Coulibaly - “Without work, money, or papers, I am stuck”

“Oh no, no, in the name of the Lord, Equatorial Guinea is not the country I had dreamt of when I was in Mopti [Mali],” said Coulibaly*, dressed in a black Bob Marley T-shirt, dirty jeans and a pair of tennis shoes that had long lost their white colour.

This young, lean Malian of 25 years is one of the hundreds of migrants, known to locals as “indocumentados,” or without papers, who arrive monthly in oil-producing Equatorial Guinea. A street vendor of pirated Nigerian CDs and DVDs, he pitches his wares daily rain or shine, in the hopes of earning more than the day before.

But four years after his arrival in the capital Malabo, Coulibaly told IRIN the “El Dorado” dream that had compelled him to go has turned out to be only that – a dream.

“I lived in Mopti, but I am from Koulikoro [60km from the Malian capital Bamako]. I was a fisherman, but at 20 years old, one does not want to be a fisherman for life. So some left to go overseas. Some would go for years without sending any news and then one day their families received a money transfer from them, and it would be like a party. From there, I started thinking about leaving also.

“I heard about Equatorial Guinea from Mopti for the first time. A cousin had passed through the country on his way to Spain. In a letter, he said he had found a night guard position with an American oil company. That with the Americans, there was money everywhere, great jobs with salaries that only Malian ministers could earn. All that made me dream – Americans! Money!

“To arrive, all I had to do was go to Calabar in [southeast] Nigeria, board a pirogue [fisher’s boat] and then disembark in Malabo. That is what I did. But I should have told myself at that moment that everything was too good to be true.

“Six of us shared a room in Semu [neighbourhood in the capital Malabo]. The owner hasn’t stopped raising our rent every month. From US$50 per month, we now pay $140. I can earn anywhere from $3 to $6 a day and sometimes, nothing at all because of [migrant] round-ups when I have go into hiding. I have been roughed up several times by people who wanted to steal my CDs.

“I have so many debts to my friends who have stepped in when I was arrested to pay the police bribes for my release when I was rounded up during mass [migrant] arrests.

“Without work, without money, without papers, I am stuck. I have no money to go home, which has gotten no word of me since my arrival. But I don’t have money to continue on to another country. There are days when I really regret having left Mopti and abandoning my wife and family.

“But with God’s help, many fellow Malians started like I did and are well established here.”

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*Not his real name