Solari Sarproh

full interview

Hello, my name is Lloyd. I’m going to be doing the interview today being the 19th of November 2023, and I’m interviewing Mr. [Redact]

[Redact]. Can you speak a little louder for the voice.
[Redact] Solari Sarproh Yea.

I want to know, sir, what kind of housing do you live in? 
Yeah. We live in a, I live in a three bedroom flat and I live in one room. I am actually renting. So, as you can see.

Can you describe the conditions, the people you live with, is it okay for you and describe. 
Yeah, like you see the condition, I live in Barcelona. It’s not a condition that anyone wants to live in, because live in a room with another person; live in a house that you have to share everything. It’s not a condition, for anyone, but you come to a country that you don’t have a job and you just have to take any opportunity so you can not sleep in the cold. So that is why you see, I can tell you for now it is okay until I can find something to do.

Who do you live with currently? Who do you live with? 
Ah, I live with the owner of this flat, and I also live with a friend, a friend of mine with my – say – core friend in Barcelona and we attend the same church.

How do you, what do you do to spend time, your own time, a special time? 
Yeah, I spend my time, uh, weekly, I go to a Spanish class in the morning and then during the week, I go to my church, to care of my church activities and then when I get a contract I go, and work and maybe find some 1 or 2 cent to help me with my bills, like my telephone, my house rent.

So how has life been since you arrived in Europe?
Yes, since I arrived in Europe, on the first day I arrived in Europe, I embraced life because Europe is fun, Europe is nice, good people. It’s nice. Spanish people are nice people. They talk to you nicely. But they’re nice not all. Coming to Europe as a student, sitting home without working for a year, it’s not an easy thing. So life has been something that is another experience. And life has been good on the side of completing my studies just by not working or completing my studies, life has been good with me and the living condition here is very good. It’s very good when it comes to the opportunities that are here in Spain to advance and live your dreams. So life has actually been, it has been good and on the other side challenging. 

Very challenging by what difficult parts of Europe? 
The difficult part of Europe is not what is, you are not working and Europe is not like where I came from that you can live without, without working. Europe is a place that you have to work to sustain yourself and other than that, you depend on people to keep helping you until you get to where you want to get to. So, the challenging part is not working. 

How does that make you feel since you arrived here? 
Ah, that makes me feel a bit worried. If they see what’s up, because a man who does not work, you are more like somebody who is live and living and dying without knowing. So it makes me feel worry. It makes me feel fear for life. But I think that the opportunity once you meet the goal, once you meet your goal, you gonna get work, you gonna to get things for so many opportunities. So it’s between me worrying and having a better hope for the future. 

How does being away from your family, your home make you feel? I don’t know. How were you feeling when you first saw Europe and you saw so many things happening – discrimination, the stigma, the segregation? How does it make you feel being away from your family? Do you talk to your family?
Yes. Being away from your family for the very first week, I left the shore of Africa, that bring one loneliness to me, being away from your family. The first thing I experienced was loneliness because when the Bible said that it is not good that makes you be alone, it’s not a joke because being alone is worrisome. I can go for the church that we can go and talk to 1 or 2 people, but then when you come back home and you see your family, of course,  you have dream about your family and you open your eyes and you cannot see your family. So being alone is stressful – is stressful. I think about my family a lot. I worry about them a lot and I can’t wait to joining my family or my family joining me. 

Mhm. Ah, could you ever have imagined that you would be able to handle the situation since you left your family? To overcome it?
Ahh, you know, everything you want to do, you have to plan.

Mm hmm. 
Yeah. But, reading about Spain before I came to Europe. I read about Spain, everything I read about economy situation. The livelihood, how much you need to live here. So, and we had our mindset that when you come to Europe, everything is good, everything would be, you know, very good for you. So I never had a thought that our life is going to get hard this way that to the point that you’re in. You can’t get a meal for the next day. I mean, in Europe – that you have to survive on what we call Gharri and dry rice (African dish). So it’s not something I expected, but again, men, we are dynamic. We are not static. Once you see something you want to change, you have to change your, your style of life, to be able to, to move on. 

Do you think that you, that you have developed the ability to deal with these challenges? Uh, not being able to feed? Of course, one of the challenges when you came into Europe for the first time, being lonely and not be able to feed. Have you developed some abilities to deal with these challenges and, and, ah, or do you think that you always had these skills?
Not actually developing, but you have to develop, is developing, because once you face challenges for like three months, that challenge become, like a habits, so you learn that something that you must be aware of. So, ah, for the past time I’ve lived in Europe here, I’m building that, that sense of, of understanding that, yes, this is the situation I will have to face. If I would even get to my goal as an individual, ah, for which I came here, I must not accept the fact that I will live here without talking with my family sometime, I will live here when I see my family, I will live here while I keep doing for my family at some point will be in. I will, I will reach the point I want to reach. So, it’s something I am developing, not developed fully yet to face the situation but is something that is developing to be able to face these challenges.

Okay. I would like to ask about your past right now, if you don’t mind. Ah, why did you leave your country and can you describe what’s up that made you to leave your country? What was the situation like?
Yes, as a young man, because I went to school. I got my first degree from my country and I have my plan that I want to get my master degree outside my country. So. Because everyone would want to, like, want to get their master degree in their country you know, working and money. But then my country that I’m coming from is not the country that you go and get a better education. They have bribery, corruption. You go to school. You are getting the education, ah, even somewhere in the village. When I want to get a kind of education, education that you can improve yourself, so, one reason that I thought was to leave my country because the education system is bad, the learning facility are all bad. So I thought it wise to come to Europe or come outside of my country, into the western world and do my master.  So that was number one reason and number two, when I got my visa to Europe and we were students who were protesting against the government who went to the European Union, went to the American embassy, because the government would come in the house and we were chased and some of our friends, they were in the newspapers, they beat them. They cut, they scrub your hair. Some of them got wounded. Even me, I go, when I came to Europe with my fingers pain. Yes. And, it was an opportunity to go study, leave my country where people had to embrace me and say okay, yesterday he leave me and had to hide. But thank god I had visa. Yeah, so many things, ah, our lives were threatened, so we have to leave our country to come to, to Europe. So that we can be safe. 

Ah, how does that make you feel at that time?
You feel threatened. You feel like you are going to die because if someone, if some of your colleagues were caught – beatings, stripped naked. Stripped of your hair to the point like even police  have to go and save them. Then you feel like if I want to be caught, I want to die. So they make you feel terrible, terrible, brother?

So how was the journey to Europe? Is there any experience particularly difficult that you would like to tell us about?
Well, I’ve lived all of my life in Africa – Liberia. And the only time I visit the airport was going for somebody to the airport, carrying someone to the airport, but I’ve never fly a plane. So it was another experience. If I may say, not difficult, but it was a journey of not knowing where you were and so when I go to Morocco, because I flew to, I came to Morocco on transit in Morocco. I got lost on the airport. I was experiencing little for my way where I was, like, lost because, my country taught me to know only village, village life. But seeing, seeing like the airport, I was like, wow. So when I got to Barcelona the next day, the next morning, I also got lost at a airport. Because those who were coming for me, they were speaking Spanish, and I was speaking English. Yeah, I was speaking English to locate those guys who was looking for me at the airport was difficult and someone had to help me out who could speak English before I located those people. So it was a journey, not I guess a difficult one, it was a new experience for me.

So what do you feel when you think about it, ah, this situation? 
I feel like I always want to share the story. I feel like, oh, like today I can go to airports. I can pick up somebody. I can direct you. I feel like everytime I think about I, like, I have learned something, I’ve learned, you know, gotten a new experience and every time I think about it I feel like. Also one other thing that difficulty or challenge you, will not pass challenge, you will pass. Once time passes, difficult times can pass and challenges can pass. So, my challenge at the airport is something anybody who comes, do my experience, if they don’t travel, if they haven’t traveled before.

Okay. I would like to know, how were you able to survive through it and have you created any kind of strategy, your coping mechanism?
When you say through it, what do you mean?

So through the, the situation here in Europe and everything. 
Yes.

Have you created…. And the situation back in Africa, facing the, the fact that you are being threatened and everything, thinking about, ah, you left because of your situation. 
Because when I came, I already wanted to do asylum when I came to Europe, but it was something that I was facing with my school and then running after asylum, I ran after it, I went to the police for money three different times. But, I couldn’t find my way to, because there were no one to help me, to show me how to do it, or where to go to, to do the asylum. I spoke with the Red Cross and they said, because I will now live in Barcelona, sent us couldn’t help me. So I just have to use my student document to be able to, ah, get my resident for the period of one year to be able to stay. So, it’s a difficult process because going back to my country, and I know people are still there, and it has been very difficult staying here in Barcelona. Yeah, with a kind of situation because my, like I said, my document, your student document, your studies or I have not gotten to enjoy because of language issue, and now my document is getting expiring and the option now is you know, go back to that country again, or renew my document, or wait for a very long time before I can, I can get status in this country. So it’s very difficult.

And, ah, what was a dream before you left your country?
Hmm. My dream, ah, before I left my country, ah, I’m a student of accounting. I’m a professional accountant, because I did my first degree in accounting. And I went to data analysis. So my dream is, is and my dream was and is to be an auditor. Either an auditor or an international auditor, internal and external auditor. So my dream is to become an auditor and today I’m still looking, I’m still working towards it, that one day that dream to become an auditor would be achieved. So my dream was to become an auditor – an internal or an external auditor.

Okay, that is your dream in the future? 
Yeah.

And so I am also wrapping up questions to do, ah. Now leaving, before leaving your country, I know the situation for students and the persecution you guys faced was very, very hard, like you described. Ah, what would be described as your strengths? Have you maintain these so far? What would be your strengths? The reason because you could survive and everything? What could be your strengths?
Yeah. Uh. My strength of surviving, that is making connection. Is making connection, always be connected to the people, even here in Barcelona you have to connect. You have to network. Because, there were people who we were connected to, able to call all year or to the situation that we’re going through – who were in government, who had information to help us to get out of that. There were people who came to our aid. So, one of my strengths is making connections, and self-motivation. Self-motivation because if I am not motivated to say, okay, I want to go to school, I want to come to Europe and study. At that time when that situation happened, I wouldn’t have had a visa to, to get out of the country. Yeah. So self-motivation, because I’m motivated, I motivate myself in what everything I do. The day I say, I can make you guys a deal, I make it, but once I tell myself I can make it, I will always make it. So one is self-motivation and two is connection and firstly is God. Yeah. Firstly is God. In everything you do, you must give it to God, because man can fail you, but God will not fail you. So.

So what would have been was too difficult and, ah, what you have been through was really, really difficult. Have you grown as a man or has it made you grow positively, the experience you experienced?
Yes. You know, our experience, it make you grow. And there is a saying I say, you don’t have to experience that growth on the mountain to see far, but those who travel, they see farther than those who are only standing on top of the mountain. So it was experience and a present experience I’m going through to make me grow as a man, because today, I know what it takes to live in Spain. I know what takes to live in Africa. When I compare, I say, man, I can decide which is best and I can tell somebody tomorrow that look, you have to do it this way because some of the experience we gain, is for us to tell it to another person that would be in a situation I faced yesterday or the situation that we are facing today. To be all the experience it made me grow as a man. Yes.

We, ah, really appreciate you and your time that you’re giving to us, our discussion. Is there anything you like to have that might help people in Europe, ah, to understand the life of a refugee? Anything that will make people understand? 
Yes. One thing I would like, I would say to you is that, umm, are we, if opportune to talk to somebody that come to you like myself facing the same challenges that I face, is you have to be focused. You have to know what you want. You have to know where you come from and where you want to go. Because there are a lot of life, because when you come to Europe and life is so good. Sometimes people follow the life and forget about what they come from, or what they came for. So, if I will advise somebody, if you come to Europe, whatever means as a refugee or as a person that came legally, you have to focus, because Europe will give you all of the opportunities. Spain will give you all of the opportunity. But they will only continue to give you the opportunity if you are making use out of the opportunity. But if you, or if you are not making the use out of the opportunity, follow bad boys, you follow bad friends and decide to do the wrong thing, you will have lost your opportunity and tomorrow you might regret why you had to leave your country to come to, to Europe or to come and seek refugee in another country. Because we migrant, we know where we came from, our country. They cannot help us, our country that we came from, yeah, the government is, they are very bad. So when you come to Europe, you go back there so you can help other people that in those difficult situations. So you have to be focused. So my advice to anyone is to be focused so much every day and depend on God. And these would be better for you.

Ah, thank you very much for this. I really appreciate it. 
Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.