When asked where he sees himself in five years, Moses laughs. “That’s a big question!” Without a clear future and with a present upended by the coronavirus pandemic, he is currently choosing to focus on his role as president of the Supervivientes del Aquarius (Survivors of the Aquarius), an association that organises legal support for, and helps out, other migrants who find themselves in the same situation as those who disembarked in Valencia after receiving help from the famous ship.

It was in June 2018 that three ships carrying migrants rescued from the Mediterranean by the Aquarius docked in the Spanish port of Valencia after Italy and Malta had denied them entry and amidst a heated debate over their reception in Spain. The humanitarian crisis was discussed in the media from ideological and geopolitical perspectives, almost never ethical ones, while the migrants were portrayed as passive subjects, without a voice, waiting for some government to save them.

They were the subjects of discussion while the crisis was being resolved but little or nothing is known about their lives afterwards. A total of 629 people from 25 different countries arrived in Spain, all of whom were granted extraordinary stay permits of 45 days and guaranteed the possibility to apply for asylum, though almost half of them expressed their desire to apply for asylum in France. However, an unknown number of passengers from the Aquarius, including Moses Von Kallon and Mok Kamara of Sierra Leone, both economics students, chose to remain in Valencia.

From the moment they set foot on Spanish soil, they were received by a network of transnational organisations with progressive programmes designed to provide initial accommodation and language training before phasing out that support a few months later and encouraging the migrants to become completely autonomous. And they did exactly that, so much so that they created an association that allowed them to emancipate themselves from the host NGOs and provided a platform to tell their own stories.

This is how their lives sound without intermediaries: “Through this whole period we’ve had to go out every day to make ends meet. In Valencia, I was an English teacher, I worked in construction, I collected junk and now I work for MLV on the Ford assembly line,” says Moses during our interview at the Sankofa space, where the association is headquartered.

“But those jobs barely pay for my housing and it’s very hard to find a flat in Valencia. I pay €600 in rent [about US$662] and I can’t find anything cheaper,” says the 26-year-old from Sierra Leone.

Moses and Muk face the same economic hardships as people from Spain and, as they put it, are working “to contribute to the country’s economy.” At the same time, they also work with the association to raise social awareness. “We had to emigrate in search of a better future but it’s not that we wanted to leave our country,” says Muk, a 33-year-old cook for whom the association is a vehicle to spread the word about Sierra Leone, where, according to data from the United Nations Development Programme, half of the population lives below the poverty line and the economy is struggling to recover from the Ebola epidemic and the collapse of iron prices.

Creating this kind of awareness provides context and transcends stereotypes. According to Ousmane Diaby, a 36-year-old Ivorian migrant associated with the Survivors of the Aquarius (who was already living in Valencia when the ship arrived), the immigrant label placed on them isn’t going to be removed any time soon. “In the future they’ll call our children ‘the children of immigrants,’” he says.

The members of the association are working to break stereotypes by showing their common humanity. They laugh, become passionate, and try to teach people that life in Africa does not fit the ‘primitive’ stereotypes that some might imagine. “In Spanish schools, students think that African children work in the fields, but African children go to school just like they do. I never worked in the fields,” says Ousmane.

In addition to giving talks at schools, the association also participates in the creation of a comic about its members’ journey, a multicultural choir, a language exchange and a cultural programme called Una noche de países (A Night of Countries). Members of the association also offer cultural mediation for any foreign resident of Valencia (102,704 out of a total population of 795,736). “There are immigrants who experience problems because they don’t know how Spain works and no one has ever explained it to them. The Aquarius is a symbol of humanitarian aid and we want to provide this cultural advice to make their lives easier. No one leaves their country in order to end up in a prison,” says Moses.

Help still needed

Nor does anyone leave their country behind to live illegally in another one, but Spain puts migrants through a legal labyrinth from which it can be difficult to escape. Ousmane, for example, has been in Valencia for five years and could have taken advantage of the Law on Foreigners, which allows people living in Spain for more than three years to work and become residents. But without a stable contract, he cannot apply for legal status, and without legal status, no one will give him a stable contract. He remains trapped in a vicious cycle of bureaucracy. Moses and Muk have been waiting for over a year for the government to make their legal status official. They currently reside in Spain with temporary asylum.

“It would be ungrateful to say that taking in the Aquarius was a political move, but that’s how it seems,” says Ousmane. “When you decide to help someone you have to follow through with that help. If you can define the borders of a country, you can also legalise people living on either side of them.” Moses nods in agreement, adding, “Look at what happened in the United Kingdom. In Sierra Leone, I learned their culture, their flag, their language. We received them in our country with respect and admiration. We learned everything from them and then they shut themselves off with Brexit. Why were we taught their language?”

Ousmane continues on the same topic, expressing regret that in Africa, Europe is praised so much that people are willing to risk their lives to get there on a boat.

“Even our government sells Europe to us, it’s such a shame. When I saw white people when I was young I was curious, I would follow them to see where they were going and I’d shout out tubabu, which means “white person” in Bambara. But here [unlike my mixture of curiosity and fascination, what I experience is rejection] some people give me dirty looks and reach for their valuables. Why? It’s really depressing,” says Ousmane. Moses says he takes the snubs with more humour. “Sometimes in the metro people will stand up from their seats and give me a superior look, but it should be the other way around, people should only get up to give their seat to the president,” he says with a laugh.

Such outrages were covered with great interest by a segment of the press, which heaped attention on the migrants during the harshest moments of the debate – with resulting peaks in audience – but disappeared when the migrants ceased to be breaking news. Did they feel used? Ousmane believes that they should be grateful for the coverage, that if they were used at any point by the media it gave them publicity that allowed their voices to be heard. Moses, on the other hand, takes a more critical view. “Sometimes when journalists want to sell your story they pursue you and get what they need. But when you need them they are never there.”

Although something similar happened to them when they launched the Survivors of the Aquarius association, their objective, as they explain, isn’t to appear in the media but to promote activities and community within the city. They go on to talk about their experiences during Valencia’s traditional Fallas celebration, now cancelled due to the coronavirus epidemic, which features mascletás, a massive fireworks display that could be heard at the time of this interview. The three men recount how the explosions and powder in the air take them back to their countries, where bloody civil wars were fought not so long ago. “But it also reminds me of the pagan rituals that are traditionally celebrated in Africa. Where does your celebration come from?” asks Moses.

After a brief discussion of local history, we return to our conversation about where they see themselves in five years. It’s a very big plan, says Moses, which involves normalising their legal status as well as overcoming the current health and economic crisis with their usual resilience – they recently produced a video in several languages in which they show people how to protect themselves from the virus.

“I just want to live my life my own way without any problems,” says Moses. “I’d like to go back to studying economics,” he adds, though he currently can’t find the time or resources to go to university. “We have a book of hopes for the future,” adds Ousmane, “but life here is expensive and demanding, and we can’t even devote ourselves to our hobbies. I play football and can’t join a federation because I don’t have papers. So our desire is clear and simple: we want the right to live in peace.”