Juan Luis Rod

A fisherman crossing the Senegal river, in the province of kayes, Mali. Tens of kilometres from nowhere there is a village called Oussoubidiagna that is inhabited by ghosts. The maps say that it is in Mali, in the region of Kayes, in the northwest of the country, but what do the maps know? With no running water or electricity, no hospital or institute, no factories or shops, in its rain-flooded streets and among its mud-brick houses there are, from time to time, a few young people with their gaze lost between here and there.

The young girls of Oussoubidiagna carry on their heads plates of food for their parents or husbands who work in the surrounding fields. These girls go to the home of one of the families who has a relative living in Europe and who can therefore afford to provide food for the relatives and friends who work in the fields.

Habibu Cissokhó, who was sent off from Gran Canaria in 2008, tried again in 2015. First he went to Equatorial Guinea, there he collected the money working as a bricklayer, and then again on his way to Europe. But he also ran into Libya. "The first shipwrecked, we were 130 or so and half died. We weren't far from the coast, so I swam back," he says with a blank stare. "In prison if you don't pay, you get beaten. We slept on the people who died the night before," he recalls as he touches his forearms with both hands because that must have been where he kept the smell and the memory.

The people of Oussobidgiana say that before it rained much more, there was work, the crops flourished in the fields. "Now we can't stop the young people, we have nothing to offer them," adds community leader Mamadou Cissokhó bitterly. In the photo, one of the young people shows us his crop, which at this time of year should be above his head, but it barely reaches his knees.

In a single room dressed with a rug and two wooden benches, a group of teenagers take shelter from the rain of this waning wet season. Kalillu Diallo, the youth representative on the community council, explains it in his words. "You are at home, your friend or your brother has left and everyone talks about them as heroes, with admiration. We know the dangers, they don't hide anything from us, we know the dead, but it's a gamble. Win or die." The last sentence hangs in the air, slips away before the eyes of the kids, walks away into the wet street where huge puddles are already starting to form. They smile. A few years ago the government started to build a place for them, the only one in the whole region, but the work stopped. They don't know why. They didn't ask either.

Sanou Sakiliba, with her grandchildren and daughter-in-law, showing the photo of her husband who disappeared in Libya. In the house of Sanou Sakiliba, 50, you can hear the daily hustle and bustle. Children running around, the hustle and bustle of food, people passing by and ghost-like pictures on the walls. This woman's shell is indestructible. Her eldest son, Fassara, left one day. With her help, with everyone's help. As he was only 16, they forged his passport for two more years so he could get a visa. Plane to France. Fourteen years he has been and still is without papers. Still, it's a blessing. "He helped us build the house and if anyone gets sick I call him and he sends us money," Salikiba says. In Oussoubidiagna they know this well. Where you have to pay even for an injection, a few bills are the difference between life and death.

But another son of Sanou Sakiliba wanted to emulate his brother. In 2014, at the age of 26, he set off on the road to Europe, which at that time was passing through Libya. "He was already married with two children, but he couldn't buy them shoes or soap to wash with, so how could he say no if we all wanted him to succeed," explains his mother. They knew that he arrived on the beach and got on a boat until they no longer knew. Then, nothing. Silence. "One year I was trying to find out, I called everyone in Libya, his friends, those who saw him, the traffickers. Until I got tired. He's dead." Boubalé Cissokhó was the name of the boy, who even ghosts have a name wherever they go.

Moriké Cissokhó was kidnapped and beaten in Libya until he was able to pay for his release. He tried to reach Europe four times. They dream of leaving, like their older brothers did, today in France or Spain, or like the 400 who in the last 20 years disappeared on the roads, swallowed up by the land or the sea. Mamadou Cissokhó, the first mayor of the village (of about 4,000 inhabitants) and now president of the Felascom Community Health Association, is the only one who has taken the trouble to do the math. All lost, all ghosts, first on the route to the Canary Islands or the Strait, now swallowed up by the hell of Libya or the Mediterranean. Behind every Open Arms, every Aquarius, every boat that drifts, jumps and jumps into the fence or the canoe are hundreds of Oussoubidiagnas.

At the health centre, two-year-old Moriké Dembelé fights for his life. He arrived with severe malnutrition complicated by oedemas and bodily injuries. "He is getting better, thank God," says Dr. Ibrahima Traoré. His grandmother Coumba Baradji takes care of him because his mother has to take care of his five siblings.

Teguida Diallo clings to the only photo he has left of his son Makan Kanouté, who died on the migration route to Europe. Around 400 young people in Oussoubidiagna, Mali, have died trying to reach Europe, but their families survive thanks to those who did.