Bombo N'dir, a Senegalese, arrived in Barcelona on October 10, 1998, pregnant with her daughter.
“The first memory I have was nothing positive.
As France is very close to Spain, I spoke in French when I arrived, and for me it was a
shock
when I discovered that they did not understand me.
I wrote to the taxi driver that I wanted to go to Sant Feliu de Codines, and when he read it he said, are you sure you want to go there?
He still thought he couldn't pay for such a long journey ”, he says through a video call on Zoom.
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It has been a long time since then and Bombo, an activist by nature, has been finding her place.
Although it has not been easy.
She is now the president of the Associació de Dones Immigrants Subsaharianes, an organization born in Granollers in 2004, which wants
serve as a point of reference and meeting point for African migrant women in Catalonia.
There they give training courses;
but they also talk a lot about feminism, women's rights, weaving networks ...
Not long ago they launched a feminist school.
"The first thing they asked us is who would be the experts that we would have," she recalls.
“We told them that we are not professors, but we are women with many experiences and knowledge of our ancestors that we want to share with our sisters.
It seems that in Spain you need to have a degree to teach and that is fine, but does that mean?
That you have to deny me all my life path?
Everything that my ancestors have transmitted to me orally? ”He wonders.
"It is necessary to decolonize minds," he concludes.
"African gender equality is a struggle that our ancestors have already started against colonialism"
A decolonization that Bombo thinks should also apply to feminism. When they joined these circles in Barcelona, they made it clear: "You will end up very exhausted." Very critical, she is convinced that we should all have a voice. But that, due to colonial ancestry, Western white feminism often makes the mistake of thinking it is superior. “A compatriot whom I had called to attend 8M and go on strike, told me that her boss had told her that if she could go clean the house, because she was going to strike and go to the demonstration. Do you see the contradiction? She is going to claim the rights of women, but ignores those of the person who cleans her house ”.
Why don't some women see their privilege? I admit that it has surely been very difficult for many Spanish and Western women, but isn't it just as difficult as what I have experienced? That I don't speak the language and I arrive in an unknown country ... It is necessary to notice the differences ”, he explains. And she assures that although, with our vision of a white Western woman, it may seem different to us, in Africa, feminism has a long way to go. They have been demanding equality for hundreds of years: “African feminism is a struggle that our ancestors have already started against colonialism. It is the fight of women to decide for themselves and have a voice. If feminism really is to recognize your rights, we have already practiced it since we were born ”.
Although, she says, it is true that in Africa there has been a certain reluctance in the past to use the name of feminism directly. “We used the phrase 'deny' more. The women, as fighters that they were, refused to be subdued, they refused to be left without a voice ”. And he acknowledges that using the word "feminism" is, in itself, another struggle. “You have to review the codes of language, because sometimes men see it as an imposition. We turn it around and use traditional language to say "your wife is your equal", because if we use the word "feminism" they see it as something European brought from abroad, copied, and then they reject it ".
“The world is drawn from machismo.
Here and in Senegal.
I am a woman and a migrant at the same time.
I was born a woman and in my town women have always been migrants, because where we were born was not our home, it was a place where they put obstacles on us and forced us to meet goals that were not the ones we had chosen, ”she continues.
The world is drawn from machismo.
Here and in Senegal
And precisely to fulfill his own goals, one day he made the difficult decision to migrate. “On the way we are raped, pregnant and, when we arrive, they take our children from us. The institutions put many barriers on us, because being a migrant woman with children is an impossibility ”. Migratory routes are more dangerous for them, which is why it vindicates the need for the Spanish Government to open the political agenda on immigration and carry out a thorough review with a gender perspective. “Everything is a nightmare. But things hardly improve when we arrive. There is a terrible institutional racism. It is necessary to review the codes and laws ”.
That institutional racism floods everything: access to housing, work space, the educational system ... “45% of our sons and daughters do not make it to university.
A worrying number that the Spanish State does not want to see or analyze.
Spain should value our demographic contribution positively, especially in the country with the lowest birth rate in the euro zone ”.
There is much to change and it is something that, he assures, will continue to insist: "If Spanish women already have a glass ceiling, we have a tower."
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