Trapped Between Africa and Saudi Arabia

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From dusty villages overrun by poverty and violence to modern cities where jobs and hope are scarce, Samuel Aranda has been photographing African migrants who take to the sea, desperate to remake their lives. For nearly 10 years, h has seen how Somali and Ethiopian immigrants have gone from looking for a new start in an unwelcoming Europe to, more recently, Yemen, where their basic needs are met.

Granted, it is hardly ideal. Though the  government in Yemen - itself facing economic difficulties after political turmoil - has welcomed them, many of the Africans live in a sort of limbo as they wait for smugglers to get them into Saudi Arabia and beyond, where they can find backbreaking - but paying - jobs.

“The Yemeni people are hospitable and help them,” Mr. Aranda said. “When the Africans step on the ground, they are given refugee status. They can rest easy without being persecuted by the police. That’s not what happens in Europe like in Spain, where they are persecuted. But what crime is it to look for the best for your family”

Samuel Aranda for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees A young girl was among hundreds of children living in the Kharaz refugee camp, Yemen’s largest.

He can relate. Though he was born in Andalusia in southern Spain,  a bad economy forced his parents to move north in 1976 to Catalonia, where his father found work at a trucking company. Given Spain’s current economic crisis, the future was not as rosy as they had hoped for, but Mr. Aranda said it was better than it would have been had they stayed in Andalusia.

“I saw how my family had to go from one place to another looking for work,” he said. “You can’t compare what we did to what the Africans go through. We did not have to take a boat or die. But the feeling is there.”

Feeling is a word that easily comes to mind in his work. An image he took during the ppular protests in Yemen - of a mother cradling her injured son - became a modern-day Pieta and was selected as the World Press photo of the year in 2012. He remains in touch with the woman and her son, too, having been reunited with them last June in an emotional encounter.

It was while he was on assignment for The New York Times in fall 2011 that Mr. Aranda first tried to seek out where the African refugees had settled in Yemen. They had been put in three locations, one close to the southern coast, another north by the Saudi border and also in the capital, Riyadh. But access was impossible, he learned.

“There were a lot of Somalis, but the majority of them were in places where shooting was prohibited,” he said. “You needed permission from the government. I tried, but it was impossible, because the military did not permit it. Along the border with Saudi Arabia, the roads were cut off. In the! south, i! t was the same thing, you can’t get out of the city.”

Though that first trip produced his prize-winning photo, it left him with an unfulfilled desire to get into the camps. A few months later Mr. Aranda met someone who worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which helped him get access. Though he had never worked with a nongovernmental organization before, he took a chance, because it seemed like the only way in.

“It was crazy what we saw,” he said of the camp by the Saudi border. “There were thousands of people trapped. They had no money to return to Somalia. They didn’t even have passports. They can’t get close to the fence because it’s guarded.”

Samuel Aranda for United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees African refugees gthering in northern Yemen, waiting for safety near the Yemeni-Saudi border.

As he worked in the other areas, he learned that the Yemeni government helped these refugees whom other countries shunned. But with little work for them locally, those who had the strength and money to do so paid smugglers to get them over the border and eventually to Dubai or Qatar, where they could find construction work.

“Sometimes the smugglers rob them,” Mr. Aranda said. “When they go over the fence, there are still mines. There are also tunnels the smugglers use.”

Those left behind - the weak, the elderly and children - have few prospects.

It’s horrible,” Mr. Aranda said. “In Kharaz there is a zone where there is nothing. It’s desert. There’s almost no water, extreme weather and with little chance of a decent life.”

Mr. Aranda hopes to return to Yemen. And he still stays in touch with Fatima and Zayed, the mother and son immortalized in his photo. The young man! has reco! vered and is active with youth organizations.

“Things are better,” Mr. Aranda said. “Whenever there is good news from Yemen, that’s a good sign.”

The same cannot be said for the Africans he is intent on following.

“I’m lucky to have the passport I have,” said Mr. Aranda, who lives in Crespia, a village near the French border. “Though I have to work for the American media because there is no work in Spain, I am very lucky. What I saw with the refugees were a lot of young men with the same motivation. We liked the same things. We liked music and football. Then I saw how they were trapped in a refugee’s hell because they were born in the wrong place. That is the frustrating thing: how someone is marked for life simply because of where they were born.”

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