Africans Warned Off 'Misery' of Europe

An African immigrant has become a minor celebrity in France after writing a book about how Africans should stay at home and improve their own countries rather than risking all to get into Europe.

Omar Ba, 28, was born in a former leper colony in Senegal. In his book 'I Came, I Saw, I Believe No More', Ba says that it is very difficult to find a job in Europe and many people are unfriendly to foreigners.

He also places the blame for the influx of African migrants, thousands of whom risk their lives at sea every year, firmly on the shoulders of African governments:

“If Africa provided just a minimum for its people, do you think so many would leave?”

Ba claims that many Africans have the fact that Europe is some kind of promised land drummed into them from an early age, as many African families and even whole national economies are dependent on the wages which overseas workers send home.

His own impressions were gained from watching happy white tourists on Senegal's beaches when he was a boy. However, upon getting to Europe he was miserable - he claims that the only reason most Africans tell their families they are happy in the West is to save face.

He arrived in the Canary Islands in a boat in 2001. He refused to tell the authorities anything, so they did the logical thing - they put him on a flight to Barcelona. From there, he managed to hitch a lift in the back of an articulated lorry and reach France. He was expelled in 2002, but is now back legally on a student visa.

Here are some telling extracts which reveal just what asylum seekers envisage when they come, and the reality:

He was shocked to discover that some Europeans were homeless, poor and sick. Worst of all, they did not want to know him, particularly the attractive young women he had dreamt of meeting. “People avoided me,” writes Ba, who managed to enrol as a sociology student at the University of Saint-Etienne. “I made beautiful girls flee; to think that when I arrived I fantasised about having an affair with some ravishing blonde who would give me mixed-race children.”

If Europe is difficult for the natives, it is much tougher for immigrants, he writes. Even those who have lived in France for three decades are “piled up on top of each other in insalubrious apartment blocks”. Ba found a room but knew another immigrant who lived in a telephone booth. He often had to beg and rummage in bins. The only jobs on offer were sweeping streets or washing dishes and that was before the global financial meltdown.

“So now a lot of immigrants are homeless, they are turning to drink and crime,” writes Ba, who spent two years at a restaurant sink before getting a job at a charity. He notes that employment does not seem to make people less miserable: “Before stepping on European soil, I never knew what stress was . . . in Africa it is impossible to have a salary at the end of the month and be depressed.”

“This migratory wave is draining Africa of its lifeblood,” he writes. “I want young Africans to listen to reason. Europe is not worth risking their life for. There they will find only suffering and failure.”

Obviously, the fact that Ba has found remarkable success relative to his status should not stop his message being spread far and wide.