I would die without cigarettes -Augustine, homeless Camerounian in Amsterdam

His name is Augustine. That was how he introduced himself to me when we met just outside Centraal Station in Amsterdam. I had just arrived at Centraal Station from SchipHol Airport as the hostel I was to stay at was not far from CS.

So I met Augustine because I asked him for directions to my hostel. Inside CS, I had firstly asked for the direction and the information officer brought out a map, pointed out where CS was on it, pointed out where I wanted to go, said I should walk out, turn to the right, and gave me the map to guide me.

But when I turned right, I realized his directions were not helpful. I looked at the map too. Also not useful. So I looked around for whom to ask for further directions and there was Augustine coming towards me.

And I decided to ask him because he was black like me in a white world. He was lighting a cigarette when I sought his attention. And when I told him my problem, he said he didn’t know the street, Nieuwezijds Armsteeg, that I sought, but he knew a hostel from where we could be directed to my hostel.

So I fell into step with him and of course we got talking. He asked me where I was from and I said Nigeria. And his reply was that we are brothers because he’s from Cameroun and that his name is Augustine.

Then he started warning me that now I’m in Europe, I have to realize that the lifestyle is different and I have to be very careful, especially of Nigerians, and that if I was to make headway, I have to have connections and know people that will help me.

Without asking him, he told me that Europe is not a piece of cake, so much so that he was even homeless and had nowhere to go and that was why he could have the time to try and help me locate my hostel.

When we got to the hostel he said he knew, the receptionist there didn’t know my hostel and the street, but she checked on her computer and said we had to go out, turn left and the street we wanted was to the right and that it was a very small street.

So we went back, didn’t locate it, so we asked a taxi driver who replied that he doesn’t know the street in particular but he knew it was around there and that it was a small street.

At this point, I started getting annoyed. It was just about 6pm but everywhere was dark like 11pm in Nigeria. And I started getting annoyed because I had asked Augustine how long he had been in Amsterdam and he said ten years so I wondered aloud why he didn’t know where I was going.

And his reply was that Amsterdam is a big place, you can’t know everywhere and the European mentality is different as I also expressed anger at the fact that the Europeans we had asked so far, and especially the taxi driver who supposed to know all the streets, hadn’t been definitively helpful so far.

My anger was also from desperation because if I didn’t locate my hostel, where would I sleep? On the streets with Augustine? Was that what he wanted? So he could take advantage of me?

I began to move faster and started to ask more people. Confoundingly, annoyingly, they would consult their phones or maps, direct us and we still wouldn’t get the street. Augustine was tagging along still and I knew he was definitely hopeful that I would give him some money as he had told me he didn’t know how he was going to have dinner that night.

And I was thinking to myself that if you want to get some money from me, is it not better you help me locate my hostel fast, because I had the impression that he was deliberately trying to impede my progress.

After some time, while he kept telling me to take it easy, I just walked away from him, believing I would do better on my own. I made better progress on my own, to the extent that a shopkeeper even helped me call the hostel and as I stepped out to follow the latest direction, Augustine surfaced again.

I knew his appearance wasn’t by coincidence, but I wasn’t really interested in him again as I felt he would just hinder me. I answered him cryptically when he enquired if I had gotten the direction and went into another store and just walked around so he would leave me alone. When I eventually came out, he was gone. But still, I still had to ask at another shop again and the shopkeeper there was the most helpful because after he consulted his maps, he was able to tell me definitively where my hostel was located.

So I got there at last. That was on Friday, January 16^th and on Sunday the 18^th, I ran into Augustine again. I was headed for the Red Light District and I met him in front of the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky.

We greeted cordially, even hugged and we got talking again as we walked the streets. “I’m tired of being here in Amsterdam,” he said. “What kind of life is this? No work, no house, nothing to eat, I just walk the streets all day and I have to beg to eat.”

Lighting a cigarette, he added that “without these cigarettes, I would have died. I just cannot imagine not having cigarettes.”

Yet even those cigarettes, he cannot afford, as he told me that “I beg for cigarettes too. Here, they don’t sell one stick of cigarette like in Africa. They only sell packs, and one pack is like seven euros because everything here is expensive.”

Speaking further, he said he’s sometimes lucky when he begs for cigarettes and money. When he’s very lucky, someone will give him twenty euros, but that’s once in a blue moon. And as per cigarettes, he smokes whatever he’s given so in his cigarette case, he can have six different cigarettes at the same time. And he can’t complain because some people won’t even give him cigarettes but tell him to go and buy his.

And lamenting seriously that he wants to return to Cameroun because he’s sure he can never suffer there like he’s doing in Amsterdam, he said, “Europe is just name. There’s nothing here, my brother. Africa is far better. There are still some places here you will enter and they will say you should get out because you are black.

“I’m fifty-three now and I have three children, two girls and a boy, back home in Cameroun and they just know I’m in Europe but don’t know how I’m suffering here.”

And on what he’ll do if he goes back to Cameroun, he said, “I’ll be a taxi driver.” And on what he was doing before in Cameroun: “I was a gendarme.” And on why he even bothered to travel out in the first instance: “I had a political problem that forced me to leave.”

Saying the reason he hasn’t returned home is because of money, I asked him how he intended to get the money he needed. “I’m waiting for a guy to come from Switzerland. He’s going to give me money. When the guy was here for a week before going to Switzerland, I had a really nice time. I ate well every day and when he was going, he gave me a hundred euros and said since I hadn’t had a woman in a long time, I should go and have one out of the hundred euros and keep the rest.”

Maybe he was just happy to have someone to talk to, I don’t know, but Augustine kept telling me about himself with me just prompting him sometimes so he would know I was really listening.

“But having woman here is money oh. Even the prostitutes are very expensive. The really beautiful ones who are as fine as models are fifty euros and there are some you’ll get for thirty euros. And you can’t really enjoy them. You can’t touch their breasts or kiss them. Some of them won’t even allow blacks because they say black people are stronger in sex and they don’t want people who will waste time but just get in and get out fast.”

So when he said out of his hundred euros, he went to have a prostitute of thirty euros, I asked him why when he knew it wouldn’t be a satisfying experience. “Wetin I go do?” he responded. “No be just to pour water?”

Complaining again about life in Amsterdam, he said, “I’m just back from prison. I was there for seven weeks.”

My recourse was to say that at least he must have had good food and shelter for that period.

“Prison is prison,” he replied angrily. “There’s nothing like having your freedom. There they are giving you only rice to eat and the rice has been frozen for six months.”

He then warned me to be very careful so as not to end up in prison. “I was imprisoned for stealing train and tram. You see these their trams and trains, you can keep entering without paying. But one day, you will enter and they close all the doors and ask for your ticket and if you don’t have, it’s prison oh.”

According to him, the fastest other way to prison was dealing in drugs. “That’s what most Nigerians living well here are doing. They wanted me to join them as well but I told them I wasn’t interested. There’s money there but when they catch you, they give you a long sentence like one Nigerian guy they caught last year and sentenced to three years in prison.”

Since he admitted that he’s been in prison several times for ‘stealing train,’ I asked him why they didn’t deport  him and he said it’s because he has his papers already and he’s just waiting for his Netherlands passport but he’s not sure he’ll wait for it anymore before he’ll return to Cameroun.

Another sore issue with him about Amsterdam is its women. “Be very careful of the women here,” he warned me really seriously. “They only use you and dump you. If you don’t have money, you cannot date their young girls who will prefer their young men. But the older ones who can no longer get married as their men will say they are already old, those ones will date you until they are pregnant, then chase you away as they don’t want you to have any rights over the child, and such a child they will make sure will never leave Amsterdam.”

Saying that one of them wanted to use him in such manner at one time but he flow with her, I asked him why, since he already knew her intention, he didn’t deceive her by dating her but having sex with condom with her so she could just be taking care of him.

“How you go do that? If you no want wetin she want, then she tell you to go. That means you have nothing together because she’ll say you shouldn’t use condom and you say you want to use so obviously you can’t be together. And since na woman get mouth for here, you find your way fast.”

And when I tried to give him tips on how he could deceive such a woman, he said, “My brother, you cannot tell me about Amsterdam. You are new here and I’ve been here ten years. I know Nigerian guys are fast. I like them for being sharp, but you are still new here and I’m the one who can tell you what’s going on here, not you telling me.”