Meet Andrew
Andrew at park near his housing camp. Limatola, Italy. 28 October 2019. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
17 October 2020
Published:
24 October 2020
Meet Andrew.
29 years old and from Nigeria.
To reach Italy he crossed three countries: Nigeria, Niger and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
He left Edo State, Nigeria on a bus in April 2016, the start of his journey that took about seven months.
He traveled on the bus for 18 hours, then transferred to a car that took him to the Niger border, about six hours away. At the border he encountered many others, not just other migrants traveling, but now border authorities who were asking for his documentation. He didn’t leave Nigeria with his ID and told border control he was passing through on holiday.
He transferred to another car that took eight men and five boys with him. The road they traveled on was not paved, but a back desert road that kept them obscured from border control.
Andrew and the others trekked on foot. They walked until they reached a village in the desert, a brief stopping point where the connection man in Nigeria had arranged for them to meet people onsite. They left the village on bikes and pedaled for four-and-a-half hours until they reached the next connection point, a bus stop.
He took that bus, the Express, he called it, at 10:00pm, traveling for 15 hours. There were more migrants traveling with him on the bus, their destination point, Agadez, Niger.
Andrew stayed three days in Agadez, in a hut provided by an old man, covertly going out to buy his own food, like bread and rice to cook. There were police everywhere across the city, he said, looking to arrest and deport migrants. He stayed in the hut alone. The old man’s son arrived to retrieve and move him to the next transfer point.
Thousands of people were waiting at the point, all being filtered onto different pickup trucks. It took a couple of hours to get everyone in place before they left.
Andrew crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with 24 people, with no water. “Nobody wants to share with you when they are on that journey,” he said. But with no water he bartered instead with some of the food he was able to bring with him, some bread, powered milk, tea, and Garri.
One man fell from the truck and died. The driver stopped and everyone tried to help the man, but in the end, the second driver took his gun and shot him dead. Andrew and the others weren’t able to bury him.
“Many people lost their lives...It’s not safe.”
There are checkpoints in the desert, where the passengers were beaten by soldiers and the women were raped. There were around ten women traveling in his vehicle.
Along the way he saw remains of car accidents and perished bodies. Drivers get lost in the desert. People get left behind.
His vehicle stopped at a well when they were out of water. Someone told him a dead body had been thrown in it. The water smelled, he said, but there was nothing else to drink so they drank it.
It took five days to cross the Sahara. He left on a Monday and arrived on a Friday, in Gaberoun, Libya, where he broke for half a day then continued with the same trafficker to Sabha, Libya.
Andrew stayed in Sabha for three weeks with an uncle who had a hotel there. He stayed in his uncle’s house, but didn’t venture out on account of “small boys” who would be after him. The small boys attacked anyway, when they came in shooting for a robbery. Two were shot and killed and two wounded, including his uncle’s wife.
He left Sabha then and traveled for 24 hours to Brak, saying hidden in the automobile. He left for Bani Waled, where he remained for four days in a compound with more than 800 people. He went two whole days without food and drank salty tap water. Everybody was sick, he said, even him.
“Many people lost their lives [on this journey]. It’s not safe,” said Andrew.
From Bani Waled he went to Tripoli where he stayed for two months in a 2-story building with over 45 people. He went out, but he had to be careful. He always kept in mind that someone outside could kidnap him, so never stayed out more than ten minutes. Small boys were the biggest threat.
There was a market two or 3 minutes walking from the house, so he bought water and food there before returning home. Others at the house were kidnapped. Some were arrested by the police. Andrew was arrested too, and stayed in prison for a few weeks before he was able to pay his way out.
One friend went missing in Tripoli. His name was Gostan and he was also Nigerian.
Andrew left for the seaside, to Tyre, a beachfront in Sabratha. He stayed there for three months. He pushed off the shore in the “lapalapa,” an inflatable boat, with 115 people, but small boys shot at the boat and it sank.
He came to land. The women on board were raped. The rest were shot at and beaten. He ran away, finding a man who he thought would take him in, but had him arrested instead. He was taken to prison.
In prison he was tortured every day for one week and 4 days, the total duration of his captivity. He was electrocuted. He was starved, served one piece of bread daily in the evening.
He called the trafficker, who initially pushed him from shore, but nothing came of it. He finally called his family to have them pay the ransom for his release, 1,000 Libyan Dinars.
Andrew returned to Sabratha, Tyre beach, for one month and 3 weeks among around 300-400 people. He had to evade the trafficker who initially pushed him to sea before prison, who wanted to sell him as a slave.
He slept in the open, sometimes on a piece of foam mattress, and ate bread, rice, and sometimes a bit of canned salmon that he bought from a small market in the seaside city.
On October 20, 2016 Andrew crossed the Mediterranean Sea on a rubber dinghy with 135 people, including a number of women, 3 of whom were pregnant; 7 children and 2 babies. It was four or 5:00 o’clock in the morning when the lapalapa pushed off Libyan shores.
He was at sea for 5 hours before being saved by a German rescue operation, staying aboard the vessel for one night before being transferred to the Guardia Costiera. Everyone on board his boat survived. He landed in Catania, Sicily, in Italy, on October 24, 2016.
Andrew is an amazing human being.
The amount of bread Andrew was served each day in prison. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean