“I have come here thanks to the good people with whom I have crossed”

One hour. Not one more minute. when Oumar suffered one of his serious asthma attacks, that was the margin his family had to take him to the hospital. They always arrived on time, but if they had not ever succeeded … “They can’t continue like this, their son’s life is at stake,” the doctor told them one day. They had to send it to a place with a health center that was not at kilometers and quilometers away and where it could receive a treatment in conditions. And they did so. They sold a property and bought a plane ticket. Thanks to that, his son would not be in danger again for his health problem. Or they thought.

Oumar (his full name is Cheikhou Oumar Baldé) was only 17 years old when he left behind Foulau, the town south of Senegal where he grew up with his brothers. But after undertaking the trip that took him to Italy and, later, to Catalonia, life put him to the test many times. Today he explains all the adversities that had to overcome accommodated at one of the tables of the Barcelona restaurant La Pau (Josep Anselm Clavé, 19), where he is head of the room. “I am here thanks to all the good people with whom I have crossed.” during the conversation, these words will repeat several times.

My mother called me and told her that everything was going well, that she could be calm

Cheikhou Oumar Baldé

He arrived in Catalonia in 2015. His uncle lived in Granollers and stayed with him until he had to return to Senegal for personal reasons. After that, he stayed alone. Without papers, he decided to try his luck in Barcelona, ​​where for a long time the NGOs he went to offered no help. He spent several nights in satin and, only when luck smiled at him, he was sheltered at an acquaintance’s house. It happened a few times. “My mother called me and told her that everything was going well, that I could be calm. I cried a lot and didn’t want to worry her anymore.”

He had no home and did not dominate his tongue. His notions of Catalan were very basic and people did not understand it. But those were not their only problems. “I was still registered in Granollers, where my primary care center was, but I had no money to take the train. I never tried to strain, because I had no papers and terrified me that the police take me.” So I didn’t receive treatment. And one day he suffered a very serious asthma attack. He was alone in a park and fell to the ground. I was very weak, I had not eaten days …

Fortunately, a man passed by and called the ambulance. He will never forget that walker or the young people of the emergency service that attended him. “Before arriving at the Hospital de Sant Pau and making sure I was safe, they bought me food.” When the doctor visited him and met his situation, he gave him two inhalers and, after warning him that he ran great danger if he did not receive treatment, he wrote a letter to be treated in Cáritas. He will always remember him too.

He went to Caritas with that epistle and sent him to a minors center, but he still had to face other misfortunes, such as spending a night in the dungeon of Plaza España. “I thought I would have to return to Senegal.” They locked him because they thought he had a minor one, but they ended up releasing him. After that, Cáritas awarded him a room in La Sagrera and helped him get food. I had to go looking for food to Plaza Catalunya and as I still had no money for transport, I was walking. The walk was long, but that was better than anything. It was then that they spoke for the first time of El Lelindar.

In Llindar they help young people who are excluded from the educational and social system for different reasons. It is a school of second opportunities with more than 20 years of travel where they receive training, from hairdressing and mechanics to hospitality. “In my house I cooked a lot, my father had worked as a cook in Italy. That’s why I opted for restoration.” He appeared to some evidence attended by 120 people and there were only about thirty places. It seemed impossible to get one. “When I knew they had taken me, I couldn’t believe it. That call changed my life.”

In my house I cooked a lot, my father had worked as a cook in Italy. So I opted for restoration

Cheikhou Oumar Baldé

The squares of the kitchen studies had been exhausted and ended up making room, but it did not matter. Thanks to a teacher, Monica, fell in love with the profession. He also was self -absorbed with the lightening and wanted to know who had come true. They soon introduced Begoña Gasch, general director of the initiative, to whom she asked how she had realized a project of those characteristics. “He was surprised. None of his students had ever consulted.”

Oumar was a student involved, but he could not carry out the practices in a restaurant like the rest of his classmates because he had no documentation. He made them at school. “It was hard. I was very excited, but I accepted the situation.” I did not expect that they would end up offering work at the school-restaurant during the distributor of El Llindar and that would help him get the residence permit. “When I knew I started crying.” Pandemia stopped the process for a while and could not contact the social worker for weeks. But he went ahead, as always. From those months of confinement he remembers the beautiful gesture of a classmate who telephoned him and told him to look at the window. “His father was waiting for me with super food bags.”

Two years have passed since he became head of the Pau Sala, the Catalan cooking restaurant that opened the El Llindar Foundation in 2022 to offer a first job exit to the young people who studied in their school. No element of the decoration has been left to chance: to the left of the entrance, a long bar decorated with phrases of the students of the Foundation is raised; And there are several cactus distributed over space. With a seemingly hostile exterior, but a tender interior, these plants are a metaphor of the boys and girls who work there.

Oumar take care of all the details for the restaurant service to leave perfect. It does not take away the eye at the tables or a moment. But in addition to directing the room, attending to customers and advising on wines – his religion does not allow him to drink alcohol, but the bottles of the letter are perfectly known – he mentions another function that he considers essential: to make the young people who work with him feel at home. “Their lives are not always easy and try to help them and understand them. I want when they are here, they are fine. For me they are like the family.”

In 2022, he opened his first restaurant in Mboro, west of Senegal, with employees in a situation of social or economic fragility. It already has three. “I have followed the example of the Pau and the Llindar. I wanted other people to have the same opportunities that I had. The people who are there risks to get on a patera, to cross the Sahara or jump fences to reach Europe because it has no alternative. If we do not promote social projects like this in those areas, it will continue to occur.” Now, he combines his work in the PAU with the direction of the establishments of the Senegal, which he manages with the help of a partner, and the theatrical activity, another of his passions. “My next challenge is to found a school of second opportunities such as Llindar, which will be completely free.”

Oumar does not dream of being the best head of the room or a prestigious restorer. Nor does he long to become a theater star. His models are the park’s walker who called Emergencies, the boys who attended him in the ambulance or the doctor who gave him the two ventolines. Also the classmate who took food during confinement or the professors of El Llindar. Now he wants to be the one who helps others.