April 18, 2011 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:30:36
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Welcome, Francis. | |
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| I'm glad we finally did this. | ||
| Oh, finally. | ||
| Well, your English has improved drastically. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think that's why I wanted to wait a little bit before I come. | ||
| I'm like, well, I'm not sure if I will handle that. | ||
| You know, sometimes I listen to the podcast, and I'm like, basically, when you're talking about different podcasts, different topics, I'm kind of like lost some time. | ||
| Like, okay, what does this mean? | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| You know, but now I feel a little bit comfortable. | ||
| Well, it's easy to talk to you now. | ||
| I remember when you first went to the UFC, I interviewed you, and you didn't know what the fuck I was saying. | ||
| Growing up, I went to school, like elementary school and middle school, and we were learning English. | ||
| I know some few words like water and stuff, but just my accent was just so different than when I came here, my first UFC event was in Orlando. | ||
| And I couldn't even hear people like water. | ||
| Like the accent was just so different. | ||
| I'm like, what the hell is going on? | ||
| I can't catch any wall. | ||
| You know, it was just crazy. | ||
| How long have you been in America now? | ||
| Three years and a half. | ||
| That's pretty impressive that you picked up. | ||
| No, permanently, because I travel a lot, but total is like two years and a half. | ||
| And you were in France for how long before that? | ||
| Four years. | ||
| When you were in Cameroon, what language did they speak in Cameroon? | ||
| Mainly we speak French in general, and just in our village that we speak our dialect. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So you know the dialect from the village, and then French, and then English. | ||
| Well, I'm learning English. | ||
| Well, we're talking. | ||
| We're talking in English. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you can speak English a lot better than I can speak French. | |
| Well, I still have some lacunes in English, but getting there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this has been a wild ride for you, huh? | ||
| Yeah, it's been a long road. | ||
| Nobody could have imagined basically from looking back from my life that we're going to get here. | ||
| Today I have to talk with great people around the world, such as you, and being the biggest podcast ever. | ||
| And to be about to fight for the UFC heavyweight championship of the world, too. | ||
| For the second time. | ||
| For the second time, yeah. | ||
| The redemption. | ||
| The redemption. | ||
| What was the first time like for you? | ||
| What was the feeling of the first fight like for you? | ||
| Oh, I had two different feelings from that fight. | ||
| First, obviously, I was very upset and disappointed that I didn't win the fight. | ||
| And, you know, as everyone who is fighting for the title, we want to get out there as victorious. | ||
| But to be honest, I always look in that fight and since the fight day, just after the fight, I look at it and I'm like, this is good. | ||
| I learned just too much in that fight. | ||
| Because even though I was in the level of fighting for the world title, I still have some missing parts in my game and in my experience. | ||
| I remember I was asking myself, How did it look like to go into three rounds? | ||
| Basically, I'm going to a potential five rounds that I've never been in three rounds. | ||
| How did it look like? | ||
| How is it to prepare for this kind of fight? | ||
| And I had this fight like six weeks earlier. | ||
| So I was having a lot of questions. | ||
| Then after that fight at night, I'm like, okay, I get it. | ||
| Yeah, it's a very big learning experience, right? | ||
| Because you were smashing everybody. | ||
| You were knocking everybody out. | ||
| So you had these very quick fights. | ||
| Yes, very quick rides and didn't spend enough time in the octagon to have those experiences, even though I was almost like... | ||
| He was almost four years, three years and a half since I've been doing the sport, but didn't spend enough time in the octagon to have that experience. | ||
| I think in one night, I covered more than what I've been spending in the octagon for the rest of my career. | ||
| No, I'm sure. | ||
| It's got to be a difficult thing to figure out how to pace yourself for a five-round fight when you've only been knocking people out quickly before that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, you know, some people get here while they're being proficient, while they've been having at least at least lives for a long time, maybe wrestling, maybe doing some different sport at school or at college. | ||
| But I never get into that stuff, you know? | ||
| Growing up, I was just like finding my way to survive. | ||
| Then I end up finding myself in somewhere that I never been there. | ||
| So the experience was just crazy. | ||
| How old were you when you had your first training, your first martial arts training? | ||
| Oh, that was in summer, October 2013. That was my first match. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So just eight years ago. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And two years after that, I was fighting my first fight in the UFC. And I remember, basically, at first, when I went in the martial art, it was just for fun, for curiosity. | ||
| I'm like, oh, it's fun. | ||
| Oh, it's good. | ||
| I like those kick shit. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| I didn't like seeing myself being a UFC fighter and people was like, oh, if you put yourself into this, you can become a UFC fighter and a UFC champion. | ||
| You can have a UFC belt wrapped around your waist. | ||
| I'm like, whatever. | ||
| I don't care about it until I have the UFC contract. | ||
| Two years after that, I'm like, okay, this might be the opportunity that I have been looking for. | ||
| So it's time to capitalize and showcase my talent and show the world. | ||
| How many fights did you have before you fought in the UFC? Six fights. | ||
| Six fights. | ||
| And did you have them all in France? | ||
| A few fights in France. | ||
| Just four in France. | ||
| I had four fights in France. | ||
| And, you know, in France, the ground and pound is not allowed. | ||
| When he goes, that was back then because MMA was illegal. | ||
| So when he goes on the ground, he's just turned into grappling games. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I had four fights in France, one in Switzerland and one in Bahrain. | ||
| Bahrain. | ||
| So when did they find out about you? | ||
| How did UFC find out about you? | ||
| That was my coach, Fernand, by the time he was working with a manager named Thiago, a Brazilian guy. | ||
| So they kind of like push. | ||
| Thiago has a connection with... | ||
| I mean, he was a manager, so Fernand was all the time sending him text messages and videos that he would... | ||
| Forward to the UFC. And I was still like, yes, but he hasn't fought nobody tough yet. | ||
| Yeah, he hasn't got a real test yet. | ||
| Until I fought this guy in Bahrain named William Badulti. | ||
| And I knocked him out in the second round. | ||
| Then I get my UFC control right after that. | ||
| What was it like the first fight in the UFC? Was it different? | ||
| That was a crazy experience. | ||
| You know, I didn't even know the rules back then. | ||
| I remember I was in Orlando and I'm like, man, this is the time. | ||
| Like, I'm going to fight to be seen in the whole world, so this is the time to take my opportunity to showcase my talent, to prove that I can do something. | ||
| Then I'm like, okay, so what is this about? | ||
| MMA. How MMA works. | ||
| What is the rules? | ||
| How it goes? | ||
| And I couldn't get it. | ||
| Didn't know the rules. | ||
| Because you got used to no ground fighting, punching on the ground. | ||
| Because there's no ground found in France. | ||
| Yeah, even though I was just doing it for two years and remember at first it was just for fun. | ||
| So I didn't really was there to become a professional fighter. | ||
| You know, all I cared about at the time was boxing. | ||
| Then I found myself there in two years. | ||
| Then I'm like, okay, what is the rules again? | ||
| How it works? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| If you try to take me down, I can do this. | ||
| Like trying to figure all those out. | ||
| It was very stressful. | ||
| And I'm like, guess what? | ||
| At the end of the day, it's just fighting. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if this guy is doing some kung fu shit, but it's just fighting. | ||
| We're going to figure it out, you know? | ||
| It's just men between men, you know? | ||
| Yeah, we're going to figure it out. | ||
| I mean, you know, I'm a tough guy, you know, so I can handle it. | ||
| Why did you transition to MMA and not go into boxing? | ||
| It's not like a transition and I didn't have a choice. | ||
| I was doing MMA because when I went to France, I didn't have a paper, so I was illegal, so I couldn't work. | ||
| And I wanted so bad to do sport and I was doing boxing and MMA. But the MMA was the one that was more open and giving me opportunity. | ||
| Like having a UFC contract as an MMA fighter was a big deal. | ||
| And didn't have much, you know, like boxing war is kind of like a very complicated business. | ||
| You have to know somebody. | ||
| They have to like... | ||
| Line you up. | ||
| It's very complicated. | ||
| But MMA was just easy. | ||
| You know, people out there are like, who is that guy? | ||
| We want that guy. | ||
| It was pretty easy, MMA-wise. | ||
| Yeah, boxing, you have to be connected to the right promoter. | ||
| Yeah, and that takes time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And basically, regarding my situation back then, I had a lot of oats, you know. | ||
| Coming from nowhere, nobody knows me with my accent. | ||
| And you know, in French, when you have accent, it's not a good thing. | ||
| It's not? | ||
| No. | ||
| What's it like over there? | ||
| It's frustrating because the way that they look at you when you speak with your accent, you know, you don't feel comfortable. | ||
| You can't, like, let yourself express yourself. | ||
| You just feel bad about yourself. | ||
| You know, just seeing some people's reactions sometimes. | ||
| And you didn't have a resident card. | ||
| You were, like, a migrant. | ||
| So together it was a tough situation to deal with, basically in the boxing business, because they're going to go see this promoter, talk about you, but who is that guy? | ||
| Where did he come from? | ||
| It's hard to have credit from someone. | ||
| Now, you came from Cameroon to France just to pursue fighting? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| I mean, I didn't come from Cameroon to France. | ||
| I just left Cameroon. | ||
| And didn't even know where I was going. | ||
| I just know that I was looking for a field of opportunity. | ||
| And that's how I left because regarding my situation back then, I couldn't afford to apply for a visa. | ||
| You know, that was even unbelievable. | ||
| I couldn't even imagine that. | ||
| Visas are very expensive? | ||
| It's not expensive. | ||
| They have to check your life, your bank account, your job. | ||
| They have to know if you're capable of taking care of yourself out there and if you can come back. | ||
| Because they don't want you guys there with your misery. | ||
| So they did a lot of background check in Africa to approve your visa to come in Europe or in America. | ||
| And my situation wasn't the best. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I didn't even have a bank account. | ||
| What for? | ||
| Half my few pounds, I just keep it in my house. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| It wasn't even enough to open a bank account. | ||
| But I still had to do something. | ||
| I feel that I had to do something. | ||
| How old were you then when you left? | ||
| I was 25. So you just had gotten to this point in your life where you knew you had to do something. | ||
| Yes, because it has been a long time. | ||
| I've been thinking about that for a very long time, looking for what I can do. | ||
| And over the years, I'm like, okay, at this point, I can't. | ||
| Just hoping something will happen. | ||
| A miracle won't happen right now. | ||
| You have to take action. | ||
| You have to do something. | ||
| Even though it's risky, you have to do it. | ||
| And that's when I decided to leave the country. | ||
| And you didn't have any martial arts training at all in Cameroon? | ||
| I started boxing a few years ago. | ||
| I left my village when I was 22. I was driving a motorcycle, doing taxi with motorcycle. | ||
| You know, like you see in Africa, people doing taxi. | ||
| You carry like three people behind you, sit on the fuel tank and just like driving them to some point. | ||
| And that's what I was doing. | ||
| So that's not like a big job. | ||
| So I couldn't have much money. | ||
| But since I was dreaming for boxing so bad, then... | ||
| I sold that to go to the city and finally boxing because I've been dreaming for boxing for over about 10 years, but there wasn't a gym like 50 miles around. | ||
| So I decided to sell my bike, my motorcycle and go to the city. | ||
| And by the time my family thought I was, people around thought I was going crazy, like, what the hell? | ||
| Like you have a job, you have a chance to have a job, to have a bike, you can feed yourself and maybe create your family, your own family and you say you're going to do this boxing. | ||
| What the hell is boxing? | ||
| Did you ever see somebody coming from here to succeed in boxing? | ||
| Then they will take some examples such as people like Wata Bele, Joseph Besala, Jean-Marie Mebe, which is people that was like a legend in combat sport in Cameroon. | ||
| But financially, they didn't succeed. | ||
| Their life wasn't a great example to lay on. | ||
| And that's why people were like, okay, those people had a chance to start sport when they were young, to be surrounded. | ||
| You're like 22 and I'm like, I'm going to do boxing. | ||
| You're old. | ||
| You're this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're old at 22. I'm like, you're old. | |
| It's not possible. | ||
| And basically, even if you're able to make it as them, what? | ||
| You can even feed your family with, you know, I'm like, yeah, fact. | ||
| Point taken. | ||
| But, you know, I love this shit. | ||
| I'm just going to try it. | ||
| So you just had a desire? | ||
| Yeah, I just have a desire, you know. | ||
| Like, I couldn't picture myself doing something else without it. | ||
| I'm like, okay, it might don't work. | ||
| But I don't want to live with the regret of not trying, you know. | ||
| I have to try. | ||
| If I fail, it's okay. | ||
| I have a right to try and to fail, to start over, as everybody has that right. | ||
| So I can use my right, you know. | ||
| I have to try this. | ||
| At least, if it doesn't work, I won't blame myself someday that I should have done this, I should have done this, I should have tried. | ||
| I was just like, okay, I give my best. | ||
| It didn't work. | ||
| And that's why I started boxing. | ||
| It was so crazy. | ||
| Everybody around thought I lost my mind. | ||
| I'm like, what the hell is that? | ||
| Boxing? | ||
| You're going to get hit. | ||
| You're going to get sick. | ||
| You're going to end up with a Parkinson. | ||
| Your head shaking like this. | ||
| No money. | ||
| Seriously, take yourself, take your life seriously. | ||
| That's not serious. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah. | ||
| Maybe, but whatever. | ||
| At the end of the day, what truly matters, you know, at least I will do what I want for some time, what I love. | ||
| And if it doesn't work, you know, I still have some sort of satisfaction of doing it. | ||
| Are you aware that the amount of success that you've achieved has got to be very inspirational for other people that are in the same sort of situation that you were in? | ||
| When they hear your story and they know the people around them are questioning their desires too, you took a chance, a lot of chances. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And look, here you are about to fight again for the heavyweight championship. | ||
| I mean, it's a pretty amazing story. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yes, I mean, I'm aware of that. | ||
| It didn't take me so long after I got in Europe to realize that. | ||
| Because I started to fight, to compete in France, and they were seeing me on TV and calling me or texting me like, Oh, we see somebody on the TV like you, but you have a Drake love, Lux. | ||
| That guy was exactly like you. | ||
| You know, I'm like, yeah, he might be me. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So, after a few fights, I'm like, damn, so that your boxing, that your boxing shit was serious. | ||
| You really like that thing? | ||
| I'm like, yes, guess what? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I am. | ||
| And I'm like, Man, that means it's never late. | ||
| You know, I've been thinking of doing this and I always thought, I always think it's too late, I can't make it. | ||
| But I think right there, you just proved me wrong because I was even closer to my dream than yours. | ||
| And you still achieve yours. | ||
| So that means it's never late. | ||
| So let me try out. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, you should. | ||
| What's wrong? | ||
| I mean, if you fail, it's okay. | ||
| You have a right. | ||
| A lot of people fail over and over before succeed. | ||
| He always needs one shot to succeed. | ||
| But most people don't have the confidence to take chances like that. | ||
| Most people, they hear these people saying, oh, you're going to get Parkinson's, you're going to get sick, you're not going to make money, you're not going to be able to feed your family. | ||
| And they listen to those people. | ||
| Most people listen to the naysayers. | ||
| They listen to these doubters. | ||
| But you didn't. | ||
| How come? | ||
| I think that's a good part of being a stubborn kid. | ||
| LAUGHTER You know, growing up, I always had my own vision, my own point of view of things. | ||
| And in Africa, when you have your point of view, which is opposite to what your parents or your elders will have, It looks very bad. | ||
| You're a very bad kid. | ||
| Kids just have to obey whatever they are telling them. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, I would like to do this. | ||
| And all the time, they will tell me, this is not for us. | ||
| This is not possible for those people out there. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, but what do those people have more than us? | ||
| I'm like, listen, you should just set up. | ||
| Our life is like this. | ||
| You're going to be a farmer or a constructioner or this, like your parents. | ||
| You know, you can't. | ||
| You're just going to follow the family's footsteps. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, but, you know, I can try something. | ||
| You know, he always take one shot to get there. | ||
| And I'm like, we tell you, it won't work. | ||
| Just forget about it. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, I know. | ||
| But I can still try it, you know. | ||
| And I'm like, this kid never listened. | ||
| And I've always been like that. | ||
| Growing up, me and my brothers, my brother was the one that was going to obey, do exactly what the parents said. | ||
| He was a good kid, a great kid. | ||
| Obey about everything. | ||
| And I was just the opposite of him. | ||
| Bad kid! | ||
| You know, he end up to be at the point that when I get somewhere, everybody will change look up of his staff. | ||
| Like, this kid is so ambitious. | ||
| This kind of kid never end up stealing broken houses because the reality is not enough for them. | ||
| They just want something bigger. | ||
| And when you have that kind of dream, you overdream. | ||
| For easy money, for easy life, you're going to end up maybe drug dealer or house breaking or those stuff. | ||
| I'm like, listen, I just have my own point of view, which is different than yours. | ||
| That doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. | ||
| I knew I had a chance that, I don't know how, but At any moment in my life, I knew exactly what I wanted. | ||
| And that was clear in my mind. | ||
| I knew exactly how to get myself ready to gather those stuff whenever it shows up. | ||
| And this is from the time you were a boy. | ||
| You've always known exactly what you wanted. | ||
| You've always been stubborn like that. | ||
| Yeah, like that started, I was six years old when my parents divorced. | ||
| I went to my aunt and she has like a ton of kids and I was one among them. | ||
| It wasn't a great experience, but what I do learn there, and this is the first thing that I learned in my life, like people was coming over, I'm like, okay, who kid is this? | ||
| I'm like, Yes. | ||
| She was like, this is my sister, kids. | ||
| Your sister will marry to this guy. | ||
| She was like, yes. | ||
| I'm like, oh, this guy is so violent. | ||
| Oh, he's this, he's that. | ||
| And that's how they were talking about my dad. | ||
| So every time that they were talking about my dad, I was just ashamed of it. | ||
| I was just six years old. | ||
| Like, if I come into the room and they're talking about my dad, I'll just sneak, go back, and walk away. | ||
| Like, I don't want to be there. | ||
| Was your dad a fighter? | ||
| Not like a professional fighter, but he was violent, fighting, beating his wife up, my mom up, beating us up. | ||
| And that's even how they get divorced. | ||
| And from that moment, I didn't know. | ||
| I mean, I was six. | ||
| I didn't know nothing about life. | ||
| I didn't know what I want to become in life. | ||
| But from that moment, I knew something. | ||
| I don't want to become like my dad. | ||
| Like, shit. | ||
| I don't want this. | ||
| So, and it ended up pretty well for me because I always have that in front of, in my mind. | ||
| And that's helped me my entire life. | ||
| And that's why even today, thinking about my dad, he might be one of the irresponsible guys out there, irresponsible dad. | ||
| But believe me, this guy impacts my life than nobody else. | ||
| And I think, even in a better way, if he was a good dad, like, have us together, educate us, you know, sometimes you tell kids not to do something, you're like, why do they always want me not to do this? | ||
| They want to try that out, to see how it feels to do it, you know? | ||
| But I get it on my own, and that was for real. | ||
| My reputation was something to save. | ||
| And growing in Cameroon, we drink a lot of beer. | ||
| A lot. | ||
| And since I already had a dream of becoming a professional athlete, a boxer, I wanted to Even though I didn't have a chance to have a gym around, I never see a gym in life. | ||
| But I want to get myself ready to get a discipline. | ||
| So if ever the opportunity gets there, I will be able to gather it. | ||
| And that's why When my friend was drinking, I would never drink, never smoke because I'm like, I'm an athlete. | ||
| I already behaved myself as such. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even when you were young? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You just had it in your head that you were going to be an athlete? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that was clear in my mind. | ||
| Never. | ||
| Did you have any exercise routine that you did back then? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Nothing? | ||
| No. | ||
| It was just my dream and I believed so much in that dream. | ||
| And it's crazy. | ||
| I don't know if it was me like just to over believe, but in some part of my mind it was clear that it's going to happen. | ||
| How? | ||
| Don't ask me. | ||
| One of the things that I read about you was that you worked in a sand mine when you were young, that you dug sand all day. | ||
| Yeah, that was growing up. | ||
| I was about 10 years old when I started that because I was in the village where I grew up. | ||
| After leaving my aunt's house, I went to my grandma. | ||
| And we had to, like, do something. | ||
| You know, we had to work to contribute at home, to buy oil, to buy food, and also for our scholarship, for books. | ||
| So we have to do, you have to work. | ||
| And that's how we started. | ||
| Even though that work was meant for adults, but we didn't have any options, so we take what we had at the time. | ||
| Growing up doing something like that, that's got to, first of all, it had to be very difficult. | ||
| Like, digging sand. | ||
| It's also, your body must develop very strong from doing something like that. | ||
| At 10 years old, like, as you're growing, as you're maturing, doing something that's that difficult, I mean, it must have made you really fucking strong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I hope so. | ||
| Obviously it did, but it's just genetics too. | ||
| There's a lot of good things that came your way that way. | ||
| But also the difficulty of doing something when you're that young, such hard labor. | ||
| I mean, it had to teach you discipline. | ||
| It's terrible that you had to do that at 10, but there had to be some positive aspects of it, some positive repercussions of it. | ||
| Oh, definitely. | ||
| I didn't like my life and I always feel like I miss my childhood. | ||
| There's something missing in it because there's been so much frustration in my life. | ||
| I had to work by that age and it wasn't enough. | ||
| When school starts all the time, I'm going to go to school and most of the time I still didn't have a pen to take notes or a notebook to write on it. | ||
| Sometimes no shoes or clothes, just have to wear. | ||
| My uniform was tear all over. | ||
| I was frustrated to look around and see other kids looking good, you know. | ||
| They went on vacation to this family member, came back with all brand new stuff and I was just there looking crappy with my I had to take my old book and look for an empty page to take a note, hoping that when I have a book, I will copy the note from this year in the new book. | ||
| But at first, I always had to use the old book. | ||
| And most of the time, teachers, they don't understand why you don't have a book. | ||
| They don't understand why you don't have a pen. | ||
| Sometimes they just think that you didn't tell your parents. | ||
| You should tell your parents so they can buy it for you. | ||
| They don't understand that you cannot just afford it. | ||
| Your parents can't. | ||
| And they will kick you out from the classroom. | ||
| Maybe just to say, go tell your parents. | ||
| And you couldn't tell them, we can't afford it? | ||
| You didn't want to say it? | ||
| They knew. | ||
| But what can they do? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Because most of the time, it's going to be even with the money that I work, that they're going to buy my pen or my book. | ||
| But you work sometimes and they don't pay you right away. | ||
| It's maybe after... | ||
| Months, months, you know, so all the process. | ||
| And sometimes they will just kick you out from the school because of the scholarship fee you haven't paid on time. | ||
| So they kick you out. | ||
| So I was a subject of shame to other kids. | ||
| Because all the time when they kick you out in front of 50, 60 students, it's not a good thing. | ||
| And I couldn't have a friend because you know how things work. | ||
| You have to be able to... | ||
| Bring something on the table to enjoy. | ||
| But since you don't even have a pen or a book to take notes, nobody expects you to bring a lunch or to buy something in the break time to share with them. | ||
| So they don't want to share with you since they don't have any hope that you have something to share with them. | ||
| And I was always in retreat. | ||
| I always stay in retreat. | ||
| And that's how I technically grew up by myself. | ||
| I end up not even trying to have a friend. | ||
| I'm like, okay, this is my situation. | ||
| Maybe I just... | ||
| I feel okay to just retreat myself, not just to try all the time and get shame of it all the time. | ||
| I always retreat and don't have to deal with these people, with their opinion on me. | ||
| But that motivated me at some point. | ||
| Look, these kids are looking at me like I'm worth nothing. | ||
| But technically, I'm worth more than them because I'm working. | ||
| Even though what I have is less than what they have, I deserve what I have. | ||
| I work hard for it. | ||
| And they don't deserve shit. | ||
| They are just kids. | ||
| They work and their parents provide for them. | ||
| I'm not just lucky to have the chance, but I'm still trying, which means I'm not bad at the end of the day, you know? | ||
| So that pushed me to, like, from there, I wanted something to prove them wrong. | ||
| I'm like, okay, I'm going to do something that's going to prove this kid that I'm not beneath them. | ||
| So that gave you motivation? | ||
| Yes, that gave me motivation because that frustration, I was full of frustration and I wanted to drive this into something. | ||
| I have to prove them. | ||
| I can't go to the party, I can't be between, I can't have friends as anyone and I have to work harder than anyone. | ||
| You know, my school was like My middle school was, I think, about six miles from home. | ||
| So it took me almost two hours to get at school. | ||
| So you walked? | ||
| Yeah, so I walked around about two hours. | ||
| And before I met the first student, it's at least after like 40 minutes work. | ||
| You know, so I have to wake up at five, just get ready, start work. | ||
| Sometimes with not eating. | ||
| Then I get to school and the school closed at maybe 4 to 5. But since I didn't eat in the morning by noon, 1 or 2, I'm hungry. | ||
| I'm starving. | ||
| I can't take it anymore. | ||
| I would leave school sometime, you know, just because I was hungry. | ||
| Or if I had a chance to have breakfast or something, I won't eat before I leave home because I know if I eat at 5 or 6, I'll get hungry early. | ||
| I'll take it at school to eat maybe around 10 so I can resist until the end. | ||
| And that's how I did it this entire time. | ||
| So my process was all different from other kids. | ||
| And nobody could understand that. | ||
| He was just on me. | ||
| And I was the only one knowing what I'm dealing with exactly to get there. | ||
| So, and all those things keep frustrating me. | ||
| I'm like, I'm going to show this. | ||
| I'm going to show them. | ||
| How long did you have to work in these sand mines? | ||
| Until I left school. | ||
| Until I left school, I was 17. And then I kept doing it. | ||
| So you did it from 10 to 17? | ||
| You did it all through school? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was the only thing to do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When did you do it? | ||
| Like if you went to school during the day, when did you work in the sand mines? | ||
| Over the weekend, over the holidays, because I never had a chance to go to holiday, even for the summer holiday, which is like three months. | ||
| That would be because we have a tropical climate. | ||
| So at that moment, we have two seasons, a wet season and a dry season. | ||
| And that's a wet season. | ||
| So it's almost rain all the time. | ||
| Kids go to vacation and all those stuff. | ||
| Adult doesn't want to work because it's raining all the time. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| That was our opportunity when they don't want to work, so we have a chance to work. | ||
| Otherwise, they will come back to their job. | ||
| We will not have job. | ||
| So that was a good opportunity to work under the rain all the time. | ||
| Get back home shaking because all day long it's been raining, so you have to stay active. | ||
| Because as soon as you stop working, moving, you get cold. | ||
| You just get freezing. | ||
| So you get active. | ||
| It forces you to stay active and to work even more. | ||
| And our employer will love that because you work even more than normal. | ||
| And yeah, so that's how we do it. | ||
| And sometimes after school, I will stop at the sand mine if I have like a quick job. | ||
| Maybe if a truck comes and they have to load it. | ||
| If I have a place to load because you load, they give money to share. | ||
| You get something sometimes. | ||
| Sometimes not. | ||
| And when I was a kid, most of the time they kick you out. | ||
| Adults didn't want you on it. | ||
| I'm like, hey, get away off here. | ||
| Because the less they are, more money they get. | ||
| So they don't want you to fuck around. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I saw that you went back recently and you were taking photos of you in the sand mine where you worked as a boy. | ||
| Did I see that on Instagram? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What was that like? | ||
| I always do that. | ||
| Yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, when I'm home, I always like to do that. | ||
| It's kind of like... | ||
| It really hurts me to remember everything, like where I came from, how he was. | ||
| Every time that I go back home, I will go back to all those places that I used to work there. | ||
| I hated this thing growing up. | ||
| Oh, you can imagine. | ||
| I hated this and mine, everything. | ||
| I hated my life. | ||
| But today, it seems like a fuel for my life today. | ||
| I have to fill up from that life. | ||
| Go back there, see this. | ||
| Because most people there are still people that we grew up together. | ||
| And he allowed me to see how far I came from. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I think the moment that I enjoy the most is like those moments, you know, going back, go to the house that I grew up into, even though we fix it today, it's not the same, but the environment, | ||
| like sleeping, have all this nostalgic, At 5 o'clock, all these animal sounds from outside, the bed, birds, all those sounds which are very familiar, bring you back from 20 to 25 years ago. | ||
| The smells, everything reminds you something. | ||
| And this is always my best moment. | ||
| I can go there and live in the five-star hotel, do some crazy stuff, but I don't enjoy that as much. | ||
| I don't know how to explain it, but I always do it. | ||
| I always go back to the sand mine. | ||
| This is like a tradition. | ||
| Not just for them, because he helps me. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| I feel like, okay, you know, it's kind of like taking my revenge of life. | ||
| Like, okay, I used to be here thinking this, thinking that, dreaming of this, dreaming of that. | ||
| Today I have this. | ||
| Look, that's my car. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, that's my truck. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Look, that's my house. | ||
| Look, this is my life. | ||
| I'm going to fly back to America even though I'm here, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, It's like living a dream. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because back then, that was just a dream. | ||
| A crazy dream. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| So I'm living into it right now. | ||
| Like, yes, doing this 20 years ago, I was dreaming like, man, how it is to be in the airplane, going somewhere. | ||
| Imagine yourself being in the airplane, going to America or to France or something. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And I go back. | ||
| I do the same shit. | ||
| I'm like, guess what? | ||
| I'm going back to America in one week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right. | ||
| You're living the dream. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And so it just reminds you, just puts you back in that place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And what is crazy is most of the time it's going to be with the same guy that I grew up with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| They're in the same place doing the same thing. | ||
| What is it like for them? | ||
| Do they ask you questions? | ||
| You know, and that's why I feel very lucky, just to have a different mindset, just to even have a dream, because they don't even have a dream. | ||
| Most of those people, if you ask them, OK, what is your dream? | ||
| Where would you like to be in one year, five years from now? | ||
| They don't know. | ||
| He gave up a long time ago. | ||
| He doesn't give a shit about it. | ||
| As long as he has something to eat before he goes to bed, it's okay. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| And now I'm like, how can somebody live like this? | ||
| But it's their life. | ||
| You can't do anything. | ||
| I'm like, Then you will find someone, some people, which is a little different. | ||
| They have a dream. | ||
| They are hoping to change their life. | ||
| Those people, over the years, you can see the change in their life, improvement, step by step. | ||
| This year, they're going to say, I want to do this. | ||
| I wish I could do this. | ||
| Next year, guess what? | ||
| Even though they didn't do that, they didn't get that done, they get closer, and next year, and next year, and next year, they move up. | ||
| But those who doesn't have a dream, you know, they're just there like that. | ||
| Do you find some of the people there that do have a dream look at you and they get inspired? | ||
| I think that's even why some of the reasons will keep me going back and even in the foundation. | ||
| Like once I had like a really good friend of mine. | ||
| This guy is in the village and he's doing good. | ||
| He's doing his businesses, doing good for a village guy. | ||
| Like sometime I will come there. | ||
| He will even give me like a whiskey, find a good whiskey for me. | ||
| And he said, man, You know, like, you just going in America and come back here means a lot to us. | ||
| Like, we grew up together. | ||
| That means it's possible for us to drive us through our dream. | ||
| Like, motivate us. | ||
| Like, yes, if Francis did it, I mean... | ||
| I might not do the same thing, but I can get to what I want to, you know? | ||
| And I'm like, thank you. | ||
| I really appreciate his word. | ||
| And he was like very humble, explaining me things. | ||
| And yeah. | ||
| And that's why I also like doing my foundation. | ||
| I like to tell these kids, like, listen, I'm not a fairy tale. | ||
| I'm not a story that you watch on TV or that you read in the book. | ||
| I'm a fact. | ||
| I grew up here. | ||
| Most of you knew me before I even lived here, which means it's possible. | ||
| You know, as long as you believe in something, in a dream, as long as you have a dream and believe in yourself, I think success is just a matter of time. | ||
| What is your foundation? | ||
| Francis Ngannou Foundation. | ||
| And what do you do? | ||
| Honestly, the goal is to do everything because there is just too much, a lot to be done back then. | ||
| There is nothing out there. | ||
| But as for now, I have a gym for kids because when I was back there with my dream as a kid, I always expected to have someone come there and have a gym. | ||
| I was like, this would be cool. | ||
| You know, so I can train, you know. | ||
| And the first thing that I did when I went in France, and then I see how there are opportunities there. | ||
| I started to collect clothes, everything that I can have. | ||
| I started to collect them and ship it home. | ||
| And over the years, I built a gym under the foundation so kids can go there and train. | ||
| Not because I want them to become a professional athlete, but just because I want them to feel like they matter, you know, like somebody care about them. | ||
| Because most of the time, that's why kids give up on their dream. | ||
| They feel like, okay, it's not mean for us. | ||
| We can't get there. | ||
| They just let him go. | ||
| Which is wrong, because I think everybody can make it. | ||
| It's still difficult, more difficult to somebody than some, but it's still possible for everyone. | ||
| And from my experience, I mean, it might not be always true, but when you believe, when you have a dream and you believe into, there's no way that you're not going to make it. | ||
| You know, he might take time, he might come on his own time, but he will always come. | ||
| So you have this dream, you leave Cameroon, you end up in France, you end up in Paris? | ||
| Is that where you went? | ||
| And what was that like? | ||
| And how did you get involved in martial arts from there? | ||
| So my journey from Cameroon to Paris was 14 months. | ||
| 14 months to get there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Remember, I couldn't go to the airport and just take a plane to go to France. | ||
| I have to use all the back doors. | ||
| It was from Cameroon to Nigeria. | ||
| In Cameroon, I've always been in this triangle city, which is like my village here. | ||
| The capital, the political capital here named Yaonde, and the economic capital named Douala here is the triangle that I've always been into. | ||
| I never get out of that triangle. | ||
| So I'm always concerned about How it looks like to get out there. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| I don't want to get only out there, only out there and still stay in Cameroon. | ||
| I want to go somewhere else. | ||
| Where? | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| So you didn't even know you were going to go to Paris. | ||
| You just knew you wanted to leave Cameroon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I want to go somewhere that I'll have more opportunity. | ||
| So what was the first day? | ||
| How did you escape? | ||
| What did you do? | ||
| Where I live, Cameroon. | ||
| And then from there... | ||
| How'd you live? | ||
| Call and train and get to Nigeria. | ||
| Did you save up some money before you went? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I saved some money and I gave some of my savings to my little sister to keep it because where we were going, man, we didn't... | ||
| I didn't know exactly how it looks like, but from what I've heard... | ||
| He was a hell. | ||
| You're going to cross a mafia and all those people across the road. | ||
| You're going to get robbed, every kind of shit. | ||
| So you better not have all your money on you. | ||
| If you don't get killed. | ||
| If you don't kill yourself by taking some risk. | ||
| I leave the money to my sister. | ||
| I'm like, just keep it in your eyes. | ||
| So every time that I call you, be ready to send it where I ask you. | ||
| And she was like, where are you going exactly? | ||
| I'm like, I'm going to the north. | ||
| To the north. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where exactly? | ||
| Just the north. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You ask me where I'm going and I tell you. | ||
| Because I couldn't tell nobody. | ||
| I remember I went to the village three weeks earlier just to see everything because I'm like, okay. | ||
| This might be the last time, man. | ||
| I might never come back. | ||
| I might just die out there. | ||
| At least I see my family, I see my village and everything for the last time. | ||
| And I went back in the village and I went to my mom and sometimes I was staring at her like this, was thinking like, maybe this is the last time, man. | ||
| Man, this shit is becoming serious. | ||
| And sometimes she crossed my eyes and I'm like, why are you looking at me like this? | ||
| I'm like, no, nothing. | ||
| A lot of things was going on in my mind. | ||
| And I couldn't tell nobody that I'm leaving. | ||
| Because when you tell somebody like, I'm leaving, the first question that pops up is like, why are you going? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| And then I'm like, okay, that boxing really started to mess up his head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I couldn't tell them. | |
| I stayed in the village for like two or three weeks. | ||
| I see everything. | ||
| And the last time that I was leaving the village, I think that was a very hard moment for me because I knew that from there I'm going. | ||
| I was scared. | ||
| I was afraid. | ||
| But it feels like I was forced to do it. | ||
| I had to do it. | ||
| I couldn't be there and see my life turn up the way that he was and not taking action. | ||
| A few years earlier, my dad passed away. | ||
| He got sick. | ||
| He stayed in the home. | ||
| We couldn't even bring him to the hospital. | ||
| And we just look at him, get sick, suffer until he passed away. | ||
| And I was like, man, if this shit happened again in my family, like, guess if my mom, after all what she, she have been doing, all the sacrifice as a single mom, if she gets sick today, We should be the ones taking care of her. | ||
| But I can't do anything. | ||
| I'm just going to sit here and see my life. | ||
| I would like to have kids in my life. | ||
| How can I take care of those kids? | ||
| They're going to go back in the same process, in the same life like me? | ||
| No, I have to take action. | ||
| So it was clear in my mind that I have to leave. | ||
| It wasn't even a choice anymore. | ||
| It was like an obligation in order to have a better life and bring a potential solution in my upcoming problems. | ||
| And that's how I left. | ||
| And when I left my country, I went from Nigeria. | ||
| And then after Nigeria, we got to Niger. | ||
| So what did you do when you go to Nigeria? | ||
| How long did you stay there for? | ||
| No, I didn't stay too much. | ||
| The whole thing was 14 months, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the Nigeria trip was really fast. | ||
| You know, Nigeria is the next country to Cameroon. | ||
| So we don't even need like a visa to go in Cameroon. | ||
| So in Nigeria, we are free. | ||
| We are still free. | ||
| So everything is still cool. | ||
| You can still travel normally. | ||
| And so it took me like two days in Nigeria, across the whole Nigeria in two days, from Yola to Kano. | ||
| And then from Kano, we found a trip to get in Niger, which is the next country, but more like a deserted country. | ||
| And we went in the south of it, and there we started to be illegal. | ||
| Because from our country, from us to get there, we needed a visa. | ||
| But from there, we didn't have a visa. | ||
| So we started to have to deal with the police, with the border protection, all these things, all day long. | ||
| You get caught. | ||
| They ask you for money. | ||
| You know, like a bribe. | ||
| Sometimes you don't want to give them all your money. | ||
| You need that to survive. | ||
| And sometimes they just rape you. | ||
| They want everything. | ||
| Take your clothes off. | ||
| Find money everywhere. | ||
| Everything of value that they see, they will take it. | ||
| So it was a game. | ||
| Who knows exactly how to hide something? | ||
| You're going to have some money, some saving on you that nobody can find it. | ||
| And they know how to find it because they've been doing this over years. | ||
| All the time, you have to come up with a new way of saving your money. | ||
| Sometimes we wrap money in the paper and solo it. | ||
| In order to get to somewhere. | ||
| Because you know that you can't cross this zone without gate. | ||
| How do they say it? | ||
| Like when they check you. | ||
| Frisk? | ||
| Frisk, without getting frisked. | ||
| So you have to save your money, some money, because you have to survive, you have to keep going, you have to eat, you have to do all this. | ||
| But when they take your money, they don't care about all those. | ||
| They just want to take whatever they can take, sometimes throw you in the dessert, and you have to figure out your own way back. | ||
| And it's hot, no water. | ||
| That was the hell. | ||
| So you had to swallow your money? | ||
| Yeah, you swallow your money. | ||
| And then find it later? | ||
| Find it later. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| Right, I get it. | ||
| At this point, it's a matter of surviving. | ||
| Everything that you can do to survive. | ||
| So you have to wrap it in plastic? | ||
| Yeah, you wrap it in plastic to protect it. | ||
| Not to get wet. | ||
| Not to get destroyed. | ||
| Man. | ||
| And we have to cross from the north of Nigeria to Nigeria. | ||
| There is a desert called Sahara. | ||
| The Sahara Desert, yeah. | ||
| And it's like one of the biggest over there. | ||
| And we have those people. | ||
| They're going to help us pass. | ||
| They take our money, they keep us in some room for a few days, and some night they just bring a small truck and put your baggage in it. | ||
| You don't have to carry a lot of baggage, because it's like 50. You know Toyota Tacoma? | ||
| Yes, it's going to be like 25 of you guys, In the back. | ||
| 25 people in a Toyota Tacoma? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Plus your luggage. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You are not allowed for a lot of luggage. | ||
| Even water, you're not allowed for a certain quantity of water because it takes space. | ||
| And you are going to the desert. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you are not allowed with a certain amount of water. | ||
| How long is the trip? | ||
| Normally it's like 24 hours with a car because it's like very flat so they don't have speed limit. | ||
| They can go like 150 miles per hour straight up and they have to hide from like rudders because sometimes they are like helicopter Flying up there looking, checking if there's something going on, because they know that there's a lot of traffic there. | ||
| Not only immigrants, but only guns and drugs and everything. | ||
| So they're always flying there. | ||
| So they use talky walky to communicate. | ||
| It's like an organization. | ||
| They are well organized. | ||
| But you have to be lucky so the car don't break up in the middle of the trip. | ||
| Because if the car break up in the middle of the trip, most of the time it's over. | ||
| What happens then? | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You guys might just die. | ||
| If you're stuck in the middle of the desert with no water. | ||
| Yeah, what else would you do? | ||
| Yeah, what else would you do? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you have to take a big risk? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like 100. At the daytime, it's like 150 degrees. | ||
| Nighttime, it drops to like maybe 20 degrees. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It gets cold. | ||
| At daytime, it gets hot. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, so you have to do that one day trip hoping that crossing your finger that everything goes well. | ||
| If the truck doesn't break down. | ||
| Yeah, the truck doesn't break down. | ||
| And we were in this car like you couldn't even sit comfortable. | ||
| I was just sitting on the edge and you have to grab the truck so hard so you get crammed. | ||
| But when you get crammed, you can't let him go because if you let him go, you fall. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| They won't stop. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So you have to, like, keep holding. | ||
| So you're hanging on. | ||
| You're hanging on. | ||
| And you get cramps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you can't let go. | ||
| Oh, you can't let go. | ||
| It's your life. | ||
| And it's a whole day. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Let him go is like letting your life go. | ||
| You know, it's over if I let him go. | ||
| There is no second chance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whew. | |
| And after a few hours, they might stop, so you guys can stretch up a little bit. | ||
| But most of the time, when they stop, you can't even move anymore. | ||
| You just shake your body and fall on the ground. | ||
| After a few minutes, before blood starts to flow in your hands and everything, and you're able to move it. | ||
| Jesus! | ||
| At some point, you guys don't get water. | ||
| I remember there was a girl with a baby in that row, and we were so tired. | ||
| And she was even in the mirror, not even the edge. | ||
| She was in the mirror. | ||
| But at some point, she couldn't do it anymore. | ||
| She just wanted to throw the baby away. | ||
| This is how hard it was. | ||
| She couldn't do it, and you can't blame her. | ||
| And the guy just keep holding the baby. | ||
| They take the baby from hell, like holding and helping pass to each other, you know. | ||
| Yeah, that's how. | ||
| At some point, we don't get... | ||
| We have like a storm of sand. | ||
| Oh, a storm. | ||
| A storm of sand. | ||
| So you have to wrap your face and everything because the sand is just like... | ||
| You go through all this stuff, and even before the middle of the trip, So | ||
| you're going through a full day, mostly without water? | ||
| No, not a full day because at first you have water. | ||
| So half a day. | ||
| Almost like half a day without water. | ||
| With no water. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But luckily, like when your water finishes, like maybe at two or three, then by six, the sun sets. | ||
| And there's no sun. | ||
| The temperature starts to go down. | ||
| So it's kind of like, you know... | ||
| So you get dehydrated at the point that you're not sweating anymore. | ||
| It's like oil on your face. | ||
| When you do it like this, it's like oil coming out of your skin. | ||
| And that's how we cross the desert. | ||
| So you get through the Sahara Desert. | ||
| When we get to this country, the first country in the south of Algeria, we found a water where. | ||
| And this waterway was there for, I don't know how long. | ||
| I think it was something that was being used by the farmer. | ||
| And he was so dirty, with dead animals in it, birds, everything. | ||
| Man! | ||
| I'm going to drain this water and it might kill me. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| I will die after if I don't drink this water. | ||
| I'm not lasting long. | ||
| So you drink it. | ||
| You kind of take the water, put it in the bottle, lift your shirt and use your shirt as a filter to drain the water. | ||
| Try not to feel this, to smell it, not to do anything. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| And that's where you kind of start to understand what you put yourself into. | ||
| It's just the beginning. | ||
| You have to go through all this process now in Algeria of changing your identity, pretending to buy a new passport like you are from Mali. | ||
| Because Mali, what is the good thing with that? | ||
| You learn a lot about immigration, about relationship between countries. | ||
| In every country, you know who is their good... | ||
| Allies. | ||
| Allies. | ||
| Who do they have a good relationship with? | ||
| So in Algeria, they have a very good relationship with Mali because Mali helps them when it was a war time. | ||
| So now you have to pretend you're from Mali. | ||
| Yes, so all Malian citizens in Algeria, they don't even need a visa. | ||
| They are free, as long as they have an ID. So, we all are black, we look the same. | ||
| We all are from Mali. | ||
| You have to prove it. | ||
| Just get some people, they are selling passports, and look at this. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| From the time you left Cameroon to the time you get to Algeria, how many days is this? | ||
| It's still not long. | ||
| Like, maybe just two weeks. | ||
| Two weeks? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, not too much. | ||
| And how are you getting food? | ||
| And how are you getting by? | ||
| You still get money. | ||
| Like, you still get money. | ||
| You kept some money. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You buy stuff. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You know, it's like an organization. | ||
| There's people around who have set up a business just for those type of things. | ||
| Just to get you from point A to point B? Yeah. | ||
| Someone who has set up a business just to change devices. | ||
| You know, currency. | ||
| Because from Cameroon to Nigeria is not the same currency. | ||
| Nigeria and Nigeria is not the same currency. | ||
| From Nigeria to Nigeria, it's not the same currency. | ||
| Everywhere, you have to change the currency. | ||
| And there are already people around. | ||
| You don't know until you get there. | ||
| And it's good for you, because it saves you out of a lot of problems. | ||
| They are making money on you, but at least you have a solution of your problem in the hands. | ||
| In Algeria, we buy a passport because we have to go from the south to the north, which is closer to Morocco before we get to Morocco. | ||
| And all the time you have to get controlled by the police in Algeria. | ||
| They know that, because it's been over years, and then I'm like, why all black people here are Malian? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they have a very difficulty to truly identify some person. | ||
| So they play it psychologically. | ||
| They can take your idea, look at you, your reaction. | ||
| They might just decide if it's you or not by your reaction. | ||
| If you're going to get a check based on your reaction. | ||
| So they kind of play psychologically out there. | ||
| And we went, we passed because I was very... | ||
|
unidentified
|
very... | |
| Maybe. | ||
| Good at it. | ||
| When I come, when the cops take my passport, I don't look away. | ||
| I pretend I'm sleeping. | ||
| When he comes to me, I'm like, I just take my hands off before he asks me. | ||
| I give him my ID. I look him straight to his eye. | ||
| That was pretty easy because when you look somebody in the eyes, your eyes cause his eyes. | ||
| So he doesn't have time to look at your face if it's really you. | ||
| You can't get out of your eyes to look at your mouth or your nose or your ears. | ||
| So I kind of look at him, staring at him like this. | ||
| So I'm like, yeah, it might be him because he's so confident. | ||
| But I was afraid as shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't imagine. | |
| Just so far, this journey is crazy. | ||
| Are you second-guessing yourself at all during this point? | ||
| Like, what have I got myself into? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you don't know until you get there. | ||
| And the thing is, you can't go back. | ||
| You can't go back. | ||
| And you don't even know exactly where you're going. | ||
| You don't even know exactly. | ||
| And at every step, you think the next step is going to be easier. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| You always get harder and harder and harder. | ||
| That's how it is. | ||
| So you get tight and tight and tight and tight. | ||
| And at some point, You find yourself in the middle of something that you never imagined, but you can't go back anymore. | ||
| And still, this is only, you're talking about a 14-month journey, and we're only a few weeks in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So it just keeps going. | ||
| That was just like a warm-up. | ||
| Oh, hell yeah. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Because in Morocco, that was a real one. | ||
| That was a hell. | ||
| That was bad. | ||
| Unbelievable life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, even now, sometime when I think about it, I was there. | ||
| It's not like a story that somebody tell me. | ||
| I was there myself. | ||
| I've been through all these things by myself. | ||
| Sometimes I still can't believe it. | ||
| Can you imagine that? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You can't even expect somebody to understand what you're talking about. | ||
| What was Morocco like? | ||
| Morocco is a nightmare for immigration. | ||
| It's like a hell of country from immigration because it's the country closer to Europe. | ||
| You know, at some point, the ocean is just like maybe five miles. | ||
| The land in Morocco is just five miles from Europe, from Tarifa, which is in Spain. | ||
| And there is a two small territory of Spain in Morocco, in the Morocco side, which is Ceuta and Melia. | ||
| Those two are just protected by the gate, by the fence, with the... | ||
| Barboire? | ||
| Barbara on it. | ||
| Oh, those Barbara, they are sharp. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, I can't tell you. | ||
| They are fucking sharp. | ||
| You almost take my stomach out. | ||
| Like, caught me here, everywhere. | ||
| The first time I fell on it, I'm like stuck there. | ||
| But if I stay there on the barbell to expect a rescue, somebody, a rescue, then the military will come and guess what? | ||
| Ah, they don't joke. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They will beat you up basically when you're a big guy like this because they know when you're big, for them you are the oldest one. | ||
| You're going to Senegal and bring all those bambinos to come to go to Europe because you think we don't want to go to Europe. | ||
| They beat the shit out of you. | ||
| Sometimes with a bar of iron, you know, they kill people just by beating them. | ||
| You know, there are just some people, they are not educated, they don't know differences, they don't even understand people's struggles, they don't understand nothing. | ||
| They just took them in the town and trained them and gave them a bath to beat people. | ||
| So the people that use for police, they just take anybody that wants that job? | ||
| No, not for the police. | ||
| There's a different call. | ||
| There's a special call there just for immigration. | ||
| Named Ali. | ||
| Because the European Union financed that call to protect their border. | ||
| Because they know that it's like a strategic point from Africa to go to Europe. | ||
| So they were like, okay... | ||
| Don't let people come there. | ||
| Morocco will be like, that's not our problem. | ||
| We don't have money to do all the stuff. | ||
| So they give them money for that. | ||
| So it's a good business for Morocco to protect. | ||
| It's like a lot of money in their economy. | ||
| They have a new call, a special call for that, so give a lot of jobs. | ||
| But man, they don't joke on you. | ||
| In this side, somewhere, you have like three fans with a barber, and the other side, you have the Guadja civil. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Guardia Civil. | ||
| It's a core in Spain. | ||
| Like a private core, but there has a lot of power in the security system. | ||
| And those people, they are not like the Moroccan ones. | ||
| They can talk to each other by defense, but one side is Morocco, one side is Spain. | ||
| But they have a huge high-tech technology equipment for civilians. | ||
| Like, they have this camera. | ||
| Like, this week I was watching a movie about some movie showing some part of that. | ||
| And you should watch this. | ||
| The movie is named Adu. | ||
| It's a small kid from somewhere in Africa. | ||
| In Cameroon, exactly. | ||
| What's the movie called? | ||
| Adu. | ||
| Spell that? | ||
| A-D-U. There it is. | ||
| A-D-U. Yes. | ||
| A.D.U. That movie is interesting. | ||
| You can see some part of that movie. | ||
| You can see the Gwaja civil, how they operate. | ||
| Even them, they beat you up. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How long were you in Morocco for? | ||
| One year. | ||
| One year? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Because every time that you attempt, and it's not easy, you have to prepare to go attempt. | ||
| And every time that you attempt, if you fail, If you get lucky, you don't get beat up or all the stuff, they're going to bring you back in the South and throw you in the desert to let you go. | ||
| So it's their own way to say, go back to your country. | ||
| They leave you in the border, out of their country, which is in the desert, close to Algeria. | ||
| Algerians, they don't want you there. | ||
| Moroccan, they don't want you there. | ||
| So you have to work like the whole night to get somewhere that you can rest. | ||
| And to go back from where you were, it takes a lot of time. | ||
| You know, it's a struggle because we're going to jump into like a... | ||
| Merchandise train, and all those things, all this process is very long. | ||
| Sometimes you have to go in the water to attempt to, like, deviate from Morocco to get to this island. | ||
| But it became very, very complicated because they have radar all the time running. | ||
| And as soon as you even have a chance to touch the water, you're going to get caught right away because they have all this high tech, this infrared motion detector. | ||
| Infrared, yeah, motion detector. | ||
| Infrared. | ||
| All those staff, they have all those staff. | ||
| So even when we go to the fence, because there is somebody who is always going to go check, to look where there is a weakness on the fence. | ||
| It's about 11 miles of fence, who protect an island, a small place like this. | ||
| So here is water, here is water. | ||
| They build like 11 miles of fence like this to protect like . - So you're just trying to figure out how to get through the fence? | ||
| Where? | ||
| First, because where everything is so good, you can't even imagine. | ||
| It's three fence with babble over every fence. | ||
| Babble on the floor on this side, the cop here, the Moroccan military on this side. | ||
| First, they dig a long hole And then sometimes they put barbed wire into it too. | ||
| So just barbed wire everywhere? | ||
| Barbed wire, yes. | ||
| Everywhere? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Plus, you have like, I don't know, maybe the first one is like three times my high. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So... | ||
| So like 20... | ||
| 20 feet of fence. | ||
| 20 feet. | ||
| And you're going to climb that and then barbed wire all over it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And the barbed wire is all around. | ||
| How are you climbing it? | ||
| No, you can't climb that. | ||
| So you have to look. | ||
| You guys, someone has to go and look around and see where there's a weakness somewhere to look and from far distant. | ||
| You know? | ||
| He can go... | ||
| We call them... | ||
| I don't know the name of the English. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Scout? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So he can go there and stay some time for two days in one place, just to observe, check what time the military swift What time, how do they react? | ||
| This day, how do they... | ||
| everything. | ||
| What time, in what interval, the Guadja civil in the Spain side pass with their car, patrol. | ||
| You know? | ||
| See, this is where there is not too much turmoil. | ||
| And when he finds some place, he'll come back. | ||
| I'm like, okay, I see this place. | ||
| I think it's good. | ||
| Maybe somebody is going to take somebody or one, two more people there to go check. | ||
| They're going to go sleep again, check, read everything, their movement. | ||
| Like, okay, the swift. | ||
| Then we have a game plan from there. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| They have a swift at this moment. | ||
| From this box to that box is like maybe 50 yards or 100 yards. | ||
| But sometimes they are like empty box between. | ||
| There is not always a military in every box. | ||
| They kind of like learn that, like, okay, this box and this box. | ||
| It's empty. | ||
| The switch is at this time. | ||
| The patrol car passed at this time, at this interval. | ||
| So we have all this and like, okay, between the patrol car, after the patrol car left, Liv, we're going to attack because it's like five. | ||
| Maybe we're going to attack in five or ten minutes because he will take them maybe another ten minutes to come and that will be enough time. | ||
| So that's your opening? | ||
| That's the opening. | ||
| It's like short opening. | ||
| Five minute opening in one spot. | ||
| And you have to do it very well because if you fail, that will tell them that you guys know this spot already. | ||
| They're going to come and fix it. | ||
| So is it a hole in the fence? | ||
| How are you getting through? | ||
| Sometimes it's not a hole in the fence. | ||
| Sometimes the barbed wire is just broken and all these things. | ||
| And in some places, instead of three, it's still two or one. | ||
| I don't know why, but it's not always straight exactly. | ||
| And you have to find that opening. | ||
| And when you find that opening, you get prepared. | ||
| Then you say, OK, we are doing this this day. | ||
| Then sometimes you go there, You guys at night time, you will go there, the convoi. | ||
| It might be 100, 200, hundreds of you guys. | ||
| And imagine like hundreds of people walking in some town around with cops living there and they still have to be like silence, like hiding. | ||
| Most of the time, the couple will see you and when they see this mass of people, they know that they are preparing something. | ||
| They will just send an alert. | ||
| But they don't know exactly what time or when. | ||
| So hundreds of people, they can lay back in one spot hiding for like three days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, three days. | |
| When the alert goes on, most of the time, the Guardia Civil in the Spain side, they start to send the infrared, the motion detector all the time. | ||
| Most of the time, they even send the helicopter to come flying on top. | ||
| Even if the infrared notice something there, sometimes it's kind of tricky. | ||
| It's technology, but it's not always accurate. | ||
| We can just stay there. | ||
| Silence. | ||
| It's crazy how hundreds of people can be silenced at once, since they all know that their future depends on that exact moment. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| How many times did you attempt to get through? | ||
| On the fence, many times, I touched the fence like I went to the fence like I touched the fence twice and over time we didn't even get to the fence. | ||
| They saw us even before because the Gwaja Sevilla, their technology is very high. | ||
| So we don't even care about the Moroccan military. | ||
| We know that we can get these guys all day long. | ||
| But the Gwaja Civil, man, all the technology, the motorcycles, the car, even when you get there, it's another deal to run away from them. | ||
| They're going to chase you all over. | ||
| They have the motorcycles, this motocross, everything to chase you. | ||
| So on the two times when you just touched the fence and you got stopped, what happens then? | ||
| Oh, the first time I get caught, very caught. | ||
| Multiple wounds and I get back in the forest, bleeding. | ||
| I mean, I was just like trying to get back as fast as I can because that place wasn't good. | ||
| The guy told us, oh, he's like this, I saw. | ||
| But he wasn't as he said. | ||
| And we went and those who touched the fence, they really hurt. | ||
| We didn't expect it to be that way, but there was a lot of bad wires. | ||
| And I get it. | ||
| I was bleeding all over my hands, my feet, because I fell into it. | ||
| And that was my very first time I saw it and I didn't know exactly how to deal with it. | ||
| In the mirror of it. | ||
| Man! | ||
| So, with a pen, when you fell on it, it just comes and... | ||
| But the problem is to get out of there. | ||
| To get out of there, that's where it starts to cut. | ||
| I can't stay there. | ||
| If those guys caught me there, they're probably going to kill me. | ||
| Big as I am, they know that I'm the leader. | ||
| Because they always want to be done with the leader. | ||
| And I just pull my leg, my hands. | ||
| I'm like, fuck! | ||
| Ugh! | ||
| I get caught by this. | ||
| I get killed by those guys. | ||
| And probably they're still going to pull me here the same way. | ||
| So I get out of there. | ||
| Then I went to the fence. | ||
| Look at the fence like this. | ||
| Man, the barbed wire was just on there like this. | ||
| I tried. | ||
| The other group was moving around to find a safe place. | ||
| And the military was with them. | ||
| So I was technically alone here. | ||
| I look at this friend like this, touch the barbed wire. | ||
| He just came down like touching on my face. | ||
| I'm like, uh, you know what? | ||
| Stay there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So how'd you get back over? | ||
| No, I get back in the... | ||
| I found a place because they have the military there. | ||
| They have places behind their boxes to come. | ||
| They have a walkway here around the fence. | ||
| So I found a place then I walked back to there. | ||
| There wasn't a military there anymore. | ||
| But by that time, I was pissed off. | ||
| Even if there was a military there, there wouldn't be many of them. | ||
| Even when I first ran, there were a few of them. | ||
| I'm like, I'm going to go through these guys. | ||
| Okay, there's like three people in front of me. | ||
| There's my life behind them, my future. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Man, I'm taking my chance. | ||
| Every day, I'm taking my chance. | ||
| I'm not letting you, like, just three of you because you have it. | ||
| Nah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm going with you. | ||
| But there wasn't a military there. | ||
| So this was the first time? | ||
| Yeah, that was the first time that I really touched and I introduced. | ||
| We met each other, the barbed wire and I. I'm like, hey man, respect. | ||
| I went back in the forest, bleeding all over. | ||
| I'm like, man, I know that if I go to the hospital, the police are going to cut me. | ||
| Because since they know there is an attack, they know there is a lot of wounded people. | ||
| So they're going to be looking at the hospital. | ||
| But, I mean, or I stay in the forest and die by losing my blood, or I go in the hospital. | ||
| Then I get caught. | ||
| Maybe they send me in the desert, but at least I was to be alive. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Then I decided at some point to go to the hospital. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I get some seizures. | ||
| The police came. | ||
| It wasn't even done. | ||
| They just took me like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| While you're getting stitched up? | ||
| Yeah, while I'm getting stitched up. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| You felt like you had to get stitched up, though? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But they don't care about anything, you know? | ||
| I mean, I don't know if they even realize that you are a person of your hurt, you know? | ||
| They just took us there. | ||
| Yeah, that was the first time. | ||
| And what happens when they catch you? | ||
| Where they bring you to the police station. | ||
| You will stay there a few days. | ||
| Because this is in the north. | ||
| The south is very far. | ||
| So you're going to go. | ||
| To bring you to the south is a very long trip. | ||
| When they catch you guys, they'll put you in the police, keep you in the police station until you are there enough of you, maybe to fill one box, to make a trip in the south. | ||
| But since there was a massive attack, there was a lot of people that got caught. | ||
| So on the same day, they took us to Ushta, which is in the South, and you sleep there like one or two days, and they wait until the night time. | ||
| They go to the border in the desert and throw you guys there. | ||
| Then you figure your way up between Algerian military, who are not joking, because sometimes when they hear noises, they just shoot. | ||
| Oh, those people, they are crazy. | ||
| So you have to deal between them. | ||
| Run, hide. | ||
| It's very hard to hide in the desert. | ||
| It's flat, just sand, no trees or grass. | ||
| Kind of like very hard. | ||
| How do you hide? | ||
| Do you have to cover yourself in sand? | ||
| Yeah, and scroll, all those things. | ||
| Sometimes you go on the floor like a snake, like a cramp, until you figure out there's no noise. | ||
| There's no somebody around, then you start to walk. | ||
| At least you know, OK, I'm going to the North. | ||
| I'm following that light. | ||
| Which is in the North, which is in Morocco, which is where I want to be. | ||
| That's how we go. | ||
| Because there was a big airport, there was a Moroccan airport not far from there. | ||
| So we always use the airport light to direct ourselves to where we are going. | ||
| So how long did it take for you to get back to the border again, to touch that fence again? | ||
| This journey is not like one trip there is not that easy. | ||
| It takes a lot out of you. | ||
| Most of the time you don't eat. | ||
| So you're not really excited after you fail one time. | ||
| You're not excited to go back there. | ||
| You're tired. | ||
| I'm like, man, I mean, you kind of like drop your hands like, I don't believe this will happen one day. | ||
| I don't believe I will make it. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| It's not possible. | ||
| It was hard. | ||
| But after a few days, you're kind of putting your stuff together. | ||
| I'm like, Man, there's no way I'm going back. | ||
| I have to do this. | ||
| And sometimes, instead of thinking of going back to the fence, you're like, okay, let me go try in the water or something. | ||
| You go, you try. | ||
| But for the water, you have to have money because you have to collect money. | ||
| You guys have to collect money to buy a... | ||
| Fleximo, but you know... | ||
| A boat? | ||
| A boat to ram. | ||
| Just a small one, the one that they use in the swimming pool. | ||
| It doesn't take a lot to... | ||
| To something that floats. | ||
| Yeah, to float. | ||
| You know, you can just with a nail, you can just like bust that boat. | ||
| It's very thin, just a raft for kids. | ||
| Yes, for kids, for swimming pool, at home. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, you see that in the people pool. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is how you're trying to get by. | ||
| This is how we're trying to get in the ocean. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You know. | ||
| But at least we have a live vest. | ||
| That's the minimum. | ||
| You have to have that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you don't know what's going on in there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And sometimes you get caught even before you touch the water. | ||
| And sometimes you get in the water, after a few hours you get caught. | ||
| So I tried the deviation to go to Ceuta, which is another Spain land in Morocco. | ||
| That was a deviation. | ||
| Didn't work. | ||
| Try a few times. | ||
| Then I went back in Tanji. | ||
| Tanji is the main ocean, straight forward. | ||
| From land to land. | ||
| There is no deviation. | ||
| Straight ahead. | ||
| So you literally go in the middle of the ocean, deal with the... | ||
| Fisher with the boat, commercial boat, crossing all over. | ||
| You have to be lucky not to be seen, not to be detected, or someone not to give the alert to the border patrol in Morocco. | ||
| And they are very aware of that, very ready. | ||
| And that's how I did it a few times too. | ||
| It didn't work. | ||
| Once I did it and this time I thought we made it. | ||
| Because we paddle over like three hours. | ||
| We always put our boat in the water around five to six early in the morning when they start to pray. | ||
| We always wait that sign off because they always protect everything, stay everywhere all night. | ||
| But the time of prayer, they really respect the time to pray, which is basically 5, 5.30. | ||
| Then we always, if we get in our spot at time, we're going to wait for that time. | ||
| Allah is like the sign. | ||
| They are going to pray. | ||
| It's the open. | ||
| So you hear that, then you get in the water. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they can. | ||
| And they have to go, they have to pray. | ||
| And they know that we use that open moment. | ||
| So after their prayer, they kind of like patrol to search those who have attempt, you know. | ||
| And this time that we thought we made it, like, We get past all those. | ||
| After three hours, you know that they will not be there again. | ||
| They are back home. | ||
| And we cross all these commercial boats, those people fishing. | ||
| We are going on our way. | ||
| We have a target in the other side. | ||
| The mountain. | ||
| Because it was already the daytime. | ||
| You mean when you start at 5.30, after 30, 45 minutes, it's daytime. | ||
| But you're kind of like in the middle of the water already. | ||
| And we paddle, we paddle, we gather. | ||
| And that was my first time that some group of people trusted me to be a captain. | ||
| Because I always say, I can be a captain. | ||
| I know how to paddle. | ||
| And I'm like, ah, you just want a free trip. | ||
| Because when you're a captain, you don't participate to buy a boat. | ||
| They use your knowledge. | ||
| It's kind of your participation. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm like, I can't do this. | ||
| They're like, oh, there's no water in Cameroon. | ||
| You don't even know to swim. | ||
| Those people that believe in them, it's the Senegalian. | ||
| When you're from Senegal and you're like, I'm captain, they don't even have to test. | ||
| They're like, yeah, it's from Senegal. | ||
| Because it's close to the water. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And most of the time, they know this trick. | ||
| And all Senegalese are captains. | ||
| Then you bring some Senegalese in the water, and you have to teach them how to paddle. | ||
| I'm like, man, I'm not buying this anymore. | ||
| I'm like, I'm a captain. | ||
| But once, those kids, they trust me, and then we went there in the beach. | ||
| The first, we were a little late because they came late with the boat. | ||
| And those first like group, the trite and the vague, were so high, they couldn't make it. | ||
| The wake? | ||
| The waves? | ||
| Yes, the waves were so high. | ||
| Because we have to check like meteor and everything. | ||
| We know the speed of the wind. | ||
| We know the direction. | ||
| If it's like north, south, southwest, northwest, southwest, all these things. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| And I just learned that in Morocco. | ||
| I was a specialist. | ||
| I can look, I'm like, today is not good, man. | ||
| We can't even try. | ||
| And that day we go, and he was like, so-so. | ||
| We tried. | ||
| The first group, there were many groups before us because we made it late. | ||
| They couldn't have made it. | ||
| The waves were so high. | ||
| Throw them away. | ||
| They tried again. | ||
| Throw them away. | ||
| And they kind of like gave up. | ||
| And then I put my own. | ||
| I put air in it and then I give instructions to my guys like, okay, when I say go, you guys first go. | ||
| When I say go, you guys first go. | ||
| Because as much as we're going in the water, it gets deeper and deeper. | ||
| And at first, we can all get into when it's not so deep because we don't have the depression on it. | ||
| So it has to be very at some point before all of you guys get into. | ||
| And as a captain, you have to be the last one to get into. | ||
| To put all your guys into care about them. | ||
| Anna was a captain who doesn't know how to swim. | ||
| But I was the man. | ||
| I said, OK, I organize everything, give them paru and everything. | ||
| We get there. | ||
| I put them, I count the waves, like one, two, three, because most of the time it's like three waves. | ||
| And the third one will be the biggest one. | ||
| Then when the third one just falls, we just go behind it, behind the third one. | ||
| And you have to be very fast because the next one is coming. | ||
| No firing. | ||
| After the third one, we go. | ||
| I put them. | ||
| The first one came. | ||
| It was still okay. | ||
| I was still putting someone. | ||
| The second one, they were all inside. | ||
| The third one came. | ||
| It was the biggest one. | ||
| And those people who were trying before, they were trying before us. | ||
| They were back to see, to wait so we can fail and we go back together. | ||
| And I'm like, oh, he stinks, he can make it. | ||
| Then the third wave came. | ||
| That was like something that you see in the movie. | ||
| Just smashed you. | ||
| I hold my boat. | ||
| I'm like, I trust myself. | ||
| I trust my boat. | ||
| Like, I hold it like this. | ||
| I saw this thing came. | ||
| I'm like, put my head in the water. | ||
| Hold my boat like this. | ||
| And it came. | ||
| Blew like, vroom, on top of me. | ||
| My boat was, because he has a rope around it. | ||
| I hold it. | ||
| And he goes like, bring it back. | ||
| I was just like, with my head under, like, I bend my head like a torch. | ||
| Like, Ben like this goes and when he came back, I pulled my boat back. | ||
| They screamed like, what the hell is this? | ||
| I put it and then I just jumped on top like, let's go, let's go, let's go. | ||
| So we pattern before the next start to go because he's very high by the beach. | ||
| When the waves roll like this and it start to hit the sand, it comes up. | ||
| But the more you go in the middle of the water, you don't see that wave anymore. | ||
| So you're three and a half hours in. | ||
| You said you got like three and a half hours in deep. | ||
| No, three hours. | ||
| Three hours deep. | ||
| Three hours in the ocean. | ||
| Then what happened? | ||
| Then this Moroccan, this army boat from Morocco, I don't know where they came from. | ||
| They were just passing by like a big massive ship. | ||
| The past behind us, you know, the international line was behind us. | ||
| You know, the line that, the commercial, because I've been there many times. | ||
| I kind of like figured out where is the commercial line, the middle. | ||
| So you passed the Morocco side. | ||
| Now you're in the Spain side. | ||
| And Morocco should have left you the fuck alone. | ||
| Yeah, normally, you know. | ||
| And they almost left us. | ||
| They went down and they turned around. | ||
| It wasn't their job. | ||
| This was just like an army officer, like a big, big ship. | ||
| Not the one that they used to chase us, though. | ||
| And they came with this big ship. | ||
| They just come in front of us. | ||
| We're kind of lost. | ||
| We don't know where we were going anymore. | ||
| This thing was just in front of us. | ||
| We are blind. | ||
| We can't see anything anymore. | ||
| We don't even know the direction. | ||
| And then they stay there. | ||
| They call the board protection, the water protection. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| There was nobody there anymore because they knew that it wasn't the time that we were in the water. | ||
| And they left. | ||
| They went for breakfast and this. | ||
| They called. | ||
| There was nobody around there. | ||
| They have to call Some ship in another city. | ||
| So they can... | ||
| It takes them like 30 minutes. | ||
| It took them like 30 minutes to come over and to take us. | ||
| So why do they come in our front? | ||
| Because they know that the Red Cross can see us. | ||
| And the Red Cross is coming from the other side. | ||
| Because as soon as they started to turn around, we always have a phone with a Spanish SIM card Oh. | ||
| And we have a Red Cross number. | ||
| So you have a phone with a Spain SIM card in it so you can call the Spain Red Cross? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We call the Red Cross because their job is just to save people. | ||
| They don't want to know where you're coming from, where you are from. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's not their problem. | ||
| They just want, they just know that this is a life to save. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They save life. | ||
| And we called them, but we couldn't tell them even where we are. | ||
| They couldn't even see us. | ||
| There were these big things in front of us. | ||
| I mean, it made us invisible. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And we waited. | ||
| We waited until they come take us. | ||
| And what happened then? | ||
| We go back to the same process. | ||
| Police station. | ||
| A few days in the police station. | ||
| Then another city, a few days. | ||
| Throw back in the... | ||
| Take it back to the desert again. | ||
| To the desert again. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| That was in December 2012. So how many months into this trip are you now? | ||
| Since I left Cameroon April 3rd. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It took me about three weeks to get in Morocco, so I was in Morocco for so long now. | ||
| That wasn't my first try. | ||
| I have tried many times. | ||
| Man, that day I was pissed off. | ||
| Because you were close. | ||
| I was close. | ||
| This close. | ||
| Like you see your life, you see your dream turn to nothing. | ||
| Like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You go back to hell. | |
| Then from there, I don't know why I promised myself that with all those experiences, I promised myself that the next time that I'm touching this water, I'm done. | ||
| I'm not coming back. | ||
| When you get into this, you get mad. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, you get into it. | ||
| It's time. | ||
| I'm doing this. | ||
| It's like you have to take your revenge. | ||
| But the winter was coming. | ||
| It was cold. | ||
| The water was so bad. | ||
| We couldn't try it anymore by that time. | ||
| But the good thing is, from there, people give me credit for being a captain. | ||
| A captain. | ||
| I'm like, wow, he's a hell of captain. | ||
| Like, right where they left us in the beach, they couldn't make it. | ||
| They saw how I put it. | ||
| So they went back, and I'm like, we have a damn captain here named Vanda. | ||
| Because back there, they was calling me Vanda. | ||
| Why Vandam? | ||
| Oh, they always have a nickname for me. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| What does Vandam mean? | ||
| Uh, Vandam. | ||
| Jean-Claude Vandam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| That's awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| If it's not Schwarzenegger or... | ||
| Oh, that's funny. | ||
| You're a hero. | ||
| Gladiator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No. | ||
| No, it's always... | ||
| They always give me a nickname. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, they're all hero nicknames. | ||
| Schwarzenegger, Gladiator. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So how did you finally get through? | ||
| The next time that I touched the water. | ||
| So after the winter... | ||
| How long ago? | ||
| How long passed? | ||
| Like how many more months? | ||
| Like three months and a half, so all the winter, we couldn't make it. | ||
| We go back to the forest to attempt to defend again. | ||
| But that life condition was so harsh, we couldn't do anything. | ||
| Like get cold all the time, no clothes, no food. | ||
| It's really hard. | ||
| You have to go to the market at night time to go find food in the trash, you know, sometimes arguing with rats in the trash, like, hey, get away of these tomatoes. | ||
| It's mine. | ||
| These rotten tomatoes are mine, not yours. | ||
| Go back in the forest, figure out how to cook that in the aluminium bucket or something. | ||
| So if it wasn't your life, you would never believe this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no. | |
| And even though it is your life. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I couldn't believe it. | ||
| Even though it was your life, it's still hard for you to believe. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| You know the first time that we went in the water? | ||
| Like, we were led by an Ivory Coast guy. | ||
| And this guy, he was a good captain. | ||
| He knows the thing. | ||
| He knew exactly what he was doing. | ||
| And he was very good in the water. | ||
| He knows how to swim. | ||
| He knows everything. | ||
| So they saw us. | ||
| That was our first time. | ||
| And this guy had a lot of experience into this. | ||
| And he's been there for so long. | ||
| So he's kind of like mad about it. | ||
| Like, okay, it's time. | ||
| I'm done with this. | ||
| I have to do it. | ||
| Whatever there is. | ||
| As time goes by, you're kind of open to take more risk. | ||
| At first, I'm like, I don't know about this. | ||
| It's risky. | ||
| It's dangerous. | ||
| And then after time, over and over, I'm like, whatever it takes, I'm doing it. | ||
| He was at that point. | ||
| We weren't there yet. | ||
| He was there already. | ||
| And then he brought us to... | ||
| This is supposed to be a deviation, but they saw us before, the military saw us before we get in the water. | ||
| And he was in the dark. | ||
| We were on the hill. | ||
| There was a big hill like this. | ||
| We have to go all the way down to touch the water. | ||
| But in the middle of the hill, there was a road and the military patrol was there. | ||
| We put the air on our boat, right, in the upstairs, in the dark, and get the paddle to some people to carry, so we can carry the boat, because we have to, like, really protect him. | ||
| Even a stone or something can just burst. | ||
| We have to really be very careful. | ||
| And then by the road, there was a patrol guy with a torch, because they sent an alert that something is going on in your area. | ||
| And the guy just saw us, and we thought it was over. | ||
| This captain, he's just like, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go! | ||
| I'm like, going where? | ||
| We are not seeing nothing. | ||
| But you hold the boat, he's going with the boat, this is your life. | ||
| You're not letting him go with your life, so we just followed. | ||
| And we were in the dark and we just fell in the water like the stone and everything. | ||
| We had a chance. | ||
| Our boat didn't hit on something, so it was still good. | ||
| But they caught the two people behind because there were six of us. | ||
| They caught the two people behind with the paddle. | ||
| So we fell in the water. | ||
| No pattern. | ||
| And the military, they were just there. | ||
| And I'm like, with their touch, you know, in the dark, when you're in the dark, there might just be four of them, but they use the touch and sweep it like this. | ||
| It blinds your eyes. | ||
| You don't know where you're going. | ||
| But we get calm. | ||
| You just hold. | ||
| The boat. | ||
| This is my life. | ||
| I'm not letting this go. | ||
| I'm dying with it. | ||
| We found ourselves in the middle of the water and they were there like, Haji! | ||
| Haji! | ||
| Come here! | ||
| In Moroccan. | ||
| I'm like, no, we are not coming. | ||
| We're trying to get there, and when we get in the boat, we find out that there are two of us missing, basically those with the paddle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| How are we going to paddle without paddle? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I was thinking that we're just going to Give up, like, you know, turn ourselves in. | ||
| The guy was like, listen, we're going to paddle with our hands. | ||
| I'm like, okay, this guy might be stupid or something. | ||
| Like, people die in the world, in the ocean, paddling with the real paddle. | ||
| And we are just going to paddle with our hands. | ||
| How crazy is that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And I'm like, listen to me. | ||
| I was very confident. | ||
| Good captain. | ||
| Like, motivate you guys. | ||
| Like, listen to me. | ||
| You see that, like, we are going there. | ||
| You guys, you do this. | ||
| On this side, you do this. | ||
| We do this. | ||
| We do that. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, okay. | ||
| Well, as you say so, I started. | ||
| I sit in the boat. | ||
| I'm like, paddling, touching the water like this. | ||
| I'm like, put your, you guys, you should put your horn deeper so you can pull the water. | ||
| That's how the boat is going to move. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| Just doing it like, oh, whatever. | ||
| I'm like, okay, when the boat is going this way, you guys, you should stop paddle and then you guys should paddle faster so he can bring it back. | ||
| This is how we direct the boat, you know. | ||
| Man! | ||
| For real? | ||
| For the first time? | ||
| I'm going to die just like this? | ||
| My family don't even know. | ||
| They won't even see my body, man. | ||
| I won't even... | ||
| And now, like... | ||
| I'm already into it. | ||
| There's no way back. | ||
| Keep doing it, doing it. | ||
| And at some point, we were, like, very desperate. | ||
| At some point, I just look in the back around. | ||
| I'm like, the mountain was like far. | ||
| I'm like, where were we? | ||
| Because I thought we were just like a few yards away. | ||
| He was moving. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, where were we? | |
| The guy said like, You don't see it? | ||
| That mountain? | ||
| I'm like, so we came from there to here? | ||
| By hand? | ||
| He said, yes. | ||
| Man, you don't know. | ||
| Like, I don't know. | ||
| Suddenly, I have this crazy power and energy. | ||
| I'm like, man, we are going to make a story then. | ||
| We are going to make it in Europe, pattern with our hands. | ||
| So, he's walking. | ||
| Then I start to paddle. | ||
| I became a captain at that moment. | ||
| Like, so excited. | ||
| I'm like, paddle in this side. | ||
| The guy, my... | ||
| There was some guy here. | ||
| Even my cousin. | ||
| He was throwing up on this. | ||
| I was paddling here. | ||
| Turn here. | ||
| Paddling. | ||
| Move here. | ||
| Paddling this way. | ||
| Block here. | ||
| I was like, man, we are... | ||
| Making stories. | ||
| Nobody ever made this. | ||
| You know? | ||
| They have seen a lot of things. | ||
| Meadow this one. | ||
| We paddle, we paddle, and the boat was moving like... | ||
| We're making it! | ||
| We're going to make this! | ||
| But unfortunately that night, since they caught two people, two of us, they sent the alert to those guys ahead. | ||
| So they sent this machine board. | ||
| So at some point we just heard this guy, he said, hold on, hold on, hold on, silence, silence. | ||
| Do you hear this? | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| I'm like, there's an engine. | ||
| There's an engine somewhere here. | ||
| So, and then I said, I don't hear it. | ||
| I'm like, they know where we are. | ||
| They're kind of like looking for us. | ||
| And I'm like, how come? | ||
| I'm telling you. | ||
| Then he said, okay, if they come here, just say it was three of you guys. | ||
| Yes, but we are four. | ||
| I'm going to swim. | ||
| I'm going to get in the water. | ||
| We are in the middle of the ocean, bro. | ||
| Don't die on us. | ||
| I mean, if you're done living, but don't just die here, you're going to traumatize us. | ||
| And then here I'm like, believe me. | ||
| Just say it was three of you guys. | ||
| So when they pull you, I'm going to hang on it. | ||
| And then when they coast, I'm going to continue by swimming because you're going to be very close. | ||
| Man, how crazy is this? | ||
| In the mirror of the ocean, this guy gets in the water and suddenly they just put a light on us. | ||
| I don't know how they call that light. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Spotlight. | |
| Spotlight, the projector. | ||
| And it was very bright. | ||
| Like, you can't even see nothing. | ||
| So we are bending our head like this, covering our eyes to see a little bit. | ||
| Since they told them it was four of us, and they just see three, so they knew that there was somebody somewhere else. | ||
| They have to look for that person. | ||
| They started to turn around, and our captain, he was like, Very good at swimming. | ||
| Getting in the water here, get out there, just put his head out there. | ||
| We could have seen his head just swinging like this, and then get in the water, get out there, swinging like this, like a fish. | ||
| I'm like, man, it's crazy. | ||
| But they found it. | ||
| They caught him. | ||
| They took us. | ||
| Put her in there. | ||
| Bring us. | ||
| Same thing? | ||
| That was the first time. | ||
| And this is the same thing. | ||
| They take you down. | ||
| They bring you down to the south. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| Same trip. | ||
| Let you go in the desert. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But we got lucky. | ||
| We didn't get beat up. | ||
| Because the officer was there. | ||
| You know, officer. | ||
| They are like... | ||
| They went to school. | ||
| They're kind of like civilized. | ||
| They speak French. | ||
| So they talk. | ||
| They understand. | ||
| They speak with you. | ||
| And I'm like, you African, you're crazy. | ||
| Because they call us African. | ||
| Well, like, guess what? | ||
| You're African too. | ||
| I'm like, no, we are Mal-Caribbean. | ||
| I'm like, oh, whatever. | ||
| It's a big continent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So how did you eventually get through? | ||
| That was my number 7th time in the world. | ||
| 7th time? | ||
| Yes, 7th time. | ||
| April 3rd, 2013. And when we get rescued by the Red Cross, because I was already like, I had a lot of experience. | ||
| I already know how to dock radars and everything. | ||
| You learn a lot of things doing this. | ||
| You know, like we took either the aluminum paper and wrapped it around the boat. | ||
| That blocks the radar? | ||
| Yes, it blocks the radars. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Either the city, the military. | ||
| One guy told us that once, when they get caught. | ||
| They said, oh, we saw you guys since, even before you touched the water, but we just want to wait to come. | ||
| Cut you after. | ||
| And he'll give us these tips next time. | ||
| But we saw you, and we didn't even want to, but we have to. | ||
| So they told you. | ||
| So he didn't want to get you, but he told you he had to. | ||
| It's his job. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But he told you if you just wrap it in aluminum foil, no one's going to see it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Whoa. | ||
| Yeah, he told us. | ||
| So over time, I kind of accumulate all this experience. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, next time that I'm touching this water, I'm not coming back. | ||
| So how'd you do it? | ||
| So I was in the forest then for the whole winter because I couldn't even go back to the city to find a job. | ||
| I was done with that. | ||
| I'm like, man, I'm done with that. | ||
| I could have just stayed in Cameroon and keep working the same thing. | ||
| I'm not coming to a foreign country doing the same shit. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| I'm here for something. | ||
| I stick on what I'm here for. | ||
| I don't want to get distracted. | ||
| I stay in the forest, so every day before I go to sleep, I remember why I'm here. | ||
| Every day that I wake up, I see Melia out there, and it reminds me why I'm here. | ||
| I don't want to go back in the city in Rabat or Casablanca or this anymore. | ||
| I'm done with that. | ||
| I'm staying here. | ||
| But after the winter started to get over, I had a friend who called me and I was like, Francis, I have this guy, they have a boat, the water is starting to get better now, not too much waves and this. | ||
| They have a boat, I would like you to come to our city so we can take them together. | ||
| I trust you and myself, you should come. | ||
| I called in my country and asked for my mom and my brother, like, I need money. | ||
| I'm like, we don't have money. | ||
| I'm like, man, figure out. | ||
| I have some picks, some stuff before I leave. | ||
| I'm like, sell everything. | ||
| I need money. | ||
| I need clothes and shoes and I need to pay a box, buy a box ticket to go to this city. | ||
| They figured out. | ||
| I think they found like 200 bucks. | ||
| They sent it to me. | ||
| I went to the bus station. | ||
| I bought a bus ticket. | ||
| It was two of us, me and one of my cousin's friends. | ||
| My cousin has married by the gate. | ||
| And we couldn't even marry because there were cops all around. | ||
| So I didn't want to find myself in Ujda, in the desert anymore. | ||
| By the winter, if you get there, it's not good at all. | ||
| It's like, what, maybe 30 degrees in Ujda, and you don't have clothes. | ||
| And in this condition, You don't come out there the same. | ||
| He takes a lot out of you. | ||
| So, we get back in the forest. | ||
| We couldn't make it. | ||
| And the next day, like at a... | ||
| not the next day, maybe two days after, because all the time the police come in the forest to chase us. | ||
| They know where we are in the forest. | ||
| The forest is very big, very pretty close to the city, but they come and they're trying to surround us because there's many of them. | ||
| And we always have somebody looking up, like looking for the police. | ||
| By 4 o'clock, 4 a.m. | ||
| sometime, you will just sleep in, you will just hear like, Boomla! | ||
| When you hear Boomla, you know, cops are around. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| What does Boomla mean? | ||
| Police? | ||
| It's not like police, but the action that the police, we call the action boomlah. | ||
| So they come to catch us. | ||
| We call that action. | ||
| It's like a slang. | ||
| And when you hear that boomlah, you have to run. | ||
| We have this plastic that we, because in the forest, we put stones together, build like a little shatter, and then find a plastic and put on top of it, not to get wet when we are sleeping. | ||
| So we build it like two feet high, put plastic on top, you know, and then get inside and sleep. | ||
| We beg for blankets. | ||
| We have some people donate to us, even some association who will come sometime give us medication. | ||
| Sometime we will get blankets. | ||
| So, your main thing is your plastic and your blanket. | ||
| But sometimes, when the police come, they put the fire on your blanket and your plastic. | ||
| So whenever now, when they say, You have to save your blanket and your plastic because that's your survival toils. | ||
| Without them, you're nothing. | ||
| You're going to have a nightmare every night. | ||
| So when they say, The first thing you do, you wrap your blanket, you wrap your plastic, you climb on top of the tree sometimes to hide it, but sometimes they climb on top of it. | ||
| They see that and they climb on top to take it and burn it. | ||
| So you wrap it sometimes, you just run with it. | ||
| You don't know how this run is going to end. | ||
| Maybe you're going to get caught because they always surround you. | ||
| Then we're gonna like sometime when you find found out you find out that you get surrounded you just go to hide somewhere and you're gonna stay like immobile for hours because they have like uh how they call miniculars Benarculus? | ||
| Benarculus. | ||
| To look from the other side and communicate over the turkey walking, like seeing if there is emotion somewhere, some people. | ||
| So we have to get in the hardest part in the forest, that they can get there. | ||
| Even if they are suspecting that we might be there, just this stake, It doesn't allow them to go there because they get hurt. | ||
| So you have to go to this pain to support all this pain. | ||
| Like, okay, he's hurting, but this is my only way to survive because they can come there to find you. | ||
| Even though, because they are not sure 100% that you're there to take all that risk. | ||
| So you have to stay quiet for like hours. | ||
| Then, under the rain sometimes, whatever is the issue, you have to stay there. | ||
| And sometimes, if you're really surrounded, if you see them before they surround you guys, you just start to run over the mountains and mountains for hours before then. | ||
| Spend a few hours in the run before coming back in the evening, knowing that they might be back because they have to go back. | ||
| They get tired too. | ||
| They have to eat. | ||
| They have to do all these things. | ||
| You can take that, but they cannot take that as much as you guys. | ||
| So that's how we do that. | ||
| So, after missing my boss to go to Tanger, two days after I came back and I have some phone. | ||
| You know, we have some phone. | ||
| It was just for call. | ||
| And I turn on my phone because we always turn off to save batteries. | ||
| He has to stay like two weeks. | ||
| You don't want to go down there in the... | ||
| Internet shop, why maybe charging your phone, get caught by the police, which is very stupid, you know. | ||
| And so I turned my phone on. | ||
| I saw like a dwarf missing call. | ||
| I'm like, something's going on. | ||
| I called some people and I'm like, man, Ito Boza! | ||
| Which means the guy that was waiting for me, he made it in Spain. | ||
| I just see the sky fell on top of my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, damn, what the hell? | |
| I should have been in this. | ||
| I'm like, man, what do I do to deserve this? | ||
| Everything is turning wrong for me. | ||
| I'm doing everything. | ||
| Nothing is going well. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| I'm out of here. | ||
| I'm not staying here anymore. | ||
| Some people were texting me like, okay, we have come here. | ||
| We're going to organize. | ||
| We're going to buy a boat. | ||
| I'm like, Like, bro, I don't have time to wait for who's going to buy a boat sometime soon. | ||
| I'm going for those. | ||
| And I have these people that, this guy, that he'd been texting me, being like, we want you to go with us, this, that, like, literally begging me to be the captain. | ||
| Because I was a famous captain by the time. | ||
| And I'm like, man, you ready? | ||
| I'm like, yes. | ||
| I said, I can't sleep here in the forest. | ||
| I can't take it. | ||
| I just go to the bus station, book a plane ticket. | ||
| I'm like, I get caught, I get caught. | ||
| Whatever happens, happens. | ||
| I'm not going back. | ||
| I didn't get caught. | ||
| I got back in Rabat. | ||
| The guy was in Rabat. | ||
| They was working. | ||
| And here I'm like, this was Tuesday. | ||
| Monday night. | ||
| I get there Tuesday morning. | ||
| Here I'm like, hey, we are working to these people. | ||
| They're going to pay us on Saturday. | ||
| I'm like, guess what? | ||
| I can stay until Saturday. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| We are going on Thursday. | ||
| I'm like, okay, go there and see how things work. | ||
| We will go, see how things work, and the other people will come. | ||
| Because we collect our money together to buy this boat. | ||
| And for now, it's still like the end of the winter. | ||
| So the water is not that calm. | ||
| You have to find a window. | ||
| And for that, you have to check the weather, the meteor all the time, every day, every single day. | ||
| So, we move. | ||
| On Thursday, we travel to Tangier. | ||
| We get, as soon as I touch ground in Tangier, I get fever. | ||
| I get sick. | ||
| I couldn't tell them that I'm sick. | ||
| They were counting on me to bring them in Europe. | ||
| So I can't show any sign of weakness to let them know that something is wrong. | ||
| I didn't have any money left. | ||
| I couldn't even buy food. | ||
| But, you know, I was very known in Tanji and very trusted. | ||
| So sometimes I'm like, hey man, just give me food. | ||
| Whenever I get money, I'll pay you. | ||
| And some few people, they trust me. | ||
| They know me. | ||
| And sometimes they give me. | ||
| But I always give some little service to people to get money. | ||
| Like first, if somebody wants to know how is the meteor, how is the weather, if the weather is good or not, even though I looked already, I'm like, Oh man, you have to pay for the internet for me to look at that. | ||
| Otherwise, you won't know. | ||
| And because I know exactly how it works, so I can pull up that thing and show him like, okay, you see this? | ||
| The wind is... | ||
| Ten miles per hour, so it's kind of like high. | ||
| It has to be like maximum eight miles per hour. | ||
| Like three miles per hour is good, you know. | ||
| And the wind is north to south while we are going from south to north. | ||
| So the wind is opposite wide and it's very strong. | ||
| So we're going to be hit by them. | ||
| They're going to slow us down. | ||
| We can't make it. | ||
| So I kind of like explain all that process to them and they like it. | ||
| So when somebody needs to know exactly what's going on when they are preparing, they're going to ask me. | ||
| I'm like, you know, you have to pay for my internet. | ||
| Sometimes I'm like, hey man, I can't look that thing. | ||
| I'm like, okay, we're paying for internet. | ||
| I'm like, hey man, I'm so hungry so I can't even see. | ||
| My eye is blind. | ||
| So they're going to buy me something. | ||
| That was my trick to eat sometimes. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And then they will buy you like a bread. | ||
| So how did you finally do it though? | ||
| How did you finally get across? | ||
| That was the last time. | ||
| That was the last time. | ||
| The last time. | ||
| So you made it all the way through. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People saw me. | ||
| Some people saw me and I'm like, oh. | ||
| If this guy is your captain, that means you're not coming back here. | ||
| They even want that guy to kick out some people and put them back. | ||
| They're trying to pay extra money just for him to put them back. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| It's not mine. | ||
| It's not my call. | ||
| We collect. | ||
| We put money together to buy it. | ||
| I'm not the one in charge. | ||
| We are all in charge. | ||
| I can't put somebody out. | ||
| And I was like, yes, because you have a lot of chance to make it since you have found them as a captain. | ||
| And I was like, okay, how many are you guys? | ||
| Nine. | ||
| But we can take ten. | ||
| Like, no, the captain says nine because we are big guys. | ||
| And normally this thing shouldn't even be taking nine, even though sometimes they put more than nine. | ||
| But we are big guys. | ||
| I don't count myself as one person. | ||
| I have to count it like two persons. | ||
| Because if you miscount, you're putting your life in risk. | ||
| And that's how we get there. | ||
| So you finally made it all the way to the other side. | ||
| You call the Red Cross. | ||
| I finally, like, I waited because the water wasn't so good those days. | ||
| I waited, I waited, and I'm like, okay, this day, next Tuesday, it's good. | ||
| And he calls. | ||
| So... | ||
| the police in the city, because they control the bus station. | ||
| If they see too much people come, come in basically with big bags, they kind of like figure out something is going on. | ||
| You know, they are preparing something. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Then they're going to reinforce the security. | ||
| So like we'd let them, other people back in Rabat with the boat and paddle and everything. | ||
| They just came the same day that we live because we didn't want to bring any attention to us. | ||
| And I'm like, Tuesday. | ||
| Tuesday is the day. | ||
| And I'm like, so I can tell them to come on Tuesday? | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| They are coming on Tuesday. | ||
| I have to find this taxi driver who's going to take us because they are not authorized to do that. | ||
| But there are some people who did it because it's like a mafia. | ||
| You have to pay way more, you know, stuff that they will pay like 20 bucks or he asks you for 150 or 200 bucks because it's illegal. | ||
| He's taking risk. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Then you agree with it. | ||
| You need that. | ||
| You need that person to do that work for you and to help you go where you're going. | ||
| We get the driver ready, put everything together. | ||
| When they came on Tuesday, on Tuesday, and I was still sick. | ||
| But getting better, Normally, the captain doesn't support to carry anything because they save him. | ||
| He has to save his energy for the big work, which is like to paddle, to direction everything, to coordinate everything in the water. | ||
| But where we were going to put our Odiak, our boat, there were a lot of corps there. | ||
| We couldn't make it. | ||
| So we have to go all the way around. | ||
| We couldn't go back. | ||
| It's like going in the forest, jumping in the fence, all those stuff. | ||
| And it's going to take a long time, a very long time, because the forest was very dense. | ||
| And the way that these people are moving, I'm like, we are not going to make it. | ||
| So I have to take this thing, this boat and carry it. | ||
| I'm like, okay, you guys, if you want to go, you better follow where the boat is going. | ||
| Because I won't be waiting for you guys since you support to carry the boat. | ||
| They're moving too slow. | ||
| Yeah, you're moving too slow. | ||
| We go all night long until like at the end we end to a place like a big steep. | ||
| It goes down like this. | ||
| I mean, those kind of places that when you go down, you can't come back anymore. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then we went down there. | ||
| We all made it. | ||
| The problem now, where to put it? | ||
| Because there were all like stones, no sand, no beach. | ||
| The original place was like a beach. | ||
| So with sand, so we can walk and put our ball, we can put air in it. | ||
| Everything was perfect there, but those places... | ||
| Too much rocks. | ||
| So you don't want to get the raft damaged. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Then I'm like, okay, how are we going to do this? | ||
| You know, sometimes when it's the day, it's the day. | ||
| Nothing can stop you. | ||
| And everything is putting himself together to make it happen. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| I told the guy, I was the captain. | ||
| I have to figure out. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| You are the captain. | ||
| That's your business. | ||
| They are hoping they just wait for you. | ||
| Basically, for most of them, it was their first time. | ||
| So they don't even know how it works. | ||
| I was just expecting them not to turn back when they see the water in the face. | ||
| Because most of the time, Oh, I want to go in Europe. | ||
| I want to do this. | ||
| Collect money. | ||
| Buy the boat. | ||
| Get there. | ||
| See the water. | ||
| See the wave. | ||
| Hear the wave. | ||
| Like, boom! | ||
| I'm like, I don't want to go to Europe anymore. | ||
| Like, I'm not getting in there. | ||
| I'm going back. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Take the boat, take the craft. | ||
| I'm not in it anymore. | ||
| Take my money, everything. | ||
| But the problem, if somebody did that where we are, the only way back is to go back to the beach and there was a police there. | ||
| And the police will know, they will know that something is going on here. | ||
| And they will send an alert so they will come. | ||
| So you have to make sure everybody goes with you. | ||
| I have to make sure nobody gives up. | ||
| Nobody leaves. | ||
| First, I told them, like, okay, guys, wait here. | ||
| Let me go find the place. | ||
| When something means to happen, everything comes together to make it happen. | ||
| Like, suddenly, I found a place just enough to put the air on the craft. | ||
| I mean, it was this small, like this table. | ||
| Not even as much as this table. | ||
| A little smaller. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then I'm like, wow, this is cool. | ||
| We can put the air here. | ||
| But how to get between the stone to get in the water? | ||
| You know, because he doesn't have to touch the stone. | ||
| The stone has to scrape it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He doesn't have to touch the stone. | ||
| And basically, like with the waves, the waves keep smashing you. | ||
| You can really get in the... | ||
| You can smash you over the stone. | ||
| And when the waves smash in the stone, it's not the same way that the waves smash in the beach. | ||
| Because in the beach, the sun is like this. | ||
| So it's taking it like this. | ||
| But the stone is just strong and there. | ||
| And it's like, boom! | ||
| So you better don't be in between stone and the waves. | ||
| So, I'm like, okay, where are we going to go? | ||
| Suddenly, some place appeared to be right there, a working place between stones. | ||
| I walk around, look, and I found a small beach, just as this table, just to put the boat. | ||
| I always keep asking myself, that place really exists or it was just something that God put it there to make us go because it meant to happen. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| It was just so perfect for a very weird place to find out all those things together. | ||
| Just a small enough beach, just perfect. | ||
| Small enough, just a small enough place to go to the beach, from the stone to the beach. | ||
| Man, just perfect. | ||
| I went back, I told this guy, let's go. | ||
| So I have to like, change my tongue, how I talk. | ||
| I have to Motivate them. | ||
| Not only motivate them. | ||
| It's not about motivate them. | ||
| You have to scare them. | ||
| They have to look scared at you than at the waves. | ||
| Ah, yeah. | ||
| Because you're not taking a chance that somebody turn around. | ||
| Right, and quit. | ||
| And then get caught. | ||
| If somebody quit, you're getting caught. | ||
| So I took a paddle, just start yelling on them, like feinting them, like, man, just change. | ||
| So it has to be like the point that he... | ||
| You're going to be afraid of the waves, but turn around, see me, get scared of me, so you better keep going. | ||
| Otherwise, we're not going to make it. | ||
| You have to do that. | ||
| You have to do it. | ||
| So I changed, and I was like fainting on them with powder, like, I'm going to smash you, like, do this, do that, and we put everything together. | ||
| Go in the water. | ||
| The water keep turning because in between stones, even though it was a beach, but the water there was very weird, like turning around, you know, and keep throwing us, keep throwing us. | ||
| I'm like, no, man, we are going this way. | ||
| Put in the third time. | ||
| We made it. | ||
| We start to move. | ||
| We get out of that place and keep going and we paddle. | ||
| From what I saw on the weather, the meteo, The rain is supposed to fall. | ||
| You said meteorologist report, is that what you're saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, just more the weather or the waves? | ||
| No, the weather, the waves, everything, the wind, you know. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All the different things. | ||
| All the different things in the water. | ||
| Because I have to know the state of the water that I have to deal with. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So I found all that. | ||
| I had all those information. | ||
| I know exactly. | ||
| I even know that at 7.30, rain is going to fall. | ||
| You know? | ||
| So I'm like, okay, if we go at 5.30 to 6, it's going to be like one hour and a half. | ||
| We're going to be very far to be able to call the Red Cross. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| And we keep going, we keep paddling, paddling. | ||
| And after a few moments, I didn't realize how long was that. | ||
| And we saw this, we saw an helicopter flying on top of us. | ||
| And he was kind of like turning around. | ||
| I'm like, man, this helicopter, she just passed away. | ||
| Like, Staying here will alert people from both sides that something is happening under here. | ||
| They are looking for something. | ||
| So now this is the decision to take. | ||
| Either we call the Red Cross and use the helicopter to tell them exactly where we are or either the Moroccan who saw that And figure out there's something going on and come here. | ||
| Get here first. | ||
| So I'm like telling my guy, call the Red Cross. | ||
| Because the first thing when you call, where are you? | ||
| What are you seeing? | ||
| Give us something that we're going to... | ||
| We were just like, we are underneath the helicopter. | ||
| You see the helicopter? | ||
| Because we are sure that everywhere that you might be, you will see that helicopter. | ||
| I'm like, we are right underneath it. | ||
| And they was like, do you have a girl, a woman in the boat? | ||
| By the time my English was very bad. | ||
| I was speaking like a pigeon. | ||
| And I'm like, do you have a woman? | ||
| I'm like, what the hell do they have to do if we have a woman? | ||
| We are in danger. | ||
| But I didn't tell that to them. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, we have a woman. | ||
| We have even a child. | ||
| We have babies. | ||
| Why do you want to know if you're a woman? | ||
| Whatever you want me to say. | ||
| Just come and save us. | ||
| We are in danger. | ||
| And right just after we hung up, Like, the water really started to change. | ||
| That rain, it was like, it wasn't raining, but... | ||
| Starting. | ||
| Yeah, starting. | ||
| And the water was like, vroom, vroom. | ||
| We all regrouped in the mirror of the craft. | ||
| Like, it was very scary. | ||
| But we have to battle. | ||
| Because they said they are coming. | ||
| And after like few minutes, I saw something like, you know, the water was, we were floating, getting on top. | ||
| And I saw there were a boat, a lot of sheep in the water. | ||
| But I saw something red because their boat is red. | ||
| I'm like, that might be it. | ||
| I think that that's them. | ||
| But I can't tell my group because if I tell them and they get excited, I throw away their pattern and it's not them, we are done. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| So, as captain, I have to keep them down. | ||
| I'm like, okay, maybe keep paddling. | ||
| I'm like, let's go, guys. | ||
| Let's go, let's go, let's go. | ||
| And at some point, somebody said, hey, I think I saw them. | ||
| I raised the paddle. | ||
| Shut the fuck up. | ||
| Like, it's not them. | ||
| Where do you saw them? | ||
| I'm like, I think. | ||
| You don't think. | ||
| Either you see them or you don't see them. | ||
| Because if you do this, and in excitement, they throw the paddle out. | ||
| We're fucked. | ||
| We're fucked. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Then, after like a few minutes, so everybody kind of like figured out something's going on. | ||
| Looking, looking, like they really say, Yes, there is. | ||
| It was clear that there was a Red Cross. | ||
| Man, I didn't care. | ||
| Some people threw the paddle as expected. | ||
| I remain the only one, the captain. | ||
| I was paddling by myself instead of somebody there. | ||
| Helping me for direction. | ||
| I was paddling like this to keep the boat, the direction, paddling back. | ||
| I just had some power right there. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| And they came and I was like, calm down, relax, calm down. | ||
| Everything's okay. | ||
| Calm down. | ||
| Because they don't want us to fall in the water. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| Because sometimes with excitement, people get crazy and end up like maybe the boat flipped and get them in the water. | ||
| So what was it like when you got on the boat? | ||
| When you got on that Red Cross boat and you knew... | ||
| We were very excited. | ||
| We make sure everything that we get as a paper, passport, we let it in the water. | ||
| Because if you have something on you that says you're from Senegal, even though you're not from Senegal, you're getting deported from Senegal right away. | ||
| So you make sure you don't have any paper on you. | ||
| I was there, man, thinking, Then suddenly I realized he was April 3rd and I left Cameroon April 3rd, one year ago. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| One year anniversary. | ||
| One long journey. | ||
| Man, I felt like he was maybe 10, a decade. | ||
| But when I was in the Red Cross boat, that's when I realized it was just one year. | ||
| So what happens from the Red Cross picking you up? | ||
| Do they bring you to Paris? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Where do they bring you? | ||
| No, they bring you right to the coast. | ||
| They call the police. | ||
| They're like, okay, we have people there. | ||
| It's not their duty. | ||
| They don't judge you. | ||
| They just want to save you. | ||
| They're saving you. | ||
| They bring you there. | ||
| They tell the police. | ||
| But they're bringing you to the Europe side. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Since that is their base, their headquarters. | ||
| They bring you in that side. | ||
| What happens once you get over there? | ||
| Well, they give you to the police. | ||
| And the police start to question you. | ||
| They bring you to the police station. | ||
| And what do you have to tell the police? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Or your story, your country, where you're from. | ||
| But before you get there, you know those country that has a... | ||
| They can deport you to... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| A good relationship with France. | ||
| No, not like good relationship. | ||
| It doesn't have to be a good relationship. | ||
| They don't have an extradition. | ||
| Yes, some country doesn't have an extradition. | ||
| They don't sign that convention. | ||
| So what country did you say you're from? | ||
| Cameroon. | ||
| From all my trip, that was the first time I was like proudly... | ||
| Cameroonian. | ||
| Like, oh, I'm Cameroonian. | ||
| Oh, so it's okay because Cameroon and France, they have a relationship. | ||
| No, Cameroon and France. | ||
| We were in Spain. | ||
| But they don't have that extradition convention. | ||
| We don't sign that. | ||
| So that was a good thing for Cameroonian. | ||
| Those people, like... | ||
| Because in Algeria, we are all Malian and... | ||
| In Morocco, we are all from Senegal, even Guinea, Bissau, like West Africa, because a lot of West Africa country has a good relationship with Morocco, which is visa-free. | ||
| They don't need visa to go there. | ||
| They just get in the border, and maybe sometime. | ||
| So once you're in Spain, do they let you go? | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| Not yet? | ||
| Not yet. | ||
| This journey is not over yet. | ||
| It's not over. | ||
| The mental part of the journey is coming. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Because after that, they're kind of like, oh, we're bringing you to the court. | ||
| I mean, it's just a procedure. | ||
| Like, you don't even see the judge. | ||
| I'm like, oh, this is your lawyer. | ||
| How do you call that? | ||
| Lawyer? | ||
| Yeah, no, yeah. | ||
| You know, commit office, the one when you don't have money, the one that... | ||
| Defense attorney. | ||
| Yeah, I know what you're saying. | ||
| I know what you're saying, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so since you can't afford lawyers, there are lawyers that they give you. | ||
| Yes, this year lower, lower, they come and like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and go away. | ||
| You don't even go to the courtroom. | ||
| You don't see the judge. | ||
| They bring you to this... | ||
| I mean, they call it like detention center or something, but man, this is like a harsh prison. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| They just want to break you down mentally. | ||
| Like at some point, you go crazy in there. | ||
| You're just like, okay, I think I was good being in the forest in Morocco. | ||
| At least I was free. | ||
| When you were in this place, they tell you when to go take a shower, when to eat, when to sleep, when to patio, this, that. | ||
| And everything is like this. | ||
| And you don't know what is your future. | ||
| You don't know if you're getting... | ||
| They're sending you back in your country. | ||
| You don't know if they're kind of like checking on your background guy and stuff. | ||
| Hey, guess what? | ||
| You don't even give them most information. | ||
| You lie on many things. | ||
| Like, why do they want to know? | ||
| Just free me. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| How long do they keep you there? | ||
| Almost two months. | ||
| Two months? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And what are they trying to get you to say? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Just keep you there. | ||
| You go crazy on your own. | ||
| You're like, piss off. | ||
| You want to get out of there. | ||
| You don't do anything. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| Are you guys going to teach us even some language every day? | ||
| Amigo, blah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| You can even have a Spanish teacher there. | ||
| At least we get occupied. | ||
| Like something. | ||
| Something, man. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| So why do they eventually let you go? | ||
| What? | ||
| They can deport you. | ||
| For some people, if they suspect that you're from some country who has an extradition, then they'll deport you. | ||
| They might bring somebody from your embassy to come and see, investigate to see if you're really from that country that you're saying If he recognizes you and if he recognizes, if he says yes, he's from my country, they will deport you. | ||
| So what is it like when they finally let you go? | ||
| Some association will come and text you and they offer you to stay there for a few days or for longer, for two weeks or for longer if you want, but you have to decide whether it's two weeks or if it's three months. | ||
| You have to choose right away. | ||
| But I wasn't going to do anything in Spain. | ||
| I just wanted to go. | ||
| So we stayed there after like two weeks. | ||
| Less than two weeks. | ||
| So I called in Cameroon again one more time. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| I made it. | ||
| I need some money, but this is the last time. | ||
| I figured out something. | ||
| I need clothes to wear. | ||
| I need a cell phone. | ||
| And they sent me some money, like 300 bucks. | ||
| Yeah, 300 to 400. I buy myself some clothes, some cell phones and beginning of the trip. | ||
| And I wasn't going to France yet because I wanted to go to the UK, to England. | ||
| Because during my journey, my goal was always to get somewhere with the opportunity of boxing. | ||
| And England was like a big nation of boxing out of any country in Europe. | ||
| But to make it in England, it was a very... | ||
| I mean, you have to go through all this process because England is kind of... | ||
| they're kind of like taking themselves out of Europe. | ||
| So there is not a free circulation as in Europe. | ||
| From Spain to go to France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, it's easy. | ||
| There is no police control or anything. | ||
| But from there, anywhere else to go to England, oh... | ||
| It's difficult. | ||
| It's difficult. | ||
| Even as a French resident with your resident card, you still need to have a visa unless you're a French citizen. | ||
| Otherwise, you still need to have a visa to go to England. | ||
| So it was very complicated. | ||
| And now I'm like, man, I'm kind of tired of this back door, this service door entrance, you know. | ||
| And even if I go to England, at the end of the day, it's not done yet. | ||
| I don't know how long it's going to take me to get there. | ||
| And if I get in England, I still have to end up in the U.S., because that was the main goal. | ||
| The main goal was to get to the U.S.? Oh, yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Growing up, my dream was always to be in the U.S. Basically, I was so big, and all around, they were calling me American. | ||
| And I was like, yeah, I am. | ||
| You know, my signature, sometimes when I sign, people don't understand why. | ||
| It's SF. And I was like 10 years old, figured out my signature, and since there was a city in America, what I know is San Francisco, and people sometimes, as my name is Francis, would call me San Francisco. | ||
| I want to like change my name to put my name San Francisco. | ||
| Like that's even why I signed SF and it end up to be my official signature. | ||
| So my signature is SF. So when you write Francis Ngannou, you write SF? No. | ||
| No writing to sign. | ||
| To sign things. | ||
| A document. | ||
| So when someone wants you to sign a document, you don't sign Francis Ngannou. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| You sign SF. Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's kind of like special. | ||
| For you, it's important. | ||
| So tell me, what is it like the first time you walk into a gym in Paris? | ||
| Okay, so then since I couldn't go to England, I'm like, okay, I might go to Germany. | ||
| Even though there will be a language barrier, but boxing doesn't take that much. | ||
| It's kind of like showing part. | ||
| A few words, you're going to get that really quick. | ||
| For coaching. | ||
| Yes, coaching is not going to be very complicated. | ||
| So I was going to Germany. | ||
| But... | ||
| We were a group of people, most of the people in the group was just like France. | ||
| I'm like, okay, let's go to France first. | ||
| Then I went in France just by curiosity to see, but I never really want to go to France. | ||
| And I ended up in France and things started to put themselves together and I'm like, By the end of the day, it's not that bad. | ||
| I just wanted a place with opportunity, It plays with opportunity. | ||
| France seems to have that opportunity and he will help me to get in the US, in the main door instead of the service door as usual. | ||
| Because I went in France, I get in France like June 9th, 2013. We went, I was with some guy, I saw, I was with some guy, he has a friend who was in the, some community there, some Mali, from Malian community, and you're like, okay, I'm going there. | ||
| I don't know where I'm going, so I just follow them. | ||
| They jump on the, you know, this thing at the train station, how do you call it? | ||
| Turnstile. | ||
| Yes, at the turnstile. | ||
| We couldn't pay. | ||
| I jumped on it too. | ||
| We just keep going. | ||
| I followed them. | ||
| I followed them. | ||
| Then they went to this Malian community. | ||
| I saw the first time. | ||
| That was the first place that I saw in France. | ||
| Man, I was so desperate, disappointed. | ||
| You know, it was like two buildings, and somebody was, they were like, putting their clothes, drying their clothes on the window, and somebody was standing from this window, talking to somebody there, in Bambara, like, Abrigidi! | ||
| Abrigidi! | ||
| I'm like, my mind was blown out, like, man, so I almost died for you, this? | ||
| This is friends that they are talking about? | ||
| That was my first image of France. | ||
| Man, I'm like, I'm getting out of here. | ||
| I don't want to stay here because this kind of thing kind of like drown your energy. | ||
| You know, I don't want to stay around this place. | ||
| So I found the parking lot. | ||
| And the next day, I mean, a guy showed us a parking lot. | ||
| We found a Cameroonian guy who came there to eat. | ||
| And he said, I'm sleeping in some parking lot. | ||
| If you guys want, I'll show you where it is. | ||
| I'm like, hey, I really want that. | ||
| Like, I'm not staying here. | ||
| Because people was recommending, they recommend us to like call the French, that number is 115. So they have a place you can call to book for a night sleeping. | ||
| But it's like just a place to sleep. | ||
| There is like Hundreds of birds in the big house and you guys just go there. | ||
| All homeless people. | ||
| And I was homeless, but I had a very proud, like, no, like, I won't give up. | ||
| Like, you know, most of homeless people, they just give up and don't treat themselves, like, just treat themselves very bad. | ||
| I'm like, no. | ||
| Seeing this, all the time that I get around that, I feel like it's going to drive my energy, take out my energy. | ||
| I was so pumped out, expecting a world to come to me. | ||
| Exciting about everything. | ||
| That kind of environment wasn't meaningful for my dream. | ||
| So I'm like, no, I'd rather sleep on my place. | ||
| Even if it's not true, I'd rather keep... | ||
| live with my dream than just let... | ||
| And just live in a homeless shelter, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So how do you get to an MMA gym? | ||
| The next day, I found a boxing gym. | ||
| All day long, I was walking, asking, until I found a boxing gym. | ||
| It was about 4, and it was exactly a boxing time. | ||
| They gave me this sheet with prizes on it, everything. | ||
| I saw the prizes. | ||
| I'm like, damn. | ||
| They don't really know that I can afford this. | ||
| But I asked the lady in the front desk if I can see the coach. | ||
| And she told me the coach is not there, but there is a guy taking a class so I can meet the guy if I want. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I met this... | ||
| Then after like 30 minutes, she brought me down. | ||
| She showed me to the guy and like... | ||
| The guy was DJ Camon. | ||
| The first guy that I met. | ||
| And I was telling him like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I was just straight up like... | ||
| Listen, I just came here. | ||
| I don't have where to sleep. | ||
| I don't have nothing. | ||
| But, I mean, I'm not asking for something besides somewhere to train, besides an opportunity, because I'm going to become a world champion. | ||
| When you walk to the gym, you don't have nothing and you're saying that for people who have been there for years and years. | ||
| It looks like you're kind of looking at them like, oh, what are you guys be doing there? | ||
| You've been wasting your time. | ||
| But it was just me believing in myself. | ||
| But he was very receptive and showed a lot of compassion of my situation and I was even surprised before we left. | ||
| I was with some guy that I met down the way and he gave us like 50-50 euro. | ||
| I'm like, man, why did he give us money? | ||
| It was just so understandable of our situation. | ||
| And he said, I'm not a coach, but I'm going to talk to the main coach. | ||
| That was on Monday. | ||
| He said, I'm going to talk to them. | ||
| The next class is on Wednesday. | ||
| I'm going to talk to the main coach and see what he said. | ||
| What he says. | ||
| And if he says yes, I'll give you a call. | ||
| Do you have a cell phone number? | ||
| I'm like, of course. | ||
| Just give him my cell phone number. | ||
| And on Thursday he called me. | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
| I spoke with the coach and everything's okay. | ||
| He said you can come to the next training, which is Saturday. | ||
| I went to that. | ||
| He said, yes, remember... | ||
| By the way, I have a glove. | ||
| A glove for you. | ||
| And let me know if you need anything. | ||
| The 50 euro that he gave me, I still had it. | ||
| And with some money that I still had it, I stopped in the box in some spa shop and bought like shorts, bags, one t-shirt. | ||
| And... | ||
| And that was it. | ||
| Couldn't even buy a mouthpiece, neither a hand wrap, nothing. | ||
| The morning was over. | ||
| Hey man, I went to the gym. | ||
| The Saturday was a sparring day. | ||
| He gave me gloves. | ||
| I didn't have a hand wrap, no mouthpiece, nothing. | ||
| Then I'm like, yeah, it's a sparring day. | ||
| I'm like, yeah. | ||
| Like, you don't have... | ||
| I'm like, no, yeah, I don't have. | ||
| But... | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Hey, I didn't care. | ||
| You know? | ||
| He's crazy how by the time I was so excited. | ||
| Like, I didn't care. | ||
| Now when I forget my mouthpiece, I'd rather drive back because I care. | ||
| I'm like, okay, if I broke my teeth, I kind of like think about those things. | ||
| I'm very cautious now. | ||
| Like, okay, I'm a professional. | ||
| I'd be so excited just to be there. | ||
| I have something to lose now. | ||
| Maybe sometime I might have a fight coming up, waiting for a fight. | ||
| You haven't done any training at all in a long time, right? | ||
| What was it like to just get in there right away and spar? | ||
| Oh, I was so excited. | ||
| I was so pumped up. | ||
| Man, like, finally get a gym like that. | ||
| Man, that was crazy. | ||
| And after two weeks, he started to tell me, like, man, you have a good boxing. | ||
| You have a good... | ||
| Because he was a big guy, too. | ||
| And we sparred. | ||
| I'm like, you have a good boxing. | ||
| But, you know, with your situation, I think the thing we're going to help you the most will be MMA. You know, boxing business is kind of very complicated. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| It's going to take time, you know. | ||
| But MMA, you can easily, pretty soon, start a fight and get 500 bucks or something. | ||
| And that will be very helpful seeing your situation. | ||
| And I'm like, what is MMA? Start to explain to me how it's martial arts. | ||
| Yeah, good. | ||
| MMA means mixed martial arts. | ||
| But what's that? | ||
| You know, it's that... | ||
| Yes, you know. | ||
| So you had never seen the UFC? You had never seen... | ||
| No. | ||
| I have seen it like a few times on TV, but didn't even stay there to watch. | ||
| I'm like, well, whatever, you know, just keep doing my thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Then he started to say, yes, he's in the cage and this. | ||
| I'm like, ah... | ||
| Yeah, I have saw that a few times. | ||
| Like, yes, if you do get some wrestling, just some good wrestling, a little bit of jujitsu base to get up. | ||
| Like, what is jujitsu? | ||
| That explains me everything. | ||
| I'm like, hey, man, please, leave me alone with your MMA. That's hilarious. | ||
| I want to do boxing. | ||
| But they offer you a fight for money. | ||
| But he was very, like, subtile. | ||
| So he wasn't rushed, wasn't pushing me. | ||
| Right, very subtle. | ||
| But, yes, all the time he knows when to put a word. | ||
| Like, I'm telling you, you should just try. | ||
| Give it a try, that's it. | ||
| I'm like, man, I want to do this straight boxing. | ||
| You know, boxing. | ||
| Like Mike Tyson. | ||
| You know, Mike Tyson, right? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| That's what I want to do. | ||
| And we keep training. | ||
| And he was very nice. | ||
| He wanted to help me to fit in. | ||
| So after training, most of the time, he was like, hey, guys. | ||
| Let's go to the bar. | ||
| Let's take a drink. | ||
| And he knows that most of the time in Paris, when a guy calls out for a drink, even though somebody calls out, make sure you have your money because everybody's going to pay. | ||
| And he will say, I get you all the time. | ||
| Sometimes he'll call out for dinner. | ||
| I'm like, oh, I get you. | ||
| Just to help me to be around people because he knows everything. | ||
| He knows that I'm sleeping in the parking lot. | ||
| And he was a big guy. | ||
| He gave me like clothes. | ||
| Hey, he gave me my first perfume. | ||
| Ralph Lauren. | ||
| I was homeless. | ||
| I have my backpack, but I have my pesume every time after training. | ||
| Take my shower really good. | ||
| Wear my clean clothes. | ||
| Put some... | ||
| So, how long before you got your first fight? | ||
| No, like, after that, like, after one or almost two months, that gym supposed to close for one month during the holiday, during the vacation. | ||
| And that's when, because I wasn't doing MMA there, like, he offered me to try, like, whatever. | ||
| But since at the daytime I didn't have time, I made this association at the street that they was, like, helping us, giving us, like, food. | ||
| Every Monday they come by and trying to give us whatever, like, These little things that you might need, like a mouthpiece or a mouthbrush. | ||
| I remember I had a sleeping bag, you know, the military sleeping bag. | ||
| Yes, they offered that. | ||
| They gave me that because the first time they were like, what can we do for you? | ||
| I'm like, it's pretty cold down there because it was by my parking lot. | ||
| It was underground parking lot. | ||
| I'm like, it's freezing! | ||
| So if you guys have some blankets, that might be very helpful. | ||
| They said, okay, next week we're going to see what we can do. | ||
| We're going to be here by this time. | ||
| By the same time, I'm like, okay. | ||
| So I came there the same. | ||
| So I kind of like have a routine of seeing them every week. | ||
| And... | ||
| Telling them how I'm bored. | ||
| I want to do something. | ||
| I'm like, we can't give you. | ||
| We don't have job for you. | ||
| But if we want to come to our place to help, cook, cut veggies, or do whatever you can do because we make food about 700 meals every day to go provide a gift to the homeless in north of Paris. | ||
| So if you can help for the daytime, if you have a time, every free hand is welcome. | ||
| Because as an association, we don't have enough money to pay people. | ||
| So we kind of like use most volunteers. | ||
| So if you want to volunteer, I'm like, Yeah, that's cool. | ||
| Then they set up a meeting with the manager. | ||
| We met. | ||
| We go through some stuff. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, you can come. | ||
| There's no rules. | ||
| Every time, every day that you have time and you want to stop by for two hours, one hour, help us to load stuff in the truck or to unload or to cut veggies, you know, or to... | ||
| Whatever you can help for, for how long you have, you're welcome. | ||
| So I started to go there. | ||
| I started to go there by the time. | ||
| So since the gym, the MMA factory was next to that association. | ||
| And... | ||
| But I never go to the MMA factory. | ||
| They were doing CrossFit in the first floor. | ||
| So what I see from that gym, it was kind of like CrossFit. | ||
| I didn't even know if they were doing like... | ||
| Stuff like boxing or MMA. And by the time it was an MMA factory, it was CrossFight, the name. | ||
| So which is close to CrossFit. | ||
| So I just thought it was a CrossFit gym. | ||
| But since my gym wanted to close, I'm like third. | ||
| Once I was with the manager of this association and I told him, like... | ||
| I think I'm going to see if this gym next door has a boxing, if they are doing boxing there. | ||
| So I'll keep training during this one month that my original gym is going to be closed. | ||
| He says, We have a good relationship. | ||
| We are good neighbors. | ||
| So I think he will be good if I play it for you. | ||
| I'm like, good idea. | ||
| That would be a very good thing. | ||
| And he went there. | ||
| He talked to this guy in the front desk. | ||
| He was Frank. | ||
| And the guy just came. | ||
| He was a nice guy. | ||
| He was a part owner of the gym at the time. | ||
| He was very nice. | ||
| He just came in. | ||
| I'm like, look at me. | ||
| I'm like, whoa! | ||
| Good baby. | ||
| We can do. | ||
| We would like to have this. | ||
| You know, like, Fernand would be happy to see him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can. | ||
| You're welcome, man. | ||
| Anytime that you want. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you start training there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he said, but Fernand is the one taking care of combat sports, so I think you should meet him. | ||
| And yeah, he said, he's going to be here on Thursday. | ||
| He's usually here on Tuesday and Thursday, which is the main class. | ||
| And we were Tuesday. | ||
| So the next day was, we were Tuesday evening. | ||
| He was there already. | ||
| He has left already. | ||
| So the next day was Thursday. | ||
| I kind of like stopped by on Thursday and met Fena. | ||
| We talked. | ||
| And I kind of like tell him like how my friend Didier Carmon is always trying to tell me about MMA. And he was like, yes, your friend, he's right. | ||
| I'm like, yeah, but you do boxing too? | ||
| He said, yes, the boxing class is at this time, that time, that time. | ||
| Then I came there for the boxing time. | ||
| I'm like, yes, you should try MMA. We do MMA year two. | ||
| You can try it if you like it. | ||
| I mean, once I just come, he was just about to try, you know. | ||
| But I love all these fighting things. | ||
| I'm like, oh, it's cool. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| So I kept coming just because it's fun. | ||
| But not because I want MMA. Like, when they keep talking about like, yeah, you should do this. | ||
| Yes, MMA. I'm like, hey, man. | ||
| You just wanted a box. | ||
| You just wanted a box. | ||
| I tried your MMA. Leave me alone. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I just want to do it for fun and that's it you know but and so by the time I was already like having a good relation with Didier Kamu but as he saw that I started to do MMA and that's exactly what what he wanted like He get at the point that he come to pay for a membership at this gym just to keep me | ||
| going. | ||
| And he knows that I want to be where he's at. | ||
| So sometimes he's going to call me very excited. | ||
| Hey, what's up, man? | ||
| How are you doing? | ||
| What are you doing today? | ||
| You're going to be at training today? | ||
| You're doing the MMA class today at the MMA factory? | ||
| I'm like, I don't know. | ||
| And then here I'm like, yes, I'm going to be there. | ||
| No, like, oh, cool. | ||
| Yes, I'll be there. | ||
| So, like, many times, he would stood me up. | ||
| He won't show up. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| He just wanted to make sure that you went there. | ||
| He just wanted to keep me good. | ||
| Isn't it crazy when you think about that's how you got into MMA and now, in a month, you're about to fight for the heavyweight title? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For the second time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And by the time, like, even Fernand was telling me, like, yeah, you should do it. | ||
| I think you should. | ||
| He was very excited about it. | ||
| And I'm like, nah. | ||
| I mean, if it wasn't about Didier Carmo, I would have left even that gym after, like, one month. | ||
| So how did they get you to sign up? | ||
| How did they get you to fight? | ||
| The first MMA fight. | ||
| So after, like, one month, like, Fernand just told me, like, Oh, there's a fight here in town. | ||
| This guy, they were like, you can fight there. | ||
| I'm like, well, since I'm doing this by curiosity, let's get the full experience out of my curiosity so I can truly tell how he feels. | ||
| I went there. | ||
| It was a tournament. | ||
| And I'm like, okay. | ||
| Let's get this. | ||
| One day tournament? | ||
| So multiple fights in a day? | ||
| Yeah, but... | ||
| No, it wasn't multiple fights. | ||
| It was like two weeks tournament. | ||
| Okay, so you fight and then you wait a while and then you fight again in a few weeks time? | ||
| Yeah, two weeks. | ||
| So I won my first fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Submission. | |
| You won by submission? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What did you use? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's not a name for that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I just dropped the guy's hand. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| I'm broken this hand or you tap. | ||
| You just grabbed his hand? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was on top of him. | ||
| I like turning. | ||
| I don't know how. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| I remember my... | ||
| Did you try to show someone how you did it? | ||
| Like, could you recreate it? | ||
| No, I didn't create it because my jujitsu coach named Christian Pumbu, which is a former light heavyweight belato champ. | ||
| So he's the guy that hurt me a lot on my ground game. | ||
| And he was right there. | ||
| He was telling me to do something. | ||
| This is it. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| That's my first submission. | ||
| I don't know what is that. | ||
| Let me see that again. | ||
| It's a shoulder lock. | ||
| Yeah, look. | ||
| You got him in a shoulder. | ||
| That's a legit move. | ||
| That's very legit. | ||
| So they taught you how to do this? | ||
| No. | ||
| He was coaching me. | ||
| That's very legit. | ||
| Christian Pumbu, he was sitting there. | ||
| And he was coaching me. | ||
| And he was telling me, like, put your foot like this. | ||
| I think I first put my foot in the wrong way. | ||
| But at the end, his shoulder gets blocked. | ||
| So he tapped. | ||
| So it was a submission. | ||
| That's a legit move. | ||
| That's very legit. | ||
| That was my first fight after three months and a half. | ||
| Is that your only submission? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| You have other submission moves? | ||
| I have four submissions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow, that's interesting. | ||
| That's legit, man. | ||
| My first UFC, my first performance of the night in the UFC was a submission over Anthony Armit. | ||
| That's right, that's right. | ||
| In Albany. | ||
| What did you get him with? | ||
| Umbra. | ||
| No, no Umbra. | ||
| Kimura. | ||
| Kimura. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, he was taking my back, then I grab, I block his leg, take him down. | ||
| Is the Alistair Overeem KO, is that your most spectacular victory, you think? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That one was so crazy. | ||
| I remember when you hit him, I don't even know how I responded because you hit him so hard and he went flying back and stiffened up and I remember thinking, holy shit! | ||
| That was about as hard as I've ever seen anybody get hit from a punch in my life. | ||
| That was like a perfect punch. | ||
| Yes, he landed pretty well. | ||
| But the crazy thing is not just that you did it to him, but that you did it to, not that you landed that punch, but you landed it on one of the most decorated strikers ever in the sport. | ||
| Right there. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| I mean, he's one of the most decorated strikers ever. | ||
| I mean, K1 Grand Prix champion, Dream champion, Strikeforce champion. | ||
| I mean, Alistair. | ||
| That guy has insane amounts of experience. | ||
| For you to land, that kind of punch on him. | ||
| Leading to that fight, I was very relaxed. | ||
| Confident, but very relaxed. | ||
| Flow, just letting go. | ||
| He plays up really well. | ||
| When you went into the Stipe fight, the first Stipe fight, how did you expect the fight to end? | ||
| What did you think was going to happen? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| We didn't know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, that fight was so... | ||
| All the way through that fight, nothing was right. | ||
| All the way in training? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even how I approached the fight. | ||
| Because I remember I was in my hotel room like, okay. | ||
| If I win this fight, where am I going? | ||
| From Boston right now, where am I flying to? | ||
| In Vegas? | ||
| How? | ||
| There was a lot of empty spots in this and I had to go back in France like three weeks before the fight because I came here a few months ago and I didn't really Give a chance to work with somebody. | ||
| I was working with Dewey Cooper, which is my striking coach, but not an MMA coach. | ||
| So I was holding back to trust people. | ||
| I don't know if it was due to my experience or what, but it was really hard. | ||
| So when comes the moment when Mick Maynard called me after the Alistair fight and offered me a fight, Okay, what are you doing? | ||
| January 20th. | ||
| That's the title fight. | ||
| I want a title fight. | ||
| But this is like, what, six weeks ahead? | ||
| And I don't even have a camp. | ||
| My camp is friends. | ||
| I was I'm still staying in my camp, like in my mind, still holding on in my camp in France. | ||
| But there is the moment. | ||
| How can I do it? | ||
| I have to go back to France. | ||
| Did you train in France for the Alistair fight? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| You trained in Vegas? | ||
| Yes, I trained in Vegas. | ||
| But it was easy because I had this fight like three months ahead. | ||
| So I was able to find a sparring partner and get Get them at the PI and train there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But this one was like six. | ||
| I get to fight six weeks. | ||
| So you decided to go back to Paris to train? | ||
| I didn't even have a manager by the time, so I had to get things done by myself. | ||
| So you went back to Paris to train for Stipe? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you have good wrestlers to work with? | ||
| Yeah, I'm a good wrestler. | ||
| But he was just such a short period of time. | ||
| Because staying here, by the time my resident card was temporary, and he was just one year. | ||
| And he was due since month. | ||
| I have to go back to LA, apply for visa to go back to France, all these things. | ||
| Then, Fernand, by the time he couldn't come here because he has a business going on. | ||
| So he couldn't come here for months or stuff. | ||
| I have to go back in Paris. | ||
| And that's why I'm like, well, I should have something, like, right here. | ||
| Like, you know? | ||
| In America. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In case an opportunity show up, this kind of thing, I have to, like, right away get into. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| I don't have to, need to travel in three weeks. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And, but there was a lot of things that I didn't know that I kind of, like, Figure out during the process, during the fight, how it plays out, how it works, you know. | ||
| Have you watched the fight since then? | ||
| No, really. | ||
| No? | ||
| Some highlights. | ||
| I don't like to watch that fight. | ||
| I have this fight in my mind. | ||
| Every step of the fight, I still have it in my mind. | ||
| I don't even need to watch it, to see it. | ||
| I know exactly what was happening, what was going on in my mind, what my corner was telling me. | ||
| I remember everything. | ||
| So, leading into the rematch, now you're training a Stream Couture. | ||
| Are you doing all your training there? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I train at the PI too, but just like strength and conditioning. | ||
| And who does your strength and conditioning there? | ||
| Kyle at the PI. Okay, and so have they been working with you for a while to prepare for this? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you're leaner now than you were before, right? | ||
| You were heavier at one point in time? | ||
| I'm getting... | ||
| I was heavier leading to that fight than I was maybe in Alistair's fight, but I'm still heavier now than I was back then. | ||
| Just from all the strength and conditioning work? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What do you weigh now? | ||
| Right now? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 275. 275. Well, that's not too bad. | ||
| Isn't it weird that the heavyweight division has a weight limit? | ||
| It's kind of strange. | ||
| It's heavyweight. | ||
| Like, why do you have to cut weight for heavyweight? | ||
| It's weird, right? | ||
| I mean, heavyweight should be as big as you are. | ||
| That's what heavyweight's supposed to be. | ||
| Oh, guess what? | ||
| It keeps you professional. | ||
| Yeah, I guess it keeps you professional. | ||
| In boxing, they don't have weight limit. | ||
| No, but that's what doesn't make any sense to me. | ||
| I never understood the 265-pound weight limit. | ||
| Where? | ||
| Because I remember when Tim Sylvia was a heavyweight champ, there was a couple times where he didn't make weight, or at least one time, that he didn't make weight the first time, and he had to go back and cut weight. | ||
| I'm like, this is strange. | ||
| For heavyweight. | ||
| For heavyweight, it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| That means there's a supposed weight class after that. | ||
| Yeah, but no one's ever fought in the UFC. I don't even remember what it's called. | ||
| Super heavyweight. | ||
| Super heavyweight? | ||
| Is that what they call it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just ridiculous. | ||
| But the point is, so you're basically around the same size. | ||
| But you got a little leaner after that fight though, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, leading to the next fight, I get very leaner. | ||
| I was, I remember, I weigh into my fight against Lewis. | ||
| I was like 250, 253. Yeah. | ||
| Now, was that in response to the first fight with Stipe? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, my fight against Lewis never really happened. | ||
| It was just... | ||
| Derek Lewis. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Again, Derek Lewis didn't even happen because... | ||
| Everything there was just... | ||
| I was there for Stipe. | ||
| He was there to just correct everything that I should have done. | ||
| When you say the fight never happened, do you feel like you just weren't there for that fight? | ||
| No, I wasn't there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like... | ||
| I wasn't there. | ||
| You made a correction after that, though. | ||
| Like, for that fight, you were very tentative. | ||
| You didn't do much. | ||
| Both of you didn't do much. | ||
| Because, like, you know, for the steeper fight, I think I rushed, basically, for the first round. | ||
| And now I'm like... | ||
| I was there like, damn, I had five rounds. | ||
| Why should I, like, rush? | ||
| And then run out of gas. | ||
| Run out of gas. | ||
| Like, I should have, like... | ||
| And look in that fight... | ||
| I mean, I watch that fight. | ||
| I see the guy look like me, but I don't recognize myself because it's not the way that I fight. | ||
| I look back to other fights. | ||
| It's not the way he looks like he's two different person. | ||
| It's not the way that I used to fight. | ||
| You know, I kind of like come, approach the fight, let myself get into fight. | ||
| And if there's an opportunity, like most of the time my opponent will be even the first to attack. | ||
| You know, because I'm there. | ||
| But this one, I just like rushing there. | ||
| So I'm like, I should have calmed down. | ||
| I should. | ||
| And I keep telling, repeating my mind, like, calm, calm, calm. | ||
| So I was in the fight with Lewis, and I was just like... | ||
| Take your time. | ||
| Calm down. | ||
| Don't rush. | ||
| Calm down. | ||
| Hey, guess what? | ||
| I was even surprised when the referee after the end of the fight. | ||
| I thought it was maybe the second round or something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I was surprised that that was the third round. | ||
| I was like, calm down, Francis. | ||
| Calm down. | ||
| So you were still dealing with the steepest fight? | ||
| I was still dealing with the steepest fight, like telling myself, Don't rush. | ||
| Calm down. | ||
| It doesn't take much. | ||
| You're going to get this. | ||
| The fight after that was Stipe? | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| The fight after that was Junior Dos Santos? | ||
| No, Curtis Blades. | ||
| Curtis Blades. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Curtis Blades and then Junior Dos Santos. | ||
| No, Curtis Blades, Cain Velasquez. | ||
| Cain? | ||
| Oh, Cain. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Cain was in between. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So you got back on track with Curtis Blades. | ||
| You stopped Curtis Blades. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You stopped Cain Velasquez. | ||
| You stopped Junior Dos Santos. | ||
| Now you're back on track. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then Jarzino Rosenstreich. | ||
| That's the next fight afterwards. | ||
| So you're knocking everybody out again. | ||
| And you look exactly like the same, but an improved version of Francis Ngannou. | ||
| The improved version of you as you were making your run up to the title. | ||
| Oh yeah, a different franchise from that. | ||
| The same physique, but a different fighter from that. | ||
| Now when I don't have a fight, I kind of just work on my wrestling. | ||
| I used to work on my wrestling, but now I kind of put a point on my wrestling and stuff when I don't have a fight. | ||
| I don't strike much when I'm not fighting, you know? | ||
| Just try to work on the things you need to work on. | ||
| Yeah, try to work on different things. | ||
| I've been, like, the past few months, just before his fight, I've been working with Roni before he fought at the Bellator. | ||
| And because he has a very good ground game, we do jujitsu, wrestling with many guys at the stream. | ||
| We have some big body guys there. | ||
| Such as Kyle. | ||
| Well, it's a great gym. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's a great gym. | ||
| Extreme Couture is one of the best gyms in the world, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, and on top of that, I mean, like, from my standing point, I never really, like, go for the best gym. | ||
| Like, what matters for me is people that I'm dealing with. | ||
| You know, the kind of people if I feel like, okay, I can deal with these people. | ||
| They are good people. | ||
| That's matter for me more than the actual gym. | ||
| And at Extreme Kuti, I kind of like find out that, found that, you know, people were just there. | ||
| I mean, I remember like Eric was, Eric Nixik, which is now my coach. | ||
| He was like all the time, like, Yes, man. | ||
| Anytime you need me, call me. | ||
| And then I'm like, yeah, this might just be some coach, 1A fighter. | ||
| You know, then I can't, with time, I kind of like know the guy, know the person. | ||
| I'm like, this is a great guy. | ||
| I would like to- So you develop a good relationship with him. | ||
| Yes, we develop a good relationship. | ||
| I say our life, I can deal with this guy. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| When did you start letting people hit you? | ||
| When did you start letting people hit you in the stomach? | ||
| When did all that start? | ||
| Oh, always. | ||
| There's so many videos of fighters hauling off and punching you in the stomach like you're standing there flexing. | ||
| He used to be on my chest. | ||
| Growing up, I used to have my little brother come and hit me on the chest and everything. | ||
| I always like toughness. | ||
| Like, ah, I'm the man. | ||
| That's why I always think that if I would have grew up in the U.S. Look at this. | ||
| There's there's so many videos the guys hitting you in the stomach That's gotta be very disappointing for him *laughter* Just have a dude stand there and take your best shot right in the stomach. | ||
| Now, you have this amazing opportunity right now to fight for the title again, but for the longest time it seemed like that wasn't going to happen. | ||
| I mean, you had to wait so long to get another shot at the title. | ||
| I know it's going to happen. | ||
| It was frustrating. | ||
| The waiting time, all those things, uncertain. | ||
| But I know it's going to happen. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| There's only thing we will make it happen. | ||
| Get your ass, work your ass, the gym, work, get out there, win the fight. | ||
| You're going to get the title shot. | ||
| At some point, it's not obvious. | ||
| It's not like, okay, it's going to happen after a certain fight, but at some point, it's going to happen, which is the good thing. | ||
| Technically, he comes with your result. | ||
| He relies on what you do. | ||
| Technically, you are the one calling the shot. | ||
| What do you think is different with you between the Francis from the first fight and you now? | ||
| Everything is different. | ||
| I surround myself. | ||
| I have a great team. | ||
| I had a good team before. | ||
| Now I have a team that we have built a relationship and they are always around. | ||
| I have to fight in six weeks. | ||
| We have been working on this for so long. | ||
| Even before my previous fight, we have been working on this fight. | ||
| And I have people around just ready to do everything that has to be done for the fight. | ||
| Like Eric, he just let his family, not to mention that he came back home not long ago after like three weeks, two or three weeks in Abu Dhabi, leaving his wife and his three kids. | ||
| But as soon as I'm like, okay, we are going to Austin, where I'm like, okay, we don't have to take a day off. | ||
| We have to be together to keep training. | ||
| And this is the thing that for the first fight, I was doing the media tour for two days, no training and that stuff. | ||
| Because I was just by myself. | ||
| The team wasn't built. | ||
| You know, so we just came, Eric just came and made all this travel just in order of helping me stay in train while I'm here. | ||
| Well, Francis, I'm very excited for the fight. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
| And I really appreciate you coming here. | ||
| It was really great to talk to you. | ||
| And your story is incredible. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| Thank you, Joe. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| For the most famous podcast in the world. | ||
| It was my pleasure. | ||
| And I mean, I think you're an incredible person. | ||
| What you've done is amazing. | ||
| Your journey leaving Cameroon and making it to where you are right now about to fight for the heavyweight title for the second time. | ||
| It's just, it's an amazing, inspirational story. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| But there's some part of that journey that I cannot recommend, though. | ||
| I think I was too crazy to do some dumb shit, but when I go back in Cameroon, some people would ask me, how do you make it in France? | ||
| I'm like, hey man, figure it on your own. | ||
| I'm not going to tell you. | ||
| Not because I don't want you to make it, but because I don't want you to go through what I've been through and I know exactly what it is like. | ||
| And I was very lucky to get out there alive. | ||
| In the past six months, I know three people from my village who have died in Morocco. | ||
| in the past three months trying to escape yeah two of them died in the water and one just gets sick and died recently it's like my friend little brother and that's so sad and I can like keep I can't be thinking that I have something to do with it. | ||
| Most of them just want to follow my path. | ||
| I'm like, that's not a good way to follow. | ||
| I don't recommend that to nobody to go to that road. | ||
| It's a hell. | ||
| It's a matter of luck. | ||
| We all have luck, but sometimes he plays differently in a different ground. | ||
| As soon as I get back out there, I tell my family, hey, please, guess what? | ||
| Just stay back there. | ||
| I don't want somebody to give me heart attack. | ||
| So if I go out there and I will hustle for us, if things work pretty well, I'm going to go back there, build maybe a company, get you guys a job. | ||
| You're going to build something good for the family. | ||
| So you're going to be able to even apply for a visa. | ||
| Just go visit those countries, Europe or US. Just don't take the path you took. | ||
| You don't even need to go there and stay there. | ||
| It's a nightmare. | ||
| You're going to have a cultural barrier. | ||
| You're going to have all these things. | ||
| You have to struggle. | ||
| You don't need that anymore. | ||
| Just, please, stay home. | ||
| You know, like, I always, like, remind them, like, please, hold on. | ||
| If things change for me, it's going to change for us, for all of us. | ||
| I have to take the risk for all of us. | ||
| So, never been there. | ||
| That's beautiful that you have that intention. | ||
| That's why I committed to a foundation in Cameroon, which is like a... | ||
| There it is. | ||
| No, not this one. | ||
| This is a different one? | ||
| You have more than one foundation? | ||
| No, this is my foundation. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, you committed to a different foundation. | ||
| I committed to a foundation that's been helping people from Morocco who want to go back, who are tired and want to go back to their country. | ||
| You know, to help get the youth, put them aware of the risk and tell them, please, don't do it. | ||
| I know you're going to... | ||
| I'm not the best example because I did it, but that doesn't mean it's good. | ||
| That doesn't take away the risk. | ||
| And it's getting harder and harder, and it's your life that you're putting on the line. | ||
| That's the part that I can recommend to somebody. | ||
| But the rest, dreaming, trying, yeah. | ||
| Well, your story is incredible, Francis. | ||
| And the title fight is March... | ||
| What's the date? | ||
| 27th. | ||
| March 27th. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
| I can't wait. | ||
| Good luck to you, sir. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I hope you're gonna call that fight. | ||
| Oh, I hope so too, man. | ||
| I think I will be. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Always a pleasure, Joe. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you very much. |
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