free Wi-Fi, he can download Malian music and
talk with his family by video. In Bamako he was
able to touch his wife and children and live with
them, but what he could not do for them, with
a Malian laborer’s wages and their small plot of
inherited land, was more than he could bear.
“It’s still better that I’m here,” he said.
Youssouf could give up on Europe, yes. He
could save for a one-way ticket home. But he
won’t, not yet. Too much has been invested
in him—the payments to the smugglers, the
expectations layered thick from so many years
away. He’s too embarrassed to go back. “Not with
empty hands,” he said.
Rounding a corner, a block from the Lepe
plaza where migrants from many nations gather
at dusk, Youssouf raised an arm in greeting. The
younger man he hailed was a Malian named
Ibrahim, and in Bambara he replied according
to protocol: Yes, his extended family was well,
his close family was well, he was well. Except
that he wasn’t. He was just back in Lepe, after a
harvest job in another province, and had spent
the night in a cardboard box on the street.
Youssouf and Ibrahim looked at each other.
“No, I don’t tell my family much,” Ibrahim said.
“I send money to my brother. He shares it with
everyone. I haven’t seen them in almost 10 years.”
They considered, standing on the street
together, what might make them feel they could
return to Mali with dignity.
“Enough money to buy a good house,” Ibra-
him said.
“Enough money to start a business,” Youssouf
said. “In agriculture I’ve learned a lot.”
Ibrahim said he needed to find an indoor bed
for the night. Youssouf told him to stop by the
migrant shelter. There’s Wi-Fi inside the build-
ing too, and later that evening Youssouf used his
tablet to send off his most recent collection of
Lepe photos. He’d found an app to make them
special for his family. Click on an arrow, piano
music plays, and images appear in rotation:
Youssouf on a beach, Youssouf in a park, Yous-
souf beside a car. In the last few pictures he’s in
an office chair, wearing a button-down shirt with
a pen in the breast pocket, sunglasses pushed
atop his head. His legs are spread. He’s smiling
into the camera. He looks great. j
Cynthia Gorney wrote about migrant workers
in the United Arab Emirates in the January 2014
issue of National Geographic. Spanish photogra-
pher Aitor Lara is a first-time contributor.
In the 1980s, as irriga-
tion and greenhouses
were transforming the
southern Spanish region
of Andalusia, Francisco
Braima Sanhá arrived
from Guinea-Bissau as a
cook. Now 59, a veteran
among foreign laborers,
he checks the vegeta-
ble garden he planted
around his shack. The
modern Andalusian agri-
cultural economy has
exploded, Braima says—
“thanks to the migrants.”84 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC