Thousands of immigrants lured to Spain by dreams of a better life now live in encampments in the woods with little food and unsafe water
By Suzanne Daley, New York Times, May 25/26, 2011
PALOS DE LA FRONTERA, Spain— Back home in Gambia, Amadou Jallow was, at 22, a lover of reggae who had just finished college and had landed a job teaching science in a high school. But Europe beckoned.....
“We are not bush people,” he said recently as he gathered twigs to start a fire. “You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We suffer here.” ....But for Mr. Jallow and for many others who arrived before them.... Europe has offered hardships they never imagined. These days Mr. Jallow survives on two meals a day, mostly a leaden paste made from flour and oil, which he stirs with a branch. “It keeps the hunger away,” he said.
The authorities estimate that there are perhaps 10,000 immigrants living in the woods in the southern Spanish province of Andalusia, a region known for its crops of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and there are thousands more migrants in areas that produce olives, oranges and vegetables. Most of them have stories that echo Mr. Jallow’s.....
“There is everything in there,” said Diego Cañamero, the leader of the farm workers’ union in Andalusia, which tries to advocate for the men. “You have rats and snakes and mice and fleas."....
Occasionally, the police bring bulldozers to tear down the shelters. But the men, who have usually used their family’s life savings to get here, are mostly left alone — the conditions they live under are an open secret in the nearby villages....