Enlarge image
Marla, 18, from Spain, Stacey, 18, from Kenya and Pablo, 19, from Brazil
Photo: Emanuel Herm;
Gordwin Odhiambo;
Rogério Vieira / DER SPIEGEL
Three young people, one year.
During the pandemic.
Those who are currently growing up experience this phase differently than other generations.
It is more fragile than life at 18 is otherwise, more uncertain.
Dreams burst, you can be thrown off course faster, especially if there is no net to catch you.
Since the beginning of 2021, SPIEGEL correspondents have been accompanying young people around the world, Stacey in Nairobi, Pablo in São Paulo and Marla in Palma de Mallorca.
We wanted to know: How does it feel to be 17, 18 or 19 now?
In Kenya, in Brazil, in Spain?
Stacey was top of the class at her school in Kenya's capital Nairobi - and got pregnant during the lockdown.
She graduated anyway and made plans for the future.
But then something terrible happened.
Pablo had just moved out of home at the beginning of the pandemic, had a job and many plans.
He became homeless and could no longer attend distance learning.
He's now making some money again - and lives with his pregnant girlfriend in an occupied house in São Paulo.
Marla passed her high school diploma and wanted to move to the mainland.
But nothing came of it, now she stays on Mallorca for the time being.
What the three of them have in common is their unwavering optimism.
Read the last part for the time being from our series over 18-year-olds in the pandemic here.
Stacey, 18, Nairobi:
"This will help me get over it all"
Stacey stands at a wooden table in Kenya's largest slum, Kibera, and has a plan.
Actually, she always had a plan, but fate always made her dreams purr, struck hard.
Especially this year.
She was top of the class, wanted to be a lawyer.
Then schools in Kenya closed for a whole year, Corona lockdown.
Stacey became pregnant at the age of 17.
“There was nothing left to do, so I met a boy.
Then it happened, «she said in January 2021 when SPIEGEL met her for the first time.
Some of her friends felt the same way; they never returned when schools reopened at the beginning of the year.
Stacey came back.
Her baby, little Aurelia, stayed with her brother and his wife during the final exams.
Stacey no longer has any parents, she is an orphan.
But she was determined to finish school in order to take care of herself and her baby.
Her exam result came in April, a close three, Stacey had hoped for more: “I'm disappointed,” she said at the time, “my goal was at least a two.
But I'm back to achieving my goals, I haven't failed. "
The dream of studying law had to wait, but the grade should actually have been better.
But, as so often, Stacey had a plan B ready: She wanted to train as a paralegal as a temporary solution.
She and her brother put every penny aside for this.
Then came the horror.
Little Aurelia, just seven months old, suddenly fell ill.
Her body grew warmer and warmer, and Stacey rushed her to a hospital in the slum.
But the doctors there quickly realized that they couldn't really help.
When the young mother finally had the money for the life-saving ambulance, it was too late.
Aurelia was dead.
Stacey fell into a hole, a deep hole.
“I was depressed, I had to go to the hospital myself.
The same hospital my daughter died in front of, ”she says.
She cannot afford psychotherapy; all her money was spent on the funeral.
But today, three months after her daughter's death, she has another plan.
And she fights.
After the last text about Stacey, numerous SPIEGEL readers got in touch who wanted to help her.
Almost 100 euros came together - enough for a new plan: Stacey now runs a small stand on a busy street in the slum.
She sells care products on a wooden table, there is no shortage of customers.
She bought goods with the money from Germany and will reinvest the profits.
Maybe a few months, and then there could be enough money for an education.
Not as a paralegal, it's too expensive.
Instead, Stacey now wants to study sign language, she has already found a university.
A friend is already teaching her the first steps.
“That'll help me get over it all.
I want to focus on the future, ”she says resolutely.
And she started meeting friends again.
She goes for a walk or swim with them.
"That distracts me," she says, and her mouth curls up in a brief smile.
Three months ago that smile was still a long way off.
Now Stacey looks almost like an 18-year-old looking for her way again.
One way forward.
Pablo, 19, São Paulo: "My life is much better now"
Pablo is busy on a Thursday morning in December.
He's standing on a street corner in the Mooca district of São Paulo, scrolling on his smartphone.
His facial features have grown up, and he has bleached his hair.
He's looking for ads on Facebook.
He wants to buy a motorcycle.
“I work for a delivery company now,” he says, grinning.
It's a job that he enjoys - and that was a distant dream just a few months ago.
At the time, Pablo, who became homeless during the pandemic, had neither a cell phone nor ID.
In order to get some money, he sold sweets through the car window, it was barely enough for more than the daily lunch.
"My life is pretty difficult right now," he said at the time.
Perhaps Pablo's life has not necessarily become easier, but he has worked a lot this year: First, he started taking over individual deliveries for a friend with a bicycle - under his name, because he had no ID, so he could not be himself register with the delivery service.
With a bicycle and in flip-flops, he brought food parcels to the gates of chic apartment towers in the east of São Paulo.
After all, he had enough money to buy an old iPhone.
"About two months ago my father asked me to lend him money," says Pablo. The two of them always had a difficult relationship.
But: "I had no choice, he's my father," says Pablo.
So he gave him pretty much everything he had saved: 900 real, around 150 euros.
A few days later the father came back with a surprise: he had bought a motorcycle for Pablo at an auction.
It was not approved.
But for Pablo the gift was another big step forward.
In the first month he earned around 2000 real with his motorcycle from the delivery service - that is almost double the Brazilian minimum wage.
He was still serving the meal for his friend, who practically "sublet" his work for him.
This type of sub-sub-entrepreneurship is not uncommon in the city.
"Then yesterday the police took my motorcycle from me," says Pablo, standing on the street corner, socks in flip-flops.
In doing so, however, he seems less discouraged than full of zest for action.
And then he has to go by bus to the country, where someone is selling an old Yamaha.
Even more has changed in Pablo's life: he moved in with his girlfriend.
She is six months pregnant.
The two now live on another occupied site, behind a pink wall, between a modern high-rise building and a youth prison.
They cannot afford a real apartment.
It's going to be a girl, says Pablo with a smile as he pulls up to his new home the next day on the motorcycle that was bought in installments.
Next to the big machine, he looks fragile.
He has had an ID card again for about a week.
His plan for the future: his own account with the delivery service.
Pablo no longer speaks of his school, which he actually wanted to graduate, after all he now has to earn money to build a house.
Because the occupied area is in the open air.
There are sanitary facilities, but everyone sets up their own barracks there.
The problem: the police keep clearing such illegal settlements.
"My life is much better now," says Pablo.
However, he still couldn't sleep soundly.
Marla, 18, Palma de Mallorca:
"I go out almost every weekend"
Something must have gone wrong with the upload.
Exactly, says Marla, in retrospect she doesn't know either.
In any case, in the end the documents for matriculation were missing.
The planned study in Barcelona, suddenly it vanished in the air.
We wrote in the first text about Marla at the beginning of 2021 that she would like to move out immediately after graduation and study psychology on the mainland in order to later become an investigator or forensic scientist.
All of this should no longer be possible?
In August, Marla flew to Catalonia with her mother, following her dreams.
But it didn't help, the deadline had already passed.
And now?
"We were always nine friends up to our Abitur," says the 18-year-old Mallorcan woman.
Two of the young women now went to Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona respectively.
Marla stayed on Mallorca, as did two other friends.
At the beginning of October she enrolled at UNED - the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, the state university in Spain.
Her fellow students are now 40-year-old men who want to study again.
Young mothers.
And many people of the same age who work during the day or are not quite sure what they actually expect from life in these times.
At first, says Marla, she only saw all of this as filling in the gaps. As a bridge to move in the coming year. In the meantime she also sees advantages: Many tasks can be done independently online, unlike at most Spanish universities, there is less homework. Compared to school, everything at university has so far been feasible. “We're under a lot of pressure now,” Marla wrote shortly before her high school exams in June. It felt like years ago now.
Even if she stays on the island for the first time, she still wanted to move out and look for an apartment in Palma.
At least gain a little distance, a little bit of freedom.
It would have been a privilege: On average, young Spanish women don't leave home until they are 29.
After months of short-time work, Marla's mother is now back to work.
But she still could not and did not want to pay for a second apartment.
So they keep living together.
In a few days Marla wants to get her driver's license and next May, she hopes, she could start a job in Cala Major, a small holiday village southwest of Palma.
Multilingual staff are here
Always needed in the holiday season.
Marla says almost casually, she has not had to think about Corona for a long time.
Sure, in many places she still needs a mascarilla, a mask.
But otherwise a lot is more relaxed than in Northern Europe.
Spain is practically vaccinated, clubs and bars are still open.
“I go out almost every weekend,” says Marla.
And if it still works, she wants to celebrate New Year's Eve with her eight friends.
This contribution is part of the Global Society project
Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?
Reporters from
Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe
report under the title “Global Society”
- on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.
The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in a separate section in SPIEGEL's international department.
The project is long-term and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).
A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.
AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has been supporting the project since 2019 for an initial three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros - around 760,000 euros per year.
In 2021, the project was extended by almost three and a half years until spring 2025 on the same terms.
Are the journalistic content independent of the foundation?
Yes.
The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.
Do other media have similar projects?
Yes.
Major European media outlets such as "The Guardian" and "El País" have set up similar sections on their news sites with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.
Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL?
In the past few years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the “Expedition ÜberMorgen” on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project “The New Arrivals” within the framework several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and displacement have been produced.
Where can I find all publications on global society?
The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the topic Global Society.
