MAURITANIA

Nouadhibou

“It’s very expensive to go to Europe and it takes a long time to get there. (…) In Morocco, there were Nigerian women who slept with a lot of men to pay their way to Spain. This is when you regret leaving your country.” Blessing

Abstracts

"Blessing embarked on a big voyage… Which lasted for three years, more or less. She made numerous stops along the way, in mythical Saharan oases found here and there. It goes without saying that these spots didn’t conjure up the same satisfied memories for her as they did for me. I met her during her last stop in Nouadhibou, in the district of Accra, which gained its nickname from the many Ghanaians peopling it.

In reality, the district holds thousands of people originating from all over West Africa, waiting to cross over by canoe to the Canaries, some 600 miles from the Mauritanian coast. Human trafficking has become a real 'business', as Blessing would say. The people-smuggling business starts off in the country of origin, and is filled out along the way by laborers who are exploited ruthlessly given their illegal and captive status."

Extract from Zoé Zoé, Femmes du mondes, 2007, Éditions Gallimard