From Ghana to Mallorca to end up on the street at 18 years old: "I just want a normal life"

PalmaMusa's room always smells good. The air freshener sticks he has placed on a shelf anchor him to the new space. The smell calms him. It smells like home. Where a month ago there was an office with a computer and a video game console, today there is a new mattress and bed. They are his. He will no longer have to wander with his clothes in a sports bag without knowing where he will sleep the following week.

Musa arrived from Ghana to Mallorca in May 2025. He was 17 years old. He was four months away from turning 18. As an unaccompanied foreign minor, he was transferred to a center in Pla, where he could stay until he came of age. He insisted that his birth date – on the papers they attributed 16 years to him – was not correct, but no one acted. “They didn't explain my options to me. They didn't heed my warning and I knew I couldn't stay there at 18. When the Police received my birth certificate, they sent me a letter. At the center they told me I had to leave and go to the street. Just like what happened to other friends of mine”

, he recounts.

It was the month of January. They paid him for four nights of accommodation. He was left out of the emancipation circuit due to a discrepancy that no one corrected in time. “My situation was very difficult. I went through the system and found myself practically alone. Without stability, without a future, and without even knowing where I had to sleep. Without documentation, work, or support, everything is very complicated,” he continues.

Help network

With the sports bag on his shoulder, he contacted Roser, the social mediator with whom he had met at the minors' center. Musa puts his hand on his heart and closes his eyes when talking about her. “She is like an aunt to me”, he confesses. Roser told the story in a WhatsApp group she shares with people sensitive to social causes. They established a schedule to host him for two weeks at each house. The more people he met, the larger his network of contacts would be to receive help, Roser suggested. The informal organization filled the institutional gap: “The hardest part was the uncertainty. Living without knowing what will happen tomorrow. It is hard to feel that, even if you want to do things right, you don't have the same opportunities. Many of us want to work, study, and grow, but we face many barriers”.

“We feel sad, frustrated, and sometimes forgotten. Abandoned by institutions, some of us have been lucky enough to receive solidarity from people. We have talent, a desire to work, and dreams; we need real opportunities to start and build a life. It is not fair that, after all we have been through, we continue to struggle for the most basic needs. I just want a normal life, to be able to help my family and feel like I belong here”, he continues.

From Ghana to Cabrera

Musa's hometown is in “a transit territory, a dangerous border to live in and where innocent people are killed; where everything is political and revolves around money”. His family –father and three siblings– managed to move to a safer area. By the time Musa finished high school, he had already worked as a plumber, repairing mobile phones and collecting scrap metal. He saved every last coin to gather the 1,200 euros that could take him to Europe. “My family is poor. I had no possibility of studying. I only told my mother about my plan. She asked me not to leave. She was afraid, but she ended up accepting it and trusted that I would succeed. I didn't want my siblings to grow up seeing that there was no future. I wanted to be an example for them”, he recalls.

Two months of crossing

To cover the 3,800 kilometers separating Ghana from Mallorca, he needed almost two months to cross Africa to the European dream. “The journey was horrible, very difficult. They gave us masks against the desert dust. There were 30 of us in a van”. Crammed together, unable to move –Musa is 1.90 meters tall–, when he stood up his legs went numb. “Eight people were left behind. They were afraid”. Others –in a story similar to that of Mateo Garrone's film Io, capitano– were blackmailed, imprisoned, tortured, or robbed of their money to embark in Algeria. Musa didn't have it on him and his family made a transfer when he was already spotting the Mediterranean. “I was four days at sea. Without food. We had two bottles of water for 28 people. I stayed bailing water out of the boat while the rest had to throw themselves into the sea so we wouldn't sink. Then we helped them up one by one”, he recalls with pauses.

The raft arrived at Cabrera. “We expected to find someone there, but there was no one. We were exhausted. I felt it was the end, that I would die there. I risked my life knowing it could be my end, but I didn't regret it for a moment, because, even if I died, I was doing it for my family”.

The Civil Guard took their fingerprints. They gave him “a small juice, a muffin and some cookies” which seemed to him “the best food in the world”.

His first phone call was to his mother. He was so happy he couldn't speak. In the minors' center, he shared a room with four other young people. He received literacy classes. “No socio-labor guidance. The workers were overworked. I felt very sad when they kicked me out. I felt very scared because I didn't know how I would survive on the street”, he confesses. Before the interview with ARA Balears, he had prepared questions for the politicians: “Why is it so difficult for us to access legal documents and job opportunities? How will we build a future without a place to live? Do they really understand what we live through daily? What plans do they have to help those who, like me, are expelled without options?”.

The Government explains that the law limits guardianship to minority age. Upon reaching 18 years of age, exit from the protection system is automatic. From here, the possibility of accessing the emancipation program opens up, a transition to adult life that includes supervised accommodation, socio-educational support, and financial aid, always within an individual itinerary that technicians evaluate on a case-by-case basis.

In practice, the system does not always arrive on time. The Administration admits that pressure on resources has increased in recent years, especially in the residential sector, where demand is much higher than availability. According to data from the Ministry of Families, Social Welfare and Dependency Care, in the Balearic Islands, 378 people currently receive some type of aid from the emancipation network, through third-sector entities with public funding.

The increase in unaccompanied migrant minors in the protection system is a factor of tension in the structure of the Mallorcan Institute of Social Affairs (IMAS), which exercises competencies in Mallorca. The PP has made an instrument of political confrontation with Pedro Sánchez's government around the distribution of minors and the financing of the reception system. Vox has gone further, demanding their expulsion as a solution and linking it, without data, to crime. Faced with this, the PSIB and MÉS raise the debate from the perspective of vulnerability, rights, and the transition of minors towards adult life.

What went wrong?

However, the system does not explain what went wrong for a young person who had gone through the protection network to end up depending on a chain of informal accommodations. Alba signed up without hesitation. Her husband and her two children (18 and 16 years old) agreed. They cleared out the office where they worked remotely and played video games, and they prepared a provisional stay for Musa. “After a few days, I saw that everything was going very well, that he was a good person. I worry about his sadness, his longing, seeing him quiet and pensive. He talks constantly with his family. The conclusion is that he doesn't need a house, four walls, and a roof, but a home, a refuge,” admits Alba.

Putting his life in a bag

Before the two-week deadline passed, they spoke. Musa opens up and says that it is difficult for her to change houses, to put her life in a sports bag and to carry a bag of food. “Here I learned that we wanted the same thing. With everyone's agreement, he becomes a new member of the family. With the same rules,” she continues. There is a change in perspective. The urgency to make a living disappears. “You can make a short, medium and long-term plan. My concern is that he does not fall into a cycle of precariousness and that we build together a life with more quality for him, after having been left out of the emancipation circuit,” she adds.

Alba observes Musa and knows that he has trouble sleeping, that the traumatic experience is affecting him and that he needs psychological attention. "His innocence has protected him from being more broken. One of the first things he has done in this house has been to rescue a bird. For me it is very symbolic." There are no problems in the coexistence. "I like that he dismantles prejudices about life in other latitudes. He is a very active man at home. Without sexist attitudes. On the contrary. He always tries to clean up. I have two teenagers who do nothing and with him I find everything done. He is very orderly. He does not contribute to the chaos of the home," Alba continues.

“My goal is for him to leave home with guarantees, as one of my children would. I want him to think about what he would like to do. He must seek his personal fulfillment. I am considering his stay for years to come. May he be happy and have a full life”, he summarizes.

Musa plays football. He would like to be part of the Mallorca squad. And study. And work. “I have no words to describe my gratitude. My dream is to be able to live in my country with security and put an end to corruption; to create a foundation there based on education and that serves to build a better future”. For now, he already has a home. Alba arrives from work and likes to notice the smell of her scented sticks. If Musa has not left his room for dinner, her son replies: “Mom, he doesn't have to socialize all the time. Let's give him his space. He is at home”.