MIGRANTS TRADE TALES OF DESPAIR IN THE DESERT
Ousmane counts on God to see him across the sea
AGADEZ (Niger) – OUSMANE Balde has just hopped off a bus from Senegal after a week-long trip through Mali and Burkina Faso to get to Agadez in northern Niger.
Once a crossroads on an ancient traders ’ route, today the town is a hub for illegal migrants.
For Balde it is the first leg of a gruelling voyage he hopes will end on the shores of Italy.
The hardest part still lies ahead.
Many of those who went before him died crossing the desert.
After that he must navigate war-torn Libya, the staging post for Mediterranean crossings, and then – most terrifying of all – survive the sea voyage to Europe in one of the rickety boats that have cost some 1 800 migrants their lives so far this year.
Balde says he is counting on God to see him safely across the sea, believing that divine protection guided his older brother on a similar voyage to Spain a few years ago.
“’I m not afraid,” the lanky 22-year-old declares.
Balde ’ s brother in Spain and another brother living in Libya are picking up the bill for his trip, at a minimum worth about R6 000, according to migrants at least R1 815 just to cross the Sahara.
It ’ s fraught with risk, but for many young people in Senegal it ’ s a risk worth taking to escape a life of poverty back home.
“If I don ’ t leave to find work I can ’ t get ahead,” Balde explains.
Ali Idrisu, from Ghana, had also dreamed of getting ahead. He didn ’ t plan to go as far as Europe, just to Libya, where he hoped to become a star footballer and eventually return home to take up a spot on the Ghanaian national team.
But his grand plans faltered almost as soon as he set out from Agadez a year and a half ago, crammed into a pick-up truck with 24 other migrants.
“We didn ’ t have enough water and food. And they (the people smugglers) used to beat us,” he said after arriving back in Agadez from Libya in a dusty Jeep.
While the plight of migrants whose boats sink or take in water in the Mediterranean is well documented, a lot less is known about their desert Odyssey.
Of the 45 000 illegal immigrants who have landed in Italy this year, 60% had travelled through Niger, accord-
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Trip fraught with risk but it s worth taking to escape a life of
poverty
ing to official figures.
Giuseppe Loprete, head of a mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Niger, said “hundreds ” of migrants die each year between the Sahara and Libya – of thirst, of hunger, in accidents and from abuse.
“What we ’ re seeing in the Mediterranean could be just the tip of the iceberg,” Loprete said.
In October 2013, the bodies of 92 migrants were found strewn across the Sahara.
They had died of thirst after their smugglers abandoned them in the desert, having promised to take them to Algeria.
“If by chance a migrant falls out of the vehicle the driver does not stop, he continues on,” Amadou Hamidine Maliki, the IOM ’ s chief in Agadez said.
If the migrant is lucky, another car might come to the rescue. Otherwise, the person is left alone to wander the desert.
“’I ve seen people die in the desert,” Idrisu says .
While the young Ghanaian made it to Libya relatively unscathed, Idrisu ’ s ordeal didn ’ t end there.
His mobile phone and identity documents were stolen shortly after his arrival and he struggled against racism.
“They treat black people like animals,” he said.
And while he found a job as a mason, working “24/7, seven days a week “, he has nothing to show for his Libyan sojourn more than a year later.
“I never saw a football pitch,” he said. As for the football boots he took with him – a symbol of his broken dreams – he left them behind in Libya.
“This is all I have left,” he says, pointing to his brown boubou robe, grubby after the week-long journey from Tripoli.