{"id":58143,"date":"2026-02-17T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.omnesmag.com\/?p=58143"},"modified":"2026-02-17T11:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T10:21:10","slug":"ousman-umar-patera-paraiso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omnesmag.com\/en\/foco\/ousman-umar-patera-paraiso\/","title":{"rendered":"Ousman Umar, in a boat to \u00abparadise\u00bb.\u00bb"},"content":{"rendered":"
Ousman Umar did not leave his village thinking he was going to Spain. \u201cI was going to paradise,\u201d he repeats. He was born in a small rural community in northern Ghana, surrounded by jungle, with no access to formal education and less than 100 inhabitants. There, information was passed down from generation to generation and the world was explained through stories. His began marked by loss: his mother died during childbirth and, according to the beliefs of his tribe, that made him an \u201cevil\u201d child, the bearer of a spirit that was too powerful. In many cases, that stigma meant death. Ousman survived because his father was the village shaman and no one dared touch the healer's son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since he was a child, he had an inexhaustible curiosity and great ability to build things with his hands. When he was only nine years old, he was sent to the city to learn sheet metal work and welding. He built cars and trucks without ever having seen a real one. He didn't know then that that first trip would be the beginning of a journey that would take him halfway across the African continent and across the sea by boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Towards \u00abparadise\u00bb.\u00bb<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In the port of Ghana he discovered ships, cranes and goods from the West. He wondered why the \u201cwhites\u201d could create all that and they could not. That question, coupled with a lack of information and opportunities, pushed him into the hands of a network of human traffickers. Hiding in trucks, he crossed borders at night until he reached Niger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abThen we went up to Gades and there they offered to take us in Land Rovers to cross the Sahara desert. After six hours of travel they abandoned us in the middle of the desert and never came back, so we had to cross the desert on foot\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ousman says that there were 46 of them when they started walking and only 6 made it to Libya alive, \u00abnot counting the corpses we found along the way\u00bb. He describes the 21-day journey as a living hell. Without food and drink, Ousman says that \u00abwhoever could pee was lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the age of 13, he arrived in Libya without family or protection. There he spent four years \u00abpractically enslaved\u00bb until he gathered the necessary money ($1800) to pay the traffickers. He was promised that in 45 minutes he would reach \u201cparadise\u201d. The reality was a new three-month ordeal through Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Western Sahara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A patera, or a coffin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u00abBetween Mauritania and Western Sahara they hid us in the dunes, and there they gave us wood and we made two small boats. I say \u00bbpateras\" for the sake of argument, but we were really making a coffin\".<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abI took two boats. In the first attempt between 150 and 180 people drowned. Mine went back to land. We were in the desert for almost a month and a half until they brought us more wood so we could make a second attempt. We set out on two boats again and in the middle of the sea one of them sank. Mine, after two and a half days, reached Fuerteventura\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe journey of Ousman Umar<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Indifference<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Once in Spain, the CIE (Centro de Internamiento de Extranjeros) confirmed that he was a minor. In Malaga he was asked where in Spain he wanted to go. He only knew one word: \u00abBar\u00e7a\u00bb. So he arrived in Barcelona on February 24, 2005, alone, with no language and no one waiting for him. He slept on the street for almost a month. \u201cThe worst thing was not the hunger, it was the indifference,\u201d he recalls. The feeling of not existing for anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00abIt was terrible to live on the street. In the desert, at least, there were five people surviving with me with whom just looking at their eyes, their looks, gave me back my humanity. But on the street no one looks you in the face. When I tried to ask for a glass of water, people would hide their bags, thinking that you were going to rob them\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ousman's angel: Montse<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Ousman's life changed when one day the woman he calls his \u00abguardian angel\u00bb appeared: \u00abI had just got up on Navas de Tolosa street, a very short street, and a lady who lived half an hour from Barcelona was there that morning. Suddenly, something told me \u2018get up and talk to that lady who is going to save you\u2019. I got up enthusiastically and followed her as if I knew her from somewhere. When she noticed, she turned around, and instead of getting scared, she grabbed my hand. I had been on the street for more than a month, with the same clothes, dirty... And she took my hand!\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Montse, who is now his foster mother, took him into her home that day. She fed him dinner and tucked him in \u00ablike a 5-year-old\u00bb and kissed him. Ousman says that despite having gone from the cold of the street to a comforting home, it was the worst night of his life. \u00abIt was the first time I didn't have to fight, it was all over. But I kept asking myself, \u2018What was the need to suffer so much, what did I do wrong, why did my best friend die, why me?'\u00bb Ousman thus came to the conclusion that the question should not be \u00abwhy\u00bb but \u00abwhat for\u00bb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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