Golden Age of Gaia

Toward a World that Works for Everyone

Menu
  • Home
    • About The Staff
    • FAQs
    • Glossary
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Service
    • Downloads Page
    • Close
  • Contact Us
  • Commentary
    • Charlie
    • Kat
    • Kathleen Mary Willis
    • Narendra Mishra
    • Sitara
    • Steve Beckow
    • Suzanne Maresca
    • Writer’s Corner
    • Close
  • News
    • Ascension
    • Accountability
    • Building Nova Earth 1
    • Channelings/Commentary
    • Reval/GCR/Stewardship/Abundance
    • Homelessness
    • InLight Universal Shows
    • New Maps of Heaven
    • Opioid Crisis
    • Politics
    • Spirituality
    • Close
  • Library
  • Hope Chest
    • Hope Chest: Frequently Asked Questions
    • Close
  • Forums
  • Donate
/ Home / News / Building Nova Earth 1 / A World That Works for Everyone / ‘We Failed to Reach Europe – Now Our Families Disown Us’
post

‘We Failed to Reach Europe – Now Our Families Disown Us’

November 16, 2019 by Steve Beckow

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

We need to bring sustainabilty to them, not require them to run a gauntlet to have it.

‘We failed to reach Europe – now our families disown us’

Tim Whewell, BBC World Service, Nov. 14, 2019

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-50391297

Most of the West African migrants who fail to reach Europe eventually return to their own countries, but it can be a bitter homecoming. In Sierra Leone, returnees are often rejected by relatives and friends. They’re seen as failures, and many stole from their families to pay for their journey.

Some readers will find this story disturbing

Fatmata breaks into sobs when she remembers the six months she spent in slavery as the “wife” of a Tuareg nomad who seized her in the Sahara desert.

“They call him Ahmed. He was so huge and so wicked,” she says. “He said, ‘You are a slave, you are black. You people are from hell.’ He told me when somebody has a slave, you can do whatever you want to do. Not only him. Sometimes he would tell his friend, ‘You can have a taste of anything inside my house.’ They tortured me every day.”

That was only the beginning of the horrors Fatmata, aged 28, from Freetown, Sierra Leone, experienced as she tried to cross West Africa to the Mediterranean. She eventually escaped from Ahmed, but was recaptured by traffickers who held her in their own private jail in Algeria.

After she and other migrants broke out, Fatmata, deeply traumatised, decided to abandon her dreams of a new life in Europe – and go back to where she started. She applied to an intergovernmental agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which pays the fares for migrants who want to return home.

Last December, she arrived back in Freetown, by bus from Mali – after nearly two years away. But there were no emotional reunions, no welcomes, no embraces. Nearly a year later, Fatmata hasn’t even seen her mother – or the daughter, now eight, she left behind.

“I was so happy to come back,” she says. “But I wish I had not.”


Find out more

Listen to Sierra Leone – the price of going home on Assignment, on the BBC World Service


When she got back, she called her brother. But his reaction terrified her. “He told me, ‘You should not even have come home. You should just die where you went, because you didn’t bring anything back home.'”

After that, she says, “I didn’t have the heart to go and see my mother.”

Fatmata thought she’d be able to pay back the money she stole

But her family didn’t reject her just because she was a failure. It was also because of how she funded her journey.

She stole 25 million leones – about US $2,600 at today’s exchange rate, but then worth a lot more – from her aunt. It was money her aunt had given her to buy clothes, that could then be resold as part of her trading business. Her aunt regularly trusted her in that way.

“I was only thinking how to get the money and go,” Fatmata says, though she adds that she’s not a selfish person. “If I had succeeded in going to Europe, I decided that I would triple the money, I would take good care of my aunt and my mum.”

But Fatmata’s aunt’s business never recovered from the loss of the money. And – to make things even worse – the theft has caused a rift between the aunt and her sister, Fatmata’s mother, whom she falsely accuses of being in on Fatmata’s plan.

“I’m in pain, serious pain!” her mother says, when I visit her. “The day I set eyes on Fatmata, she will end up in the police station – and I will die.”

It’s a story that’s repeated in the families of many of the 3,000 or so Sierra Leoneans who have returned in the last two years after failing to reach Europe.

At one time, relatives often raised the money to send someone, but there’s less willingness to do that now that stories of imprisonment and death along the route have multiplied.

Now, many would-be migrants keep their plans secret, and take whatever money they can, sometimes even selling the title deeds to the family land


Jamilatu stole money which had been lent to her mother

At the headquarters of the Advocacy Network Against Irregular Migration, a voluntary group that helps returned migrants rebuild their lives, all the returnees I meet have stolen from their families.

Jamilatu, aged 21, who escaped with Fatmata from the traffickers’ prison in Algeria, took a plastic bag of cash worth $3,500 from her mother’s room when she was out of the house. The money didn’t even belong to her mother. It had all been lent to her by neighbours, as part of a microcredit scheme.

After Jamilatu left, the furious creditors besieged her mother’s house, threatening to kill her if she didn’t return the money. She was forced to flee Freetown for Bo, three hours away in the south of the country, leaving her three other children behind with their father.

“My mum doesn’t want to talk to me, because of the money,” Jamilatu says. “So since I came back, I haven’t seen her. And I want to see my mum – it’s over two years now that I’m not seeing her.”

Jamilatu has been estranged from her mother for more than two years

I visit her mother, Maryatu, at her new home in Bo, and after a long conversation she says she would like to see Jamilatu again, despite the suffering she’s caused.

But when they meet, soon afterwards, it’s a short, awkward and almost silent reunion. They embrace stiffly. Then Jamilatu kneels in front of her, asking for forgiveness. Neither looks the other in the eye.

Afterwards, Jamilatu goes straight back to Freetown.

“I am the happiest woman on Earth today because I have seen my mum,” she says. But she doesn’t look happy. Her mother has told her they can’t live under the same roof again until Jamilatu has raised the money to repay the creditors.

It’s hard to see how that will be possible. Jamilatu, like Fatmata, has no job. They both depend on support from Advocacy Network Against Irregular Migration. The group was founded by Sheku Bangura, himself a returned migrant, who lobbies the Sierra Leonean government to do more for returnees – currently there’s very little official support – and tries to give practical help himself. He finds accommodation for those who are homeless, intervenes with the police if returnees get into trouble, and organises basic psychological counselling.

Sheku Bangura has personal experience of the challenges faced by returnees

“I have had a lot of migrants who have mental problems,” he says. “These young people, they are on the streets, they don’t have place to sleep. It’s not really easy for them.”

One of those helping out at the Advocacy Network is 31-year-old Alimamy, who set out across the Sahara three years ago, after stealing and selling an expensive water-packaging machine belonging to his uncle.

One of his two travelling companions died of starvation in the desert. The second drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in a dinghy. Alimamy ended up in a Libyan detention camp. He was only rescued in November 2017 when the IOM began organising flights from Tripoli to West Africa for those who wanted to go home.

Emaciated and exhausted, he accepted the offer of a ticket, but he was terrified of the reception he would get. “I was thinking I should not come back to Sierra Leone, because I know my uncle has a very high temper,” he says.

Alimamy’s attempt to reach Europe ended in a Libyan migration detention centre

Since returning, Alimamy has lived with friends. His elder brother, Sheik Umar, a former professional footballer, says: “We are hearing he is in Freetown, he is suffering. And yet he hasn’t got the guts to face any of us in the family.”

Sheik Umar says he used to be close to his brother, but if he sees him now, he will ensure he is “arrested, prosecuted and convicted”.

“If he dies in prison, I will not have any regrets, I am sure no family members will have regret, because of the shame he has put on all of us.”

He says the water-packaging business Alimamy had been entrusted to run by his uncle could have generated enough money to support the whole family.

“But he misused that opportunity and all of us are in this mess now… Wherever I go now, people taunt me. Our mother is sick, she has moved to a village. That (business) was the beginning of our hopes. But Alimamy has shattered all of that.”

Alimamy himself is angry and frustrated. “I have come back home, no impact, just like I’m zero,” he says. “The place where I am living, it’s like a hell for me. The way people look at me, I don’t feel happy. They’re looking at me like I’m not human.”

Sheik Umar says his family has suffered as a result of Alimamy’s actions

The IOM offers migrants who return voluntarily to their home countries in Africa “re-integration allowances” worth up to 1,500 euros (£1,270). The money comes from a 347m-euro fund financed mainly by the European Union. But the allowances aren’t paid in cash. If they were, most people would just use them to repay their relatives. So the IOM pays for goods or services that applicants can prove they need to set up a specific business.

Alimamy got an allowance to buy a motorcycle to rent out to other drivers to use as a taxi. But after just four months, one of the drivers went off with it and never came back. Alimamy himself had become a victim of theft.

As for Fatmata and Jamilatu, they never received an allowance because they returned from Mali at a time when some other Sierra Leoneans were abusing the system by catching a bus to Mali, pretending they’d returned from across the Sahara, and claiming the allowance. So everyone returning from Mali lost out, including Fatmata and Jamilatu.

Now, all three returnees take part in “awareness-raising” events organised by the Advocacy Network. They go out on the streets with placards and loudspeakers to warn other young people of the dangers of illegal migration, and urge them to stay in “sweet Sierra Leone”.

But for them, home is no longer sweet. All three are consumed by feelings of worthlessness.

Fatmata says: “I have nothing to offer. I have nothing to show. I can’t even go and see my daughter. I only see the pictures, because I have nothing to give her when I get there, so I can’t.”

Alimamy says the “stigmatisation” he suffers is forcing him to do the opposite of what he says on the streets. He wants to make another attempt to reach Europe.

“Staying here is like a hell for me,” he says. I remind him of the horrors he experienced on his first attempt, being enslaved, imprisoned, and seeing friends die.

“Well,” he says, “I have been through that, and I’m sure I could cope.”

Share this:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Filed Under: A World That Works for Everyone, Human Trafficking, Slavery/Human Trafficking, Steve Beckow

Subscribe to the Golden Age of Gaia

Recent Posts

  • A Transmission from Mira from the Pleiadian High Council Through Valerie Donner July 8, 2025
  • From Darkness Unto Light, 8 July 2025 Update – Part 3
  • From Darkness Unto Light, 8 July 2025 Update – Part 2
  • Politician or Statesperson?
  • Ismael Perez ~ White Hat/Alliance Update
  • From Darkness Unto Light, 8 July 2025 Update – Part 1
  • Judith Kusel: Soul Calling
  • The Creators: The Most Powerful Practice Ever
  • The Oracle: This is Unlike Anything You Have Ever Experienced
  • GFL Station ~ The Arcturians (Layti): Huge Timeline Jump

Archives

It’s “Official”!

What is the Purpose of Life?


Click on graphic

Time to Prepare for the Emergency Broadcasts?

An RV Checklist

Before and After the Reval

You’re invited to take time out to read our wide-ranging selection

Breaking

The Real Target Wasn’t Uranium. It was the Elite’s Vault

Massive!!! GESARA Is Now Military Law

… if you want to see what’s happening….

Joe Biden: The President Who Never Was

You Have Prepared

https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Mary-Had-a-Little-Lamb-2.mp4

See From Darkness Unto Light – GCR, EBS, G/NESARA

Divine Mandates

Archangel Michael on Why All This Conflict is Occurring

Jesus: You are Bringing to Light What Needs to be Revealed

  • You live in tumultuous times and you live in a time of fulfilment. … You are leaving compassion and latitude for correction and understanding.
  • You are bringing to light what needs to be revealed so it doesn’t destroy the fiber of your society. …
 When you see the shadow, it defines the light.  (Jesus through Linda Dillon, Heart Call, Sept. 19, 2020.)

St. Germain: Action Against the Dark is in Accord with the Plan

Reign of Darkness is Over Once and for All

The Cabal’s Tin Toys and Party Favors

Aurora TR3-B

Adamu of the Pleiadian Monad: Please, take a second. Try to think.

If we are able to surround your planet with millions of ships of living light….

The Trump Effect

President Trump’s Second Declaration of Independence

The Greatest Show on Earth

Channeling President Trump

Trump Surprises Everyone

https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Trump-Approaches-Homeless-Veteran-Woman.mp4

Stands and Declarations

Digger: Address to Councils

The Question of Sending Love and Light

Can sending love and light be harmful?

We are the People of the Internet

https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/We-are-the-people-of-the-Internet.mp4
  • (This video can no longer be found on the Internet!)
  • The next, Love Revolution will happen, I predict, on the Internet

We are the World (1985)

Journalists vs Conspiracy Theorists

Can’t Say It More Clearly Than This

Hammer Blow to Woke Elites

https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Trump_-a-Hammer-Blow-to-Britains-Demented-Woke-Elites.mp4

A Global “No!” to the Deep State

1969 Doctors and Health Professionals: End all CV19 Measures

The Glorious Revival: Statement of Principles

The Rights of All Persons & The Duties of Government

The Westminster Declaration

The Hope Accord

MEGA MAGA: Making America Great Again while Making Planet Earth Great Again Too!

America shows the way to making Earth great again! All honor to America.

Issues and Warnings

Nothing Is as It Appears

A cogent analysis of the Alliance’s moves and countermoves against the deep state.

What’s Next?

The Reval, G/NESARA, and building Nova Earth….

A Word in Defense of Candace Owens

Candace argues from a more expanded view than most of us.

On Canada and the United States Uniting

An Inadequate View of Reality

No one group is the root of all evil in the world.

The Perfect Primer

The perfect primer for answering questions from the newly-awakened.

How Do I Make Sense of Our World?

  • The best introduction to the subject in recent memory.

Is U.S. Government a Colossal Globe-Spanning Racket?

Matthew Ward: Learning the Truth of What’s Happening

Matthew via Suzy Ward: Earth’s People are On the Move

Matthew Ward: Who are the Illuminati?

President Kennedy On the Peril We Face

Unpleasant Truths About the Deep State

9/11 – What Really Happened on That Day?

Pushing the Climate Change Hoax

The Next Scam: Climate Change

“Climate Change” is a Conspiracy Theory

Alex Newman: CO2 is Not Pollution

Dr. David E. Martin: The History of the Development of Covid 19

Covid 19 has been under development by the military as a bioweapon to be used against humans, since the early 1960s.

Dr. Peter McCullough: Let’s Win the War Against Therapeutic Nihilism

There is a Plan

There will be no world war. No nuclear devices can be exploded in space. Global martial law is to restore law and order worldwide. There is a Plan.

The Plan

Whitney Webb: What the World Faces

What G/NESARA Mandates

Ezra Cohen-Watnick: Spelling It Out 1 Time

Predicted Events

Five Point Plan

I suggest we follow a five point plan before rushing to reconciliation.

 

Tired of White-Hat Bias in Reporting

It Isn’t that We Don’t Censor….

  • Free speech is not unlimited.

Please support this site. Donate:


A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit
  • Building, anchoring, and restoring hope, trust and Love within the human community.
  • "The key to Love is sharing, ... [balancing] give and receive." - The Divine Mother.

A Reader’s Encouragement

Downloads Page

(Always) free introductory texts on Ascension, Disclosure, Abundance, and Accountability. Especially of interest to those new to these subjects.

GAoG on Facebook

  • Did you know we have a Facebook page? Come see what we share.
  • URL: https://www.facebook.com/GoldenAgeofGaia22

 

HB & AHWAA Transcripts & Audios: Divine Beings, Universal Laws, Blessings & Virtues

* HB/AHWAA Transcripts and Audiotapes

* On the Importance of the Universal Laws

* The Universal Law: What, How, and Why?

Amanda Lamond: A Call to Legal Lightworkers

  • Legal Lightworkers, help bring in the next “legal system” and processes for the energetic dissolution of conflict using the Universal Laws.
  • For Light Warriors desiring deep ascension support, please look at the Light Warriors BOOTCAMP
  • For more, download No One Can Take That Step For You

Amanda Lamond: Free Audio Course for All Those on the Ascension Path

La Presse Galactique

French-English Translation available

PAO: Galactic Activation Webinars

  • Join Our Monthly Webinars
    with Spectacular Special Guest

Spiritual Counselling

  • Releasing old patterns of limitation.
  • Remembering, embodying, and expressing your true Self

Len Satov
SourceLight – Seeing you home
http://www.lensatov.com/

Beyond Being Human

Greg Bourdon, Life Coach

Greg Bourdon

Professional Life Coaching

Los Angeles, CA
Mobile & Text: 818-601-1307

[email protected]

The Spirit Cafe, Council of Love

  • Join the Council of Love’s Spirit Cafe

Kees de Graaff: Somehow I’ll Find My Way Home

https://goldenageofgaia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/22Somehow-Ill-Find-My-Way-Home22-Tribute-to-All-Lightworkers.mp4

All of life is embarked on the same one journey – from God to God – a voyage of Self-discovery

How Energy Reaches Us – and Why

Where does the energy come from that uplifts and transmutes us?

Divine Mother: Not in My Plan?

  • Divine Mother: [I am speaking about] those in … positions where control and abuse of power have been rampant. That will not be the platform [from] which integration of the various galaxies [into the new, interdimensional region of space] takes place. That is not the Plan.
  • I know very clearly, Sweet One, as do you, if it is not [in] my Plan, then it will not occur. …
  • Make no mistake, … Love will win because that has been my Plan always.
  • (The Divine Mother in “Enter the Delegations – Part 2/3,” May 5, 2019, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/05/05/enter-the-delegations-part-2-3/.)

The Pattern of the Mother

  • This universe is designed around the pattern of the Divine Mother. What is that pattern?
  • Creation, preservation, transformation = love building, love preserving, love dissolving = inbreath, pause, outbreath = rajas, sattwa, thamas (gunas) = Akar, Ukar, Makar (Aum) = Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva (Trimurthy)
  • One more?
  • Father, Son, and Holy Ghost = Brahman, Atman, and Shakti

The Mother’s Clarion Call to All of Humanity!

This is my clarion call to all of humanity to embrace love, to embrace truth, to embrace peace…

The Divine Mother’s Mandate

  • Build what is divinely beautiful. I give you my divine authority to do so. I will guide you. I will help you. But I entrust this to you as well. …
  • We are helping you. That gateway is open and you are being flooded and you are being assisted and you will be assisted every step of the way.
  • (“Transcript ~ The Divine Mother: Take Up Your Divine Authority, AHWAA, February 23, 2017,” February 28, 2017.)
  • On the Divine Plan for Ascension.

Spiritual Advice in Troubled Times

  • The Arcturian Group explains….

Bring It Back to the Love

  • Beloved child, son of my heart, [Ascension, spiritual evolution] is only about love, about the many expressions, about the many forms.
  • And truly of anchoring and being nothing but the love, in intellect, in wisdom, in sharing, in adventure, in relationship.
  • It can only be [that way] when you continue to bring all adventures, all arguments, all explorations back to the love.
  • (The Divine Mother in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, April 30, 2019; also at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2019/06/01/the-divine-mother-it-is-all-a-journey-of-love/).

Do not Venture Where There is No Love

  • Do not venture where there is no love. Because, if there is no love, then there is no truth. And if there is no truth, there will not be peace and [peace], Sweet One, is the Plan.
  • (Archangel Michael in a  personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, June 17, 2020.)

Archangel Michael: Lead or Leave a Vacuum


If no [lightworker] steps forward into [leadership] ...

Archangel Michael: Do not Get Caught in the Drama of White Hats or Black Hats

  • Beloved ones, do not allow yourselves to be distracted, yes, by the chaos….
  • Do not get caught in the drama of white hats or black hats, or good guys or bad guys. All beings are birthed directly from the Heart of One…. (“Archangel Michael: Do not Get Caught in the Drama of White Hats or Black Hats,” Nov. 12, 2019; see here.

Archangel Gaia on Our Mission on Earth

  • Archangel Gaia said
  • “I am now telling you what your mission is on Earth – it is to be an angel on Earth.
  • “You do not have to change the people around you; you do not have to get involved in politics, or that kind of activity.
  • “What you are meant to do here as a lightworker is to anchor a certain vibration.”
  • (Gaia, ”Earth Speaks: Your Mission on Earth,” through Pamela Kribbe, March 13, 2022, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2022/03/13/earth-speaks-your-mission-on-earth/.)

Ronna Vezane ~ Archangel Michael’s Gift: New Age Creed

Werner Erhard on Responsibility

“Responsibility begins with the willingness to take the stand that one is cause in the matter of one’s life. It is a declaration not an assertion, that is, it is a context from which one chooses to live. Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no….”  (Read more…)

GAoG – Spiritual or Political? Michael Answers

Mission Statement of the Golden Age of Gaia

Spiritual Experiences that Have Shaped My Life

Inner Realms Podcast, No. 9: Steve Beckow

An enjoyable discussion of spiritual experiences with Amin Jaberansari, from 2023

On a Personal Note

  • I’m neither qualified to be a spiritual teacher nor do I wish to be one.
  • I’m a writer who wishes to share his views with you on subjects of mutual interest and listen to yours as lightworker equals and spiritual adults.

Copyright © 2025 The Golden Age Of Gaia

Copyright © 2025 · Dynamik-Gen on