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.
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A
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78 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC