They will likely face challenges. Migrants have automatic rights to healthcare and other benefits in Brazil, but African migrants often face racism and struggle to find well-paid work. Friday and Yeye have been taken in by a shelter in Sao Paolo and are being assisted by a Catholic mission, Missao Paz, with Portuguese lessons and other support. Yeye wants to start a new business and bring his wife and children over. Friday is focused on the more immediate future. “I am in a new place, I am trying to adapt, I am trying to learn the language,” he said. The first journey he had ever made out of Nigeria had nearly killed him, but as the days passed after his rescue, he felt the hopelessness that had dogged him back home begin to ebb, he said.
