Immigrants In The High Seas..Is it Worth it?

[Ab-Titchaz]

A Migrant's Journey to Europe​

Over 19,000 migrants have arrived on the Canary Islands this year​

Morgan is one of the thousands of African people who have made the perilous journey to the Canary Islands in an open fishing boat.He was caught and deported back to Nigeria but he hasn't given up hope of getting to Europe. Morgan got in touch with the BBC by e-mail from Morocco, and this is the story he told:

My name is Morgan, I'm 30 years old. I tried to get to the Canary Islands once before but didn't make it, I'm on my way back to try a second time.

The boat I was on was intercepted by the Spanish police as we reached land. I was put in detention and then deported back to Nigeria.

That journey was quite possibly the most frightening experience of my life and had we not been picked up by the authorities, we would all have died.

Despite this, I am on my way back, to try again, a second time.

'Fear for family'

Life in Nigeria is hard. There is such poverty. There are no jobs, there's no food and there is corruption. I can't say too much about the situation as I fear for the lives of my family, the ones I've left behind.

My father died when I was young, life for my family has been difficult ever since, I don't remember a time when we didn't struggle to eat.

I have to try and make a better life for myself and it will enable me to send money back for my family.

I left Benin City in Nigeria on 11 January 1998 and began my journey. I travelled overland through Nigeria, Niger republic, Libya, Algeria and into Morocco.

I worked wherever I could, selling goods and working as a barber. I was caught by police on various occasions. On the border of Morocco, they beat me so badly that my legs were dislocated.

A friend of mine told me we should go to the western side of Morocco where we could meet someone who would help us get to the Canary Islands. As soon as my legs were better, we went.

'Boat journey'
I gave a man 300 euros. He took me out into the open desert where there were more than 70 other Africans waiting to go. We entered the boat on 7 August 2002. There were three boats, each boat carried around 25 people.

Migrants travel for hours from the African coast ​

As the boat moved off, we began singing gospel music to keep our spirits up. It helped us not to think about the danger. After many hours, lots of us, including myself, were vomiting. One girl who had been seriously vomiting died. I can't say what happened to her body. I try never to think about it. I'm also afraid for my safety.

After many hours of this, a big wave came and covered the boat. Everyone was shouting, water was pouring into the boat. I thought we were dead. We were all crying, we had no idea which direction we were going in or which direction we had come from. Everyone was panicking but then the engine suddenly started again.

We all worked hard to bail out the water and we continued the journey. We were at sea for another three or four hours. I remember thinking it felt like the ocean kept opening up, swallowing our boat and spitting it back out again.

'Rescued'

We were rescued by the police as we neared the coastline. Moments after they picked us all up, our boat broke in two. If we had not been rescued, we would certainly have died at sea.

The other two boats disappeared. To this day I don't know what happened to them. I was in detention on the island for many days but we heard nothing.

Back in Nigeria, the situation was even worse. I started trying to save money again, I met a friend who had some money and we agreed to try and make the journey again.

We went from Nigeria to Benin, through Togo and Burkina Faso and into Mali. There we paid a truck driver to take us to Morocco but he dropped us in the middle of the desert in Algeria. We were left there for two days with no water. Some people died, including my friend and travel companion, John.

Luckily for us, the authorities rescued us again. It was the Algerian police this time, they found us in the desert and sent us back to Mali. That saved my life.

I gathered together as much money as I could and started out again. I'm back on the road now working where possible and trying to save enough money to take the boat again.

I am, of course, very afraid of making this boat journey again but there is no other way. I and other Africans like myself feel we have no choice. I have to try and make a better life, I pray that God will see me through

BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | A migrant's journey to Europe

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Senegalese fishing boats - or cayucos as they are called in Spain - have become the preferred method of transport for illegal immigrants trying to reach the Canary Islands.

The crossing is the last journey the boats will make. They are lifted from the quayside for crushing.
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[Ab-Titchaz]

Folks,

these immigration patterns emerging between Europe and Africa carry with them
some shocking and sad stories to say the least.Despite all the information
available, African Immigrants still set out on that perilious journeys with a sense
of desperation yet at the dame time their is the zeal that "if I get there
then my troubles are over"

Hata hivyo,I still brood over this circumstances of things and ask myself, is it
worth it?...Trekking through that dreaded Sahara Desert only to be faced
with the challenge of being in a rugged/rickety boat trying to cross the high seas.
Sometimes they say its only the shoe-wearer who knows where the shoe pinches...
what is your take?

 

[Nkamangi]

Life in the west is not worth it whether you travel across the sea with a canoe or fly klm business class. I've seen immigrants in Europe depressed, discriminated and looked at as second class immigrants. Africa needs to put its act together so that we run to each other.......and we need to stop these senseless wars fuelled by the west!!! If only we would stop being selfish.

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Life in the west is not worth it whether you travel across the sea with a canoe or fly klm business class. I've seen immigrants in Europe depressed, discriminated and looked at as second class immigrants. Africa needs to put its act together so that we run to each other.......and we need to stop these senseless wars fuelled by the west!!! If only we would stop being selfish.

I agree na pia on a larger extent, African Govts and leaders need to work
for the betterment of their people by providing jobs and basic social amennities
so as to curb this unprecedented movement of African souls.

 

[Tonga]

Life in the west is not worth it whether you travel across the sea with a canoe or fly klm business class. I've seen immigrants in Europe depressed, discriminated and looked at as second class immigrants. Africa needs to put its act together so that we run to each other.......and we need to stop these senseless wars fuelled by the west!!! If only we would stop being selfish.

Nkamangi, I would like to add this too, IF ONLY OUR LEADERS WOULD STOP BEING GREEDY and INCONSIDERATE. Africa would at least make a step ahead we've been stagnant since the Colonizers left us ( For TZ its been more than 40 yrs now) only because of poor leadership with wrong decisions, corruption, greedy, inhuman and selfish leaders we have all over the continent and many more. The list can go on and on, but we have to get out of this mess ourselves na sio kungoja mzungu aje atutoe. Tukumbuke kwamba umaskini wetu ndio unawapa nafasi ya kujichukulia hata kidogo tulichonacho, trust me they are always there to play the Godfather role to their own advantage; but guess what we allow this to happen by being so desperate, poor and cry babies.

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Migrants risk lives for Europe ​

Panorama reporter Paul Kenyon has returned to West Africa to trace the route of African migrants as they attempt a deadly four-day crossing of the Sahara desert on foot. They set out unaware that the Europe they dream of reaching is deep in recession and the welcome less than warm.​

The man from the Libyan security services held a black beret over his nose. We had been walking in the heat for more than an hour across the dunes. Along the way we had seen discarded T-shirts and jeans, the occasional rucksack, and now this. The body was fresh, around two weeks old. It was that of a young man, clothed in a chocolate-brown T-shirt and faded jeans. There was no visible injury, no blood. He was lying on his back, propped awkwardly against the hot Saharan rocks. I crouched beside an outstretched arm and saw something had fallen from his grip. It was a plastic water bottle, empty and half submerged in the sand.

The guard pointed back up the path. "Many more this way, many more," he said.

Our trip to this remote part of Libya took place three weeks before the celebrations for Colonel Gaddafi's 40 years in power.

While the rest of the world's press struggled to get entry visas, and news of the pending release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison not yet broken, we were embedded with Libya's security services in the Sahara desert.We were not looking for al-Qaeda, even though its followers are known to operate close to here on the Algerian border, we were looking for African migrants.

Every year, around 40,000 of them cross the Sahara on their way to Europe. We found ourselves in the middle of the most dangerous migration route in the world. Most of those who attempt to cross here are economic migrants, but some are political refugees, fleeing conflict and persecution in places like Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. We had air-conditioned vehicles and huge tanks of water, but the migrants cross this part of the desert on foot.

When the British Army patrol in similar conditions in Afghanistan, each soldier is supposed to drink 14 litres of water during a day-long operation. These migrants walk in the desert for four days, sometimes with just a litre or two of water, so that they can keep the weight down.

The next body we came across lay with his wrist across his forehead, like he was wiping away the sweat. He looked about 18. His jeans had been torn around the left calf, probably by a jackal, and the flesh was torn away down to the bone. Nearby, there was another empty water bottle.
It is a story that has come to dominate my life for the last two years.


'We walked'


In 2007, an extraordinary photograph in the morning papers set off my work on this story. It was an aerial shot of a tuna net, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Hanging from it were 27 men, clothed but with no sign of any boat. It seemed they had fallen from outer space.

When I finally tracked them down, to a hostel in Italy, it turned out they had been trying to cross the sea to Europe when their boat had capsized. They had clung onto the net for three days without proper food or water. None of them could swim, and they were so unfamiliar with the sea, they believed the tuna in the net were man-eating fish.


"But how did you get the Mediterranean in the first place?" I asked.

They looked at each other, puzzled. "We walked across the Sahara," they said.

The youngest was a 19-year-old, from Ghana, named Justice Amin. As we talked I realised the journey he'd taken, that they'd all taken in the hope of reaching a "promised land" was of biblical proportions.

They had not just risked their lives crossing the sea, they had first risked them on that walk across the desert. All of them had lost friends. They had been reduced to drinking their own urine on the Sahara, and drinking seawater on the Mediterranean. A quarter of those who attempt the journey each year end up dead.

Justice Amin finds life in Naples difficult and warns others not to follow​

Justice's story was particularly compelling. He had been raised by a witchdoctor, who spoke in tongues and sacrificed chickens on a clay idol outside their hut. Yet he could still speak four languages, and quote lengthy tracts from both the Koran and the Bible. He told me about the journey to Europe - about the nomads who lead men into the desert and then abandon them without water, the people smugglers who trick migrants onto boats without enough petrol to reach the other side and the Libyan border patrols who dress "like ninjas" and capture migrants on the dunes.

I wrote a book about him, called "I am Justice", and now here I was, on the Sahara, with the very patrols he had tried to evade.

We were back in the air-conditioned jeep when the radio message came through. They'd just spotted 21 migrants walking across the sand a couple of miles away. If caught they would be thrown into a Libyan prison. But if they were not stopped, they might just make it to the Mediterranean and the next step on this deadly journey.

Or, they might end up as corpses propped against Saharan rocks, arms reaching out for empty bottles.

Panorama: Europe or Die Trying, BBC One, Monday, 14 September at 2030BST.

 

[Kayanda]

Folks,

these immigration patterns emerging between Europe and Africa carry with them
some shocking and sad stories to say the least.Despite all the information
available, African Immigrants still set out on that perilious journeys with a sense
of desperation yet at the dame time their is the zeal that "if I get there
then my troubles are over"

Hata hivyo,I still brood over this circumstances of things and ask myself, is it
worth it?...Trekking through that dreaded Sahara Desert only to be faced
with the challenge of being in a rugged/rickety boat trying to cross the high seas.
Sometimes they say its only the shoe-wearer who knows where the shoe pinches...
what is your take?

This is extra ordinary story and still shocked as this chap still willing to do it again. I think we africans we have to change our mind to accept our way of life. I am quite sure if you accept yourself still you can live comfort life. My relative in a village western Tz they don't have credit card, they are not employed but (self employed as peasants) still they can eat comfortably, play ngoma, with a help of solar panels and used tv they can watch recorded England Premier League, not complaining about corruption, lack of job etc. This is very simple life WHY DO YOU HAVE TO RISK SO MUCH? Anyway very sad story.
Kayanda

 

[Wandugu Masanja]

wakati wa utumwa tulikuwa tunaibiwa na tukupiga kelele oo tunafanywa watumwa leo tunakwenda wenyewe tena, sio rahisi kuliondosha suala hili kwani tuna utumwa wa kiakili ambao ndio waliokuwa nao viongozi wetu

Africa tuna kila kitu tokea ardhi hali ya hewa na manpower lakini viongozi wetu wana mtindio wa ubongo tufanye nini?

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Africa tuna kila kitu tokea ardhi hali ya hewa na manpower lakini viongozi wetu wana mtindio wa ubongo tufanye nini? [/QUOTE]

...Nd'o maana wengine wanaamua potelea mbali, kufa dereva nd'o kufa gari. Mtu yuko radhi akumbwe na janga la jangwani lakini aende bara la Uropa angalau atapata nafuu. Hata hivyo ukweli ni kwamba hio nafuu hamna!

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

Rubber boat with African immigrants in the high seas.

Africans storm Melina fence, a Spanish enclave in Morroco, mainland Africa

Scaling the Melila fence into Europe, april 03 2014.


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[Ab-Titchaz]

Victim of Morocco Police brutality.

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[Ab-Titchaz]

The Mediterranean Sea...a watery graveyard for African immigrants trying to reach Europe....

Fortress Europe: Fortress Europe. English edition

Lampedusa Italy after a massive a massive boat sink.

The Survivors....

 

[OLESAIDIMU]

Mtaambiwa mnawaonea wivu enyi wala vumbi!!!!!

Wait and see!!!!

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

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[Ab-Titchaz]

The leaky boats (Documentary)....




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[Ab-Titchaz]

The Melila Fence.....

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[hashycool]

Inasikitisha!

 

[Ab-Titchaz]

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[Ab-Titchaz]

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