The fate of Ousman Umar (Fiaso, Ghana, 1988) could have been that of many of the migrants who try to cross the Strait by boat every day: to die by drowning. Umar arrived safely in Fuerteventura. I was 17 years old. He could not speak Spanish, nor could he swim. Long before he crossed the Sahara desert on foot, abandoned by the mafia and in the company of friends that he had to bury there, and survived the tyrannical regime of Gaddafi in Libya. Upon arriving in Barcelona he met his guardian angel: Montse. She and her husband would become her legal guardians months later. That has been 15 years. Ousman now has two majors, a master’s degree, two published books, and an NGO called NASCO Feeding Minds.. A journey in the desert with a happy ending.
Thanks to the NGO, young people from their region are trained in computer classrooms. His goal is to prevent them from embarking on deadly journeys like the one he made himself. “I have suffered a lot because of the badness of people, but I still trust that there is enough good in the world and very good people. Bad people make a lot of noise. The negative flies by itself. This is the example that there is hope, “says the Ghanaian entrepreneur, recognized with the Princess of Girona Award 2021, before his talk at the Congress What really matters. At the end of the interview, where he is empathetic and funny, He ends up declaring himself a culé and a lover of football, “a sport capable of uniting people from all over the world.”
-How have these pandemic months gone by?
-I feel bad for the people who have suffered and who have lost relatives. I have seen the pandemic as a real opportunity. An opportunity for society to put social values back at the center. Who of us knew who their neighbor was before the pandemic? Virtually no one. We were dehumanizing ourselves. In my tribe there is a saying: “The tranquility of the neighbor is your tranquility.” If your brother can’t sleep you won’t sleep either. In Ghana we don’t have double glazed windows to isolate noise (laughs). It is a message of wisdom about community, coexistence and solidarity.
-The reporter Xavier Aldekoa highlights African values such as gratitude and the value of time in a book published by the magazine 5W (Africa in with Alfonso Armada). What can we Europeans learn from Africans?
-The most basic values such as respect, humility, the ability to share and love. They are basic values in all regions. It has been defended by Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism. All religions. We have allowed the system to distort them. What surprised me the most when I got here was the lack of respect for the elderly. My heart couldn’t imagine it. For me, my grandfather and my grandmother are the wisest people in the community. My grandmother is the queen.
-You may have been horrified how the political class has ignored the elderly in nursing homes during the health crisis …
-In my second book, From the land of the whites, I tell among other things what I did during the pandemic. (He points to a photo). This is me. Everyone was afraid to go to nursing homes. I volunteered to go there to collect samples and then analyze them in a laboratory. You don’t have to go to the Indies to help. I had more than a hundred computers reserved to send to Africa. I realized that hospitals were lacking. I repaired computers and distributed among schools and hospitals. At the very least, these patients can talk to their family before they die. Solidarity and social commitment are above all.
-How do you think the European Union is facing the migration challenge?
-A shame. What has been the world’s largest immigrant factory in human history? How many Spaniards had to emigrate to other countries during the Spanish Civil War? How many Germans had to emigrate to Argentina during World War II? They weren’t immigrants, were they? Is it so easy to forget and so difficult to open history books? I am quite optimistic. I don’t think Europe is on the road to suicide. I hope they find out sooner. I trust that this will be changed before we hit the cliff.
-Is the only solution for people to stay in their country of origin is to educate them?
-The real paradise is at home. His tribe, his food, his friends, his family. Let him come here to pick tomatoes in the plastic sea if he ever comes… That is not the future. The only way is to train. It is the slowest but the most efficient. Last week 24 bodies arrived and more than 150 people in a boat. According to El País, the first body reached the Spanish coast 30 years ago. At some point we will change the strategy. The solution is not in the sea. When we reach the sea the battle is practically lost.
-It has survived the Sahara, the mafias, Libya and the Mediterranean Sea. What are you scared of?
– (laughs). What I’m most afraid of is dishonest, hypocritical and false people because I don’t know where they are going to come to you. Those people scare me more than a gun. They kill you very slowly. They silence you. That’s the worst. The world is not going to be destroyed by those who drop bombs but by what they sit and look at and do nothing.
– It was five years crossing borders until arriving at Spain. What is the biggest obstacle you have faced in your life?
-There is a saying in English that says: “From frying pan to fire“From the pan with hot oil to the fire. Which one is worse? It’s a constant hell. One after another. You can’t get the slightest idea what it means to live a single day in the Sahara desert pissing to drink it, Burying your own friends. Being black in Libya during the Gaddafi dictatorship was a crime. Imagine a 13-year-old boy there. Four years I had to live in Libya.
-Have you been discriminated against more for being poor or for being black?
-You have to understand that racism is nothing more than fear of the poor, fear of the unknown and a deep ignorance. The ignorant person is not aware of it. That’s the worst. Right now with this (points to his suit and tie) I’m no longer the black guy who comes to steal. In a suit I am Will Smith, a basketball player, soccer player or the son of a tycoon. Everybody respects me. If I wear a tracksuit, someone who doesn’t know me hides their purse. Just because I have dark skin, I’m automatically synonymous with criminal.
-Those speeches are booming in Europe. Vox claims that immigrants come to take bread from Spaniards and rape their wives. How do you fight against those discourses that incite hatred and violence?
-Here I am raping everyone (laughs). You fight with training and information. It is the only tool to refute them. Proposing hatred and destroying is easy. The difficult thing is to build. It is a shame the amount of money and efforts that the Spanish Government and the European Union invest in education and unfortunately there are still people saying atrocities without the slightest empathy to recognize that not so many years ago the MENAS were your grandparents, they were Europeans. You only have to take four Argentine surnames. They are German, Swedish, Italian, Spanish. Do you still have the courage to go on TV and say that migrants come to steal? Who are you? If your grandfather was an immigrant. Are you so ignorant?
-You came to Spain as a minor. What do you think of the Vox cartel in the Madrid metro?
-When I arrived in Barcelona, on February 24, 2005, I lived on the street for two months. Calculating if each month I would charge 4,700 euros … Let Vox tell me where I am going to collect the millions that they owe me to buy a Ferrari and computers for schools in Ghana. I have not seen a penny. Not even in the Sahara desert did I feel as lonely as the two months in Barcelona on the street, eating from the garbage. It is absurd to lie blatantly. A little humanity and common sense. It is intolerable that there are politicians willing to separate and destroy people just because of their lust for power. People must recognize these people and stop following them.
-If your future self told your past self everything that was going to happen, would you believe it?
-Not at all. It is hard to believe it. In just 15 years, I studied two majors and a master’s degree and did half Chemistry Sciences. I founded an NGO without state aid that benefits more than 20,000 students. I do not intend to change the world, but the bit that this one touches me I can change. You don’t need to do big things, just your square meter. Change this. Eduardo Galeano used to say: “Many small people, in small places, by doing small things, can change the world.” Look at the story. The big changes do not come from above. They always come from below. In the United States there is the great example of Rosa Parks. Those are the gestures that matter.
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