At many traffic lights in Córdoba there is a person trying to sell tissues and air fresheners to passing cars. It’s an increasingly common image, which proliferates at Christmas. After an initial welcome, he shows you his products and invites you to buy them. … Everyone hides a different story even if everyone is fighting to make a dream come true. Joseph must pay for medicine for his daughter, who suffers from a chronic illness.
Joseph arrived from Nigeria “many years ago” and now every day he walks along Avenida de la Arruzafilla in Cordoba selling tissues and air fresheners. Often, receive food from neighbors which he takes every week to his house in Seville, with his wife and his daughter Victoria, reason for which he tries to raise as much as possible
His daughter suffers from an illness that forces her to invest in expensive medical treatments that Joseph tries to pay for with what he earns at traffic lights. “I go once a week to Seville where my wife and daughter live, the rest of the week I sleep with some friends in the southern sector“. To preserve his privacy, Joseph preferred not to appear in the photos after being questioned by ABC in the middle of the conversation.
“Things have been slow in recent months (in terms of traffic light sales),” but Joseph hopes that at Christmas and until Three Kings Day, people will collaborate “a little more.” Despite the rainy days and the drop in temperatures, it remains in Arruzafilla Avenue, with his daughter Victoria always in mind.
Like Joseph, there are dozens of stories at every red light in Córdoba with migrants who arrive by destination or by chance in the city and try to get some money to achieve their goal. Joseph is clear on this because “everything i get here is for my daughter and my family.”
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