Those on the verge of becoming full citizens in Guinea-Bissau are beneficiaries of a policy that stands in contrast to that of many other countries

Eduardo Marina was harvesting in the peanut fields with all the adults in his family when he smelled the smoke. Raising his head, he saw that Missira, his village in southern Senegal, was burning.

Marina ran towards the fire. The children were still in the village, being babysat by his eldest daughter, Satou. Gathering them up, he and the whole family ran through the forest and over the border into Senegal’s tiny southern neighbour, Guinea-Bissau.

That was in 1991. They have never been back to Missira. Ever since, they have lived with thousands of others in limbo in Guinea-Bissau, waiting for a nearly four-decade conflict to end.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In 1991, the adults in their village in southern Senegal were all out working in the fields, and Satou Marina (pictured) was the oldest child left in town to tend to the younger children. Photograph: Ricci Shryock/The Guardian

Now, they are on the verge of becoming full Guinean citizens, as beneficiaries of a sweeping policy that stands in stark contrast to many countries’ reluctance to take in those fleeing war, persecution and poverty.

Seven thousand refugees will join Guinea-Bissau’s 1.8 million citizens, equivalent to the UK naturalising 256,000 refugees at a stroke.

The government made the declaration last December and approved it in July. Since then the UN refugee agency has been working with a local contractor to produce and distribute ID cards, naturalisation and birth certificates for the refugees and their children, most of whom have never known any other home except the verdant, Creole-speaking, gumbe-playing country they grew up in.

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“They were facing the risk of being stateless because of having no documents,” said Mamadou Lamine Diop, the UNHCR’s recently appointed chief of mission in Guinea-Bissau. “It can be a lesson to others: how Guinea-Bissau managed to get rid of its caseload.”

When he arrived, Diop realised that a major obstacle to getting the refugees naturalised was the astronomical amount the government wanted in order to turn each one into a citizen – 900,000 CFA (£1,230) per person. Under his leadership, the UNHCR managed to negotiate down to 150,000 CFA.

UNHCR is trying to raise this amount – $2m (£1.52m) in total – from donors. Without it the organisation cannot start processing ID cards. “Just imagine how much money we can save and redirect to other people in need,” Diop said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man and boy wash mangoes in the rain in Pelundo. Photograph: Ricci Shryock/The Guardian

As well as the money, dysfunctional Guinea-Bissau hopes to reap a much-needed reputation boost with the policy.

Before the villagers fled, armed rebels fighting for the independence of Senegal’s southern strip had been coming to Missira regularly, demanding animals and warning people to get out.

When they arrived in Guinea-Bissau, Marina and his family headed straight for the village of Pelundo, where they had old family ties dating from colonialist days, when Guineans used to go and work in French peanut fields.

They were a hungry, ragged group by the time they got there. “We only had the farming clothes we were standing up in,” said Marina, now a meticulous 73-year-old who became the village chronicler, keeping track of local fortunes in large notebooks. “We managed to take the children. That was all.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lansana Tiana, a refugee from Senegal’s Casamance region who has made his home in Guinea-Bissau. Photograph: Ricci Shryock/The Guardian

Nevertheless, he said, Pelundo welcomed them in. “The villagers here said we had complete equality,” he said. “They even gave us posts – I was the secretary of the village football club.” He gestured at Pelundo’s simple earthen streets and its veranda-ringed houses. “This was common land. If you had the money, you could build a house on it.”

Marina is looking forward to being a citizen – he cannot imagine ever being able to return to Senegal. “I don’t dare go back,” he said. “The rebels come and go – you think it’s peaceful and suddenly they strike.”

For Satou, his daughter, naturalisation is less about safety and more about identity. Now 39, she was babysitting at the age of 12 when the rebels came to burn down their village.

“My ID is Senegalese, but now I’m Guinean,” she said, balancing a baby on her hip. “I’m from here. I wouldn’t want to go back. The villagers see us as locals now – in fact they always have done.”

Their old village, Missira, is one of 64 that have been wiped off the Senegalese map. Scouts who have gone to look for it say the streets have become forest and the houses are completely gone. The only way you can tell it was once inhabited is by the clustered fruit trees that drop their mangoes on the forest floor, with no one there to eat them.

With the Marinas now happily integrated in Pelundo, Missira will probably stay that way. But not all of the refugees in Guinea-Bissau feel the same. Some still long for home, decades after leaving – not every village has been as generous as Pelundo.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Domingos family work in a farm in rural Guinea-Bissau. Photograph: Ricci Shryock/The Guardian

In Tarero, as the families who fled expand, land is running out. “As you harvest your crops, the locals are sowing theirs right behind you,” said Lansana Tiara. “There is hospitality, but it’s limited.”

Land rights are often a highly contentious issue for newly minted citizens, as in the case of Tanzania when it offered 200,000 Burundian refugees citizenship in 2015. Guinea-Bissau’s $270 per refugee includes a sum for integration, to which land is key, but it cannot solve all land-related problems.

For many, the border between the two countries is a frustrating colonial relic, and the whereabouts of “home” is complicated.

“In colonial times, my father was forced to work planting trees in Guinea-Bissau, so the whites could walk in the shade,” said Nfally Tiana, puffing on a pipe in his 1970s-style flowery robes. “He ran away to Senegal. I fled Senegal to come here.”

Tiana’s father told him stories of the time before colonialism and borders, when after work, the men used to rest under a large tamarind tree. “Maybe if this had never happened, we’d be sitting under that tree now,” he said.

Additional reporting by Allen Embalo

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