When he stepped onto the rickety boat which would take him from Africa to the Canary Islands, 16-year-old Madassa Mohammed didn’t know about the coronavirus epidemic which was sweeping across Europe.
But even if he had, it wouldn’t have stopped him or any of the thousands of other African migrants who have been arriving in droves on the Spanish archipelago.
From a farming family in Mauritania, Mohammed said he came looking for work after his father died, leaving them penniless.
“I’m the oldest and the one who needs to earn the money. My siblings are too young,” he explained at a safe house for unaccompanied minors in Telde on Gran Canaria.
“I was forced to cross the sea to look for work: it’s risky but it’s all about money.”
He arrived in March as the virus was spreading like wildfire across Europe at a time when west Africa had barely registered any infections.
“On the day we left, they hadn’t yet discovered any cases,” said this lanky teen wearing the red shirt of a local Canaries football team.
“Just staying at home is worse than coming here and dealing with the pandemic.. in the end, they choose the lesser of two evils,” explains Noemi Santana, the Canary Islands official in charge of social rights.
Since January, more than 5,100 migrants have made the perilous crossing from the African coast, an increase of 500 percent from the same period in 2019, raising fears of a recurrence of the crisis of 2006-2007 when tens of thousands of migrants flooded onto the islands.
Although a crackdown largely stemmed the flow, it began ticking up again about a year ago. In the first half of September, there were almost 1,200 arrivals — a figure not seen since 2008.