A decade into their

new lives in Spain,

Senegalese friends

Fatou Ndoye, left,

and Hawka Diallo

prepare for a Sene-

galese holiday inside

Ndoye’s apartment in

the town of Moguer.

Diallo works picking

berries; Ndoye and her

husband have jobs in

a fruit warehouse. The

younger of the Ndoyes’

two children, an eight-

year-old girl, was

born in Spain and

is a standout at her

public school.

WHEN YOUSSOUF WALKS in the southern

Spanish town of Lepe, where he is living for

now inside an abandoned slaughterhouse,
he greets in passing the other Africans he

recognizes: the Senegalese, the Nigerians,

the men from Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast.
He is fluent in French and has learned

good Spanish, but with Malians like him-

self the exchanges are in Bambara, which

requires more elaborate courtesies. Is your
extended family fine? Yes, they are well. Your

close family is fine? They also are well. And

your wife? She is well. ¶ Youssouf likes to

wear a short-brimmed hat and sunglasses
outdoors. His clothes and shoes are clean

whenever he’s on the streets; there’s hot

water in the slaughterhouse, where aid
workers have improvised a migrant shel-

ter amid the concrete stalls. Youssouf helps

keep order inside. Because of this, and

because he knows how it feels when a man
with ambition battles shame every morn-

ing—why a good son or husband or friend

tells lies over the mobile phone to people he

loves, a continent away—Youssouf makes

This story was

produced by National

Geographic through

a reporting partner-

ship with the United

Nations Development

Programme.

W

A

WORLD

ON

THE

MOVE

78 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC