Mamadou Sow: "The first time I saw the sea was at night and I was on board a raft with 124 people"

Calella“The first time I saw the sea was at night; and I, on board a raft with 124 people”. Born in a village in the interior of Senegal, Mamadou Sow (Tambacounda, 1991) landed in the summer of 2007 in El Hierro, in the Canary Islands, thanks to a tourist boat that spotted his adrift raft. He traveled from the capital, Dakar, with the help of an older brother, without the permission of his mother, the widow of his father. “In my village, everyone who had a house or a car had migrated to Europe or the United States”.

He was admitted to a minors' center in Tenerife, where he lived with a few Moroccan boys, until, from January 2008 onwards, more began to arrive, from other origins. Some minors were sent to Madrid and Barcelona. They wanted to send him to Ceuta, but “for me it meant returning to African territory”. As punishment for refusing, he was transferred to another center in the same city where the conditions were worse. Football was a key factor in his integration. The new center raffled tickets to go to the Tenerife stadium to watch the first team's matches, but he always had a reserved seat. The monitor used to tell the others: “Mamadou is the only one who knows the players' names”. He witnessed a promotion to the First Division.

When he turned eighteen, he had to leave the minors' center. Omar Ndiaye, his mother's well-known Senegalese acquaintance, who is now deceased, offered him to live with him in Pineda de Mar. His legal residence permit was expiring in six months and he needed a work contract to renew it. “In the midst of the crisis, I couldn't find anyone who wanted to hire me. I was undocumented for nine years.” His first undeclared job was in the kitchen of a family restaurant. With his first wages, he rented a room in a shared apartment. “Working without papers means not having any kind of network or insurance – he explains–. There are employers who want the far-right to win so that immigrants have no hope, so they have to work for peanuts while the owners go on vacation and live a life of luxury at the expense of the workers”.

He frequented the village bar: he went there to watch football matches. He would argue with other customers about the related topics. “I'm a bit like Toni Padilla: I'm interested in the social, political, and football aspects.” Until three Uruguayan brothers appeared in his life, who today are his best friends. Fede is the coordinator of CF Calella, which plays its matches in the stadium popularly known as the “Caribbean” field due to its proximity to the sea. He offered him to manage one of the teams, and since then Mamadou has been balancing his work in a restaurant kitchen with that of a coach.

When I ask him if he has experienced racism in Catalan grassroots football, he replies that whenever he witnesses such acts, he reacts forcefully. He gives as an example a time when a man from the local audience in Malgrat de Mar referred to a Sant Pol player as “The black one”. Mamadou snapped at him that if he didn't know the name, he should refer to him by his jersey number, not his skin color. The person accompanying the man reprimanded him for the racist comment. "We must try to change people's language and mentality. A well-known acquaintance once told me that I didn't seem African because I spoke without an accent. I answered him that I'm from here. He was stunned, and I immediately told him to relax, that it was a joke. But these shock tactics change people's mentality," he concludes.

In his mid-thirties, single and childless, Mamadou Sow considers himself the black sheep of the family. “By spending so much time away, I’ve strayed a little from customs and traditions.” In 2023, he returned to Senegal for the first time. His mother had already passed away. A neighbor from Maresme asked him where he was going. “To my country,” he replied. “You’re going to see your family. This is your country, even if it pisses you off.” Mamadou doesn’t feel entirely Senegalese or entirely Catalan, let alone Spanish. “I always joke that the day I vote will be for an independent Catalonia. It will be a very beautiful day.”