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African refugee immigrant is a big lottery winner

By Michelle Robertson
1 Feb 2016 559 Share
Sometimes good fortune smiles on those who really, really need it. One such example is a Senegalese man who had absolutely nothing... until winning €400,000 in the Spanish lottery. His name is Ngame, and he arrived in Almeria, Spain, eight years ago, after being rescued from the sea by authorities. Since that time, he and his wife have tried to survive by doing agricultural work and picking vegetables in the greenhouses that cover much of that region. Life had been hard and to make it worse, he had recently been laid off by his current employer.
So the big win could not have come at a better time, and it has completely changed their lives. "I just can’t believe this," he said in an interview outside the store where he bought his ticket, "Some days we haven’t had five euros between us." Speaking of his plight as a desperate immigrant looking for a better life – while holding back tears – Ngame expressed his gratitude: “I want to give thanks to the Spanish people and the Spanish government for rescuing me when I was in the sea.”

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