Desperate Moroccan Teen Swims to Ceuta in Risky Migration Attempt

"Life in Morocco was very difficult for me, I studied during the day and worked at night, I only slept 4 or 5 hours," Ayoub confides to RTVE. From a poor family near Tetouan, the 17-year-old young man, very desperate by his situation, decided to reach Ceuta by swimming, as many young people did last May.

Some of them were immediately returned to Morocco. Ayoub, on the other hand, managed to hide and enter the autonomous city where he wandered the streets for two days. Then he was arrested by the police and transferred to the Santa Amelia sports center, one of the reception centers for minors. "There were a lot of people, we slept very close to each other, we didn’t see the sun and the agents didn’t let us go out on the street," he recalls, deploring the living conditions in this center.

To read: Moroccan Teen’s Perilous Journey: From Runaway to Student in Spain

On August 13, more than a hundred minors were repatriated. Aware that his turn would come and not wanting to return to Morocco, Ayoub modified his personal information with Photoshop, and on the basis of this new document presenting him as an adult, he asked to leave the center. Now considered an adult, he returned to the street. Later, he tried to return to Spain by climbing under a truck. After several attempts, he finally managed to reach the peninsula. "I sprayed my body with two liters of gasoline so the dogs wouldn’t smell my scent and I wasn’t spotted," he explains.

But this was only the beginning of his ordeal. Ayoub recounts that he spent 37 hours under the truck, without eating or drinking. Arrived in Madrid, he turned to the Raíces Foundation to ask for help. "I noted that he was very young and in a very vulnerable situation. He was living alone on the street," said Lide Mancisidor. Despite all the adventures, Ayoub does not give up. "I want my life to change, I want to have a better future and help my family in Morocco," he said.