The sad truth about the Beach Vendors on Costa del Sol

The journey from Mali to Marbella; from Senegal to Sotogrande; for the promise of a better life...



Disillusionment – ´Europe is not the way we expected it to be'



‘When people save for the dream of going to Europe, they don’t understand the reality of the journey or life here when they arrive. The journey itself can be fatal. Some make it as far as North Africa, but the Spanish, Moroccan or Mauritanian security forces often intercept groups of men, load them in buses and then dump them out in the desert with nothing; many die there. If they make it as far as getting on a boat, some die of exhaustion or illness and there have even been cases when security forces have overturned boats and killed immigrants.’



Source: SUR in English, an English newspaper in Andalusia, Spain.









The article on SUR in English, an Andalusian-based newspaper. To read, please click to enlarge.











Many of the African beach vendors are decent looking, they could easily hold normal jobs back home, and they are tall as well.



The African beach vendors on Costa del Sol are everywhere, they are exceptionally mobile and they often move about from one boulevard to the other, always on the look out for the policia. There was a time when I saw a few of them packing up all their goods in a jiffy, bolting through the crowds to the other direction of the beach. Oops 112 policia calling? If they are caught, would they be charged for illegal vendor squatting or selling fake designer goods? I would guess the former.



From what I’ve read and heard, most of them have tried their chances on the job market, and even though they speak 3 European languages—French, Spanish and English, with the current bleak unemployment outlook in Spain (-+22% now), there are obviously no jobs in sight. And because of this, they have succumbed to peddling fake designer bags, shades and watches on the coasts of Spain.



Whenever I see people trying hard to survive by very little means on the streets, it really stops me on my tracks, and makes me reflect. I just cannot help but well up a hope of sympathetic feelings for these people. Nevertheless, I am grateful for what I have.

Tracing the Tangles

In theory, cycling on Cape Ann - with itsmiles of rocky beaches and its quaint villages - should be idyllic. In practice, it is all main roads, devoid of shade and dense with traffic, along a largely hypothetical coastline. The water views are obscured by developments and the sea is strangely scentless much of the time. Add to that the crater-sized potholes, the unyielding drivers, and the mosquitos immune to insect repellant - and frankly I don't find it so idyllic at all.



But stubbornly I persist: the same old 45 rolling miles, from Rockport to Ipswich and back. There is exactly one stretch of backroad along my route, and I anticipate it as one might anticipate a tart fruity filling in an otherwise bland pie.



There is only one stretch of backroad, but this stretch has a little of everything: climbing, quiet, overhanging trees, wooden bridges over saltwater marshes. And the part I look forward to most are the twists. The narrow road loops abruptly to the left, then to the right, then to the left again, then - who knows. It twists haphazardly - not so much a series of hairpins, as a mess of tangles.



As a young girl I once found a stray length of golden chain in my grandmother's garden.It was thin and delicate, the kind of chain meant to be worn with a pendant. But now it was dirty and torn and missing a clasp - not really of use to anyone.I remember standing there and spilling it back and forth from one hand to the other, fascinated by the curves and tangles it made each time it settled on my palm. I would trace the tangles with my eyes and it was an act of meditation.



This memory comes out of nowhere as I now trace the twists of the road on my bike. Or rather, it is the bike that traces them. I merely hang on and take it all in, savoring the experience. The bike leans dramatically left, then right, then left, then ...who knows. And I relax and lose myself in the meditative feel of it, my hands keeping clear of the brakes. I can't tell you how I finally learned to corner. It just happened one day. It emerged from a tangle of experiences, memories, emotions.

Sic Semper

An Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus).

For various goofy reasons, my husband, my sister, and I have developed our own names for many birds. This one is affectionately known as a Kingburger.

Sic semper tyrannis is the Virginia state motto, and the phrase that some witnesses claim JW Booth shouted after shooting Lincoln. It's often misspelled as tyrannus, which changes the meaning.

A little History of North American Bird Names.

While looking up tyrannus references, I ran across the Guidelines for contributors to Birding. Ruh-roh. I am so guilty of indefinite references. Oh dear. Restrictive vs. nonrestrictive clauses. Good thing I wasn't planning to write an article for them anyway.

(Imagine musical notes here.) It's my blog and I'll abuse grammar if I want to... overused ellipses and hyphens in place of em-dashes oh yeah! Misplaced apostrophes oh no no no... Misusing "hopefully" and blatantly writing a plural possessive adjective when referring to a singular concept, ooh wah baby...

Actually the misplaced apostrophe is one of my pet peeves.

Dusty

I'm still getting used to the new camera. There are a lot of buttons.



And the print in the owner's manual is very small.



Last night when I was trying to take a picture of the peppers Hubby had strung up, the camera refused to operate, and kept flashing an odd symbol at me.

About the time I started suspecting that the symbol meant, "You're an idiot," I realized that it was actually telling me, "You took the memory card out of the camera and forgot to put it back." Which I suppose amounts to the same thing, really.

So, which picture of Dusty looks best on your computer? Or can you tell a difference? Does it matter? The first one is straight out of the camera and the other two are lightened a bit.

Morning Dance

As the sun rises each morning over the Platte River in Central Nebraska, it is a regular activity for the cranes, as they are waking up, to stretch their wings and sometimes do a little dance for their partners or potential partners. After they stretch they will often jump up and down in the air, flapping their wings and exhibiting a number of other "dance" moves for any partner that might be interested :-)

Pink- A -Phobic

Were there too many pink rooms in my Boomer childhood, too many pink sheets and towels piled high at bridal showers, with subsequent weddings themed Blush & Bashful? Could it have been an overdose of girly gift shopping in the Pink aisle of the toy store? Whatever the reason, I can put up with a small amount of this color, but I don’t love it … yet it appears uninvited all over my garden.

Nature is against me: A group of white dianthus plants may suddenly display a pink heart, as the default-color seedlings sprout and bloom, their roots too entangled to separate. All the peachy, yellow, white and dark purple verbena will die, but the neon pink plant thrives and lives through the winter, ready to resume its battle with the pale yellow Ladybanks rose. The seed packet shows vibrant purple zinnias, not the actual washed-out pink ones that appear. The skullcap tags read ‘Cherry red’ but the plant shouts pink!

Back in .., as we pulled in the driveway of our just-purchased home, the very air seemed to have a roseate cast to it. The crepe myrtles were in hot pink bloom, lightly frosted with the powdery mildew that usually accompanies the flowers. Our neighbors to the North had several large trees; the East-side neighbors grew a row of 15-footers along our mutual back fence, while the South-side neighbor had a mere half-dozen in his yard. More crepes sprinkled across the street added to the spectacle. On our quarter-acre we counted twenty-two Lagerstroemia “WayTooPink”. Our guess is that the eight largest trees were intentionally planted. The rest were 4 to 7 feet in height, apparently seedlings that had been allowed to grow against the windows, inside the boughs of flowering shrubs, and right on top of the few existing roses.

We took out many of the pink myrtles, pruned and cared for the rest, and as you can see, they're blooming again. Over time the numbers were reduced to 7 trees. Last year we released two semi-dwarf, mildew resistant crepe myrtles from the deck containers where they’d sulked for years, planting them into the yellow/blue/purple border, where they are now opening white flowers.

Once rescued and revived, the climbing rose bloomed pink.
I love it.

The Tree-Root Waterfall

The Tree-Root Cascade, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

Here's a pretty unique waterfall.

This cascade is formed by the roots of a bigleaf maple growing through the creek bed. The water flows over the roots in a curtain and plunges into a somewhat deep pool.

This waterfall, like many others in the area, only flows during the rainy season. It's completely bone dry right now.