The hall of Blaise Diagne International Airport in Diass is packed with people this evening of Saturday, November 4, 2023. Hundreds of young people, all aged between 20 and 35, are in long queues for formalities. check-in on Royal Air Maroc flight AT 500 leaving in a few hours for Casablanca. The spectacle would suggest the crowds observed during the departure of large groups of supporters of the national football team to attend an international competition. But the difference is that the silence which reaches these places, although crowded with people, is surprising, astonishing, even worrying. Not a murmur, everyone waits quietly for their turn, as if somehow gripped by anxiety, anguish! It’s really unusual to see this order, this discipline among Senegalese people, especially at Dakar airport. I whisper the question to a lady at the counter: “What’s going on?” She replied: “They are going to Nicaragua. ”

I turn around, taken aback, to measure the immensity of the crowd. My interlocutor adds: “It’s been like this for a long time and every evening, on all the flights that go to Morocco or Spain.” I am stopped by a police officer as I head towards the police station for departure formalities. A discussion begins on this phenomenon and he in turn admits to me: “We cannot count the number of departures. The country is being emptied of its young people.” At the cabin baggage filter, agents take out talismans and bottles filled with holy water, belongings of many travellers. The instruction not to take liquids in your luggage is hammered out loudly, but nothing is done. A young man holds on to a small bottle for his life. The lady, responsible for searching the luggage, ends up showing leniency and leaves him the bottle. She turns to me to ask me my destination. I reply. “I’m going to Nicaragua.” She retorts with amused certainty: “No, Mr. Diagne, I regret! Those who go to Nicaragua do not have a trolley, they just have a backpack as their only luggage!”

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It was in the boarding lounge that another traveller came up and addressed me, looking relaxed: “I think I recognize you!” she said. “Are you sure, Madam?” She is not at all taken aback and replied: “Yes, yes. I see you on TV.” I notice her backpack and ask her “Don’t tell me you’re going to Nicaragua too!” A. Sambe, that’s her name, seems to find my question crazy: “Of course I’m going to Nicaragua. In any case, you will no longer have anyone to vote in 2024,” she teased. I am amazed by her attitude, which is characterized by a certain nonchalance but also paradoxically, she appears determined.

I told her how sad I was to see her and all these young people heading off like this towards a most uncertain adventure. The debate begins. A. Sambe is convinced that she has nothing more to hope for in Senegal and that she must try her luck in another country. She wants to convince herself that nothing works in the country anymore, that Senegal is the worst country on earth and it is impossible to have a successful life there. I am disappointed. I insist: “Do you think the situation will be better where you plan to go and do you measure the dangers and risks that await you on your route? I believe that if you manage to save some six million francs to pay for this trip to the United States and with so many difficulties, it is good proof that you can get by here, at home.” She remains unfazed: “The money is the result of contributions from my entire family. I’m going to work and come back in five years. And then the situation will not be worse than it is here, where we no longer even have the right to express our opinions,” she wants to believe.

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I don’t know if it’s shock or irritation, but I reply: “Frankly, you’re trying to clear your conscience, but what you’re saying is not based on any objectivity. If your family contributed to raise this sum, it is not to allow you to go and live in a country where you would have greater freedom of opinion! Do you know that on the way from Nicaragua to the United States, your final destination, you will find thousands of people from other countries. It is not the Senegalese alone who are taking this path of exodus.” She has one and the same answer to everything: “I know, but the situation has become impossible in Senegal. And then the one who is my reason for living is imprisoned. Let us go somewhere else,” she said with a laugh.

She says she is a supporter of Ousmane Sonko, the political opponent imprisoned for calls for insurrection and violence. The speech she intends to give to border police agents when entering American soil is already well developed. “Leaving the country will not allow Ousmane Sonko to get out of prison!” Indeed, but she remains firm in her conviction that she must leave. She leaves, saying she is a victim of political persecution in her country. I show her images that I just received on my phone, of more than eight hundred migrants whose canoes ran aground the same day on the Mauritanian coast, precisely in Nouadhibou. She agreed and said: “Taking the canoes is simply tantamount to suicide. This is madness. » She does not realize the risks that mark her own route to the border between the United States and Mexico. She nevertheless promises to give me news.

I.Wagué also closes his entire business to leave 

We finish boarding. A young person is sitting in the twin seat of mine. His name is I. Wagué. He is also going to Nicaragua. He is thirty-two years old. He got married in 2021 and just baptized his first baby. I. Wagué owns a hardware store which seems to be doing well. “I am established in Keur Massar. If you come there, most of the people who build in the neighbourhood buy cement and iron from my business. My hardware store is very well known. It’s Wagué Quincaillerie. If you come there, just ask.” Nevertheless, he decides to go on an adventure. “I paid for the trip for my younger brother, Mbaye, who has been in Atlanta for a month.” He shows videos of his younger brother who presents himself to his advantage in the country of Uncle Sam. Wagué watches the videos, all satisfied and envious. He details the expenses of the trip: “I paid four million five hundred thousand francs to a direct seller in Dakar. It is established near the Port of Dakar. He does this business and takes care of all the procedures (he mentions the person’s name).

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He arranged everything until Nicaragua, and once in Nicaragua, ‘I have the contact of another person who will take over. I will have to pay a thousand dollars from Madrid (Spain) to be able to board for El Salvador. The authorities of this country have introduced a new tax payable by passengers in transit, to finance work to modernize their airport. I’m with two other friends of mine. We purchased Business Class tickets because there were no available seats in Economy Class. After Madrid, we will take an Avianca flight to Bogota (Colombia), then to San Salvador (El Salvador) and another to Managua (Nicaragua). It is the Avianca company that makes this entire journey from Madrid. It is in Nicaragua that smugglers will take us by bus to Mexico City, for around two thousand dollars. The tax at Managua airport is one hundred and sixty dollars. Other smugglers will take over for the sum of two thousand dollars, to transport us from Mexico to the American border, and we can go to one of the camps. There are several camps. We are going to Camp Reynosa. It’s better to go to the camps where the American police officers treat you well and allow you, after a few days of waiting, to pass through and enter their country. On the other hand, migrants who try to cross borders illegally by scaling walls or barriers are mistreated and deported.” Ultimately, the trip cost a whopping six and a half million CFA francs, not counting the necessary expenses for food.

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The journey lasts around fifteen days of tribulations. I. Wagué is determine

d to go all the way. What about his thriving business which allowed him to raise the necessary sums to finance two trips, his own and that of his younger brother? “I left it in the hands of one of my uncles.” Ironically, this uncle had emigrated to the United States where he spent more than thirty years: “He did not leave by the path we are taking now. He had a visa.” Never mind! Isn’t it that after a good thirty years, this uncle came back to only take care of the business that you are abandoning? I. Wagué does not budge: “It’s all true, that he didn’t succeed there, but people don’t have the same chances. I’ll take my chances. You just have to pray for us, uncle. It’ll be OK. » Honestly, I’m helpless.

We arrive in Casablanca. Another compatriot, O. Fall, on his way to France for his work, is not angry at this absurdity which is causing young people to set off en masse on the road to Nicaragua. Such large groups of young people from different African and Asian countries are also in transit at Mohammed V airport. They sleep on the ground, in the corridors of the airport, while waiting for their onward flights. Obviously, their destination is Nicaragua too, their backpacks indicate it. O. Fall has only compassion, a great sadness even, which ends up revolting him, to see another young Senegalese lady, painfully carrying a baby less than a year old and who is part of the group of people setting out for the adventure from Nicaragua. But he resigns himself: “What can we do? They are stubborn and don’t want to hear anything!” I. Wagué also promises to give his news. Our roads separate in Casablanca. We are all sad.

By Madiambal DIAGNE – mdiagne@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH