Vicious circle
Thousands of refugees from Senegal live in Germany. They leave their home country and their family to escape bitter poverty and a life without prospects. Since Senegal is considered a safe country of origin in Germany, they are neither allowed to work nor to get an education, even after years. Mbacke tells of his fate.
My name is Mbacké Ndiaye and I have some information to share with you about my life and fate. I was born in July 1995 and I come from a country called Senegal. It is located in the west of the African continent. The name Ndiaye is a very old name in Senegal with a lot of history and tradition. I spent my childhood in Dakar and attended a French school for ten good years before I had to leave school due to lack of resources that prevented me from continuing my studies and because of my mother, who has been suffering from a serious illness for many years. At the same time, I took care of my brother and sister because I am the oldest in the family. In order to be able to feed my family, I looked for a job to save them from hunger and bitter poverty. I took a daily and very hard work as a day laborer and still could not satisfy the most necessary needs of my family. But I had no choice because I needed the money. I made a difficult decision. I left my country and my family so that I could build a livelihood and a life abroad to save my family and myself from hunger and poverty.
Since I didn't have much money to leave my country, I decided to go to Mauritania where I lived for a year and a few months to work and save so that I could then enter Europe. My flight through many countries was hard and very dangerous and finally I reached Germany. The lack of perspective that had led me to be a day laborer in Senegal made me wish that I would be a man with perspective as soon as I set foot in Germany. I wished so much to get an education, to work and to build a future for myself and my family. But all those dreams, those hopes I had, all those attempts to learn and work did not come true. In the seven years that I have been living in Germany, I have not received permission to train or work, no matter how hard I have tried, I have completed German courses with a B1 degree, and I have been doing volunteer work for years. Although I received many training offers from companies, I was never allowed to accept them. And so I now live here in the lack of perspective from which I fled and a terrible circle closes.