Meet Ricky
Ricky in Padova, Italy. 25 May 2018. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
25 May 2018
Published:
June 2018
Meet Ricky.
28 years old and from Anambra State, Nigeria.
To reach Italy he crossed three countries: Nigeria, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
His journey took seven months in total.
He traveled through Nigeria to Agadez, Niger where he met a caravan of trucks to take the group he occupied of more than 200 people across the desert.
Ricky crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck so overcrowded sticks were planted in the base of the truck to give people something to hold on to. It’s a normal modification made for the desert crossings, but it was not enough to keep everyone inside; many people fell and died, he said. Nor was there enough water. People drank their urine to survive.
He arrived in Sabha, Libya, his first stop in the country, where he was imprisoned for two months. His eyes darted around as he talked, as he remembered, “It was so terrible.”
He kept clutching his chest, “It was so fucking terrible there,” Ricky said. His friend, Kensington (Nigeria), listening on, said it was giving him flashbacks. He left in a rush soon thereafter.
“There were lots of
gunshots everywhere.”
When the traffickers at the compound would transport him through Sabha he was put in the back of a car with sheets thrown over him so no one would see him.
He was let out of prison, then made his way to Garian*. He looked for work on the street, but there, small boys (young Libyan kids with guns) kidnapped him and sold him to new traffickers.
He was held in prison in Garian for three months. We do not know the conditions or human rights abuses he faced, just that “there were lots of gunshots everywhere.”
He made it to the coastal camp in Sabratha, Libya were he stayed before departing for the sea.
Ricky crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy with 300 people, including old men, women, children, and numerous babies. In total, he was out to sea for 8 hours. The boat capsized and broke in two, throwing everyone in the water. He watched a woman holding her baby sink into the sea and die. More drowned around him.
He was rescued by a German NGO, and was then transferred, we believe, to the Guardia Costiera, landing in Lampedusa on 10 June 2016.
Ricky is an amazing human being.
Ricky has been living in Padova, Italy since being transferred from Lampedusa while awaiting the outcome on his Italian asylum. We met at Giardini dell’Arena, the park in central Padova where many other people in the migrant community, homeless or simply awaiting their documentation verdict, congregate. More of his story, pre- and post-Lampedusa, as it develops.
* City name not verified.