Starting over in good health: Bernadette's reintegration story

Bernadette Ngo Ngambi runs a beachside clothing boutique in Kribi, a southern seaside resort on the Cameroonian coast. Returning from the paths of irregular migration, she benefited from local reintegration support under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration.

“It was a friend who told me about the trip. She knew I was doing nails and that I was looking for work. So I thought, if I leave the country, I can do my nails there. That's how she encouraged me. I said ‘okay, why not?’ That's how I decided to travel.”

Bernadette’s friend connected her with someone to organize the journey. “I prepared, put some money aside. They told me about the trip, that it was not complicated, that it was easy. So in short, we were not told everything that happens there.”

She sold all of her belongings with the expectation that she would be gone for a long time. “Success was lying ahead of me! When I got to Morocco, it wasn’t.” Bernadette was trying to get on a boat cross the sea to reach the “El Dorado”, as she describes Europe, but was turned back multiple times.

Bernadette abandoned her plan of finding fortune in foreign lands, and tried to return to Cameroon. She asked her father for money to help her return but she knew that this was the end of her ‘adventure’; I don’t come from a rich family. I already lost my mother and I wasn’t looking to add any more problems so I’d rather return.

When she arrived in Agadez, Niger, she was referred to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help with her return. Unaware of being pregnant, Bernadette had a miscarriage while on the road. “The journey was very, very long. All of the movements, the bad road made me lose the baby, the gynaecologist explained to me.” Bernadette subsequently fell very ill, her life was at risk.

IOM organized her return to Cameroon and provided medical and psychological follow-up support. “She didn’t look good. It was clear that she had a serious issue,” describes Hermann Mvogo, Protection Assistant at IOM Yaoundé, who accompanied Bernadette’s case when she returned. IOM paid for surgery and treatment to help her get better.

As her health condition improved, Bernadette got back on her feet, and followed IOM’s reintegration activities to open her own business. After being away for several years and starting over in a new city, she lost all her nail clients. Being by the seaside, she decided to open a shop selling bathing suits, with the help of the IOM’s assisted voluntary return and reintegration (AVRR) programme through the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration, with financial support from EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa.