My dream is called Ubuntu

My dream is called Ubuntu

I come from a family of immigrants. We are Amazigh, from Morocco, and at home it has always been said that our story begins in Al-Andalus. From there my family was expelled to Melilla and later, expelled a second time, to Morocco. That is why I say I did not learn about migration from books: it is in my genes.

My father, although of Moroccan origin, was born Spanish. My grandfather, from the Founty family, was one of the first to obtain nationality in Melilla, thanks to a favour from Franco. My mother’s family had a different story. They came down to Melilla from the Gurugú mountains, and my grandfather, paradoxically, emigrated just a few kilometres from his homeland. He lived there for years without nationality, like many people in Ceuta and Melilla. Elsewhere in Spain, years of residence could resolve the situation; there it was complicated by territorial and political issues. It always seemed unfair to me.

I was born in Melilla. But my paternal grandmother, for reasons I still do not understand, did not want me to be Spanish, and I was registered in Nador. I grew up with my father, who was Spanish, while I was a foreigner, because my mother was. That lasted until I was 14, when my mother started a legal process to have me recognised as Spanish through my father. She succeeded. She obtained her own nationality years after me.

I know what it is like to live as a foreigner while being Spanish, and also as a Spaniard while being Moroccan. I have both nationalities, although in Spain I cannot use the Moroccan one. When I travel to Morocco with my Spanish documents, they recognise me as Moroccan and I even get a discount at museums. It still makes me smile.

Since I was a child I have been surrounded by these stories and by what everyone thought about them. When I was young I married a Moroccan man who later became a Spanish citizen on his own. My second husband was also of foreign origin. My children are a mix of cultures.

My third husband was Tunisian. When I met him he was undocumented, and I lived that reality with him, from the inside. With all respect, I call it “the administrative ghost situation”, because there are moments when that person does not exist for anyone, sometimes not even for NGOs, because they do not fit their requirements. It was very hard.

After marrying at the mosque, we also wanted to marry at the civil registry. The official refused because she considered it a marriage of convenience. I cannot speak for him, but for me it was not. I was truly in love, and that interview broke my soul. I am strong and resilient, but it was humiliating: I was treated as if I had committed a crime. I understand that procedures need to be protected, but humanity should never be forgotten.

I have a degree in Psychology and I have trained in transpersonal therapy and coaching. For years I worked with migrants and with second and third generations, accompanying processes of migratory grief and everything that is stirred up when someone leaves their homeland. Even so, I always had the wish, almost the need, to go back to where I started, to my first years working with immigrants in Granada.

Now I have come back, but not as before. I come back with my life experience, my training and my professional background, and I know what goes on inside someone who emigrates because I have lived it and because I have accompanied it. That is what I put at the service of Ubuntu Canarias, which was born together with a group of people from different backgrounds who shared the same concern.

Ubuntu is an African word usually translated as “I am because we are”. Thinking of my family, my grandparents, my children and so many migrants I have met, I could not find a better name. My dream is that whoever arrives in the Canary Islands knows where to go and finds someone to explain, guide and accompany them for part of the way.