by
Pamela Kerpius

Recorded:
18 January 2024

Published:
5 March 2024

Meet Foday.

17 years old and from Serekunda, Gambia.

To reach Europe he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, then back to Libya again.

The journey took over four and a half years total, starting on 28 March 2019 on a bus from Gambia to Senegal, which transferred him straight through to Mali.

In Mali, he stayed at a connection house for two weeks, where 40 others waited at his side in hiding. The food was brought in on errand from one of the house managers who would shop on Foday’s behalf, so he could avoid drawing attention to himself on the outside. The food was mostly unpalatable. He snuck out to buy a few things anyway—some tinned sardines and a bit of bread. He took water to drink but it was salty from the tap, but he had to take it to survive.

His SIM card was out, so he had no contact with anyone beyond the confines of the connection house. There were rooms partitioning the space, but they were small, and with 14-15 people sleeping in each one it was too cramped for suitable rest.

Six people packed into a taxi at the end of the two weeks in Mali—four in back, and two upfront, where Foday sat, beside the driver. The taxi transferred him to a depot in Bamako where he and the others met a bus enroute to Timbuktu, Mali. From there it was two days of travel: departing on a Tuesday and arriving on a Thursday, said Foday.

Foday crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a truck, part of a caravan of 250 people, on what would be a two day crossing. Dust was blowing. “It was just air,” he said. They inhaled the grit. There was no clean water, just brownish water in big tanks given to them by the driver. They cooked rice in it once and the grains turned brown. People ate whatever they were able to carry with them. Biscuits and sardines, but traffickers would steal that too. He had stomach pains from the contaminated water. Fights broke out for food—fights for survival. “In any second you can lose your life,” Foday said. You cannot sleep onboard. People were falling out of the truck; it would only stop for 2-3 hours at a time to break for rest or food.

There were two checkpoints in this crossing. One, staged by armed robbers. The second, an Algerian police station, where he paid bribes to officers to continue his journey. He arrived in Borse*, Algeria, at a connection house. The outside was made of brick—sand and clay blocks formed together to resemble a brick oven, and that felt like one too. “It was very hot,” said Foday. Inside, the house held more than 70 people in a patchwork of small rooms that held 10-12 people each. The electrical current wasn’t strong. His phone was still out too, since Mali, with that incompatible SIM.

He stayed at the connection house while working. “It was eight good months because I don’t have money to go further,” said Foday. He worked construction, and had to do it also just to have enough to eat, “If you do not contribute, you do not eat,” he said. The rest of the money he pocketed to save for the journey ahead. He’d move heavy bricks, and depending on their weight his pay rate would shift; the average was around 100-200 CFA (West African Franc; just over thirty cents USD). He’d wake at 5:00a.m., bathe, work until 5:00p.m., then join the communal dinner at the brick house.

He traveled by van on a two-day journey from the Borse connection house to Tamanrasset, Algeria. 16 people were packed lap-to-lap—snug right up against each other, unable to move—with cushions thrown over them so they’d stay obscured from authorities.

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It was a five-day stopover in Tamanrasset, a delay for the Ramadan holiday. From there it was 16 days to the city of Debdeb, Algeria, which sits at the rough border zone with Libya and Tunisia. Four tires blew out that had to be changed. Some who fell asleep in the desert during a break would wake to realize the truck had left without them. The drivers never woke them up. People, unlike cargo, are not accounted for. Two or three people, Foday said, were left behind. There was no water or food here. Someone among them had two packets of couscous, no sugar; and mixed it in a bottle of water. They passed it around, everyone took a sip. “For the whole day,” Foday said, that was all they had to eat.

The transfer picked up after six days in Debdeb, crossing the border into Libya, moving directly to Gharyan, Libya, further north. But it was a Tuesday when he and the passengers were suddenly dropped in the desert, a protective move for the smuggler whose path authorities, he said, were on to. They had a liter bottle of water each. It had to be rationed. One sip when he woke up, one sip after 2:00p.m., and the last sip of water for the day before trying to rest at night. He got no sleep though, and it was two days later on Thursday at 2:00p.m. that the driver returned and transferred Foday and the others to Zawiya on the coast.

Foday was in Zawiya for five months before he made his first push off the shore on 17 June 2021, a boat that was caught by Libyan authorities. They threw him in prison, at which time he was fifteen years old. He had a single set of clothes and no shoes. “The underwear and the clothes you go [with] inside the prison, those clothes you wear until the day you are going out,” said Foday.

There was no medical aid. People died in front of him, “more than three times,” he said. Prison guards focused on his joints for the beatings they would give him. It happened with a stick, and it was a daily occurrence.

He ate one half of a piece of bread—his daily meal serving; drank salty tap water that gave him stomach pains. There was no shower for the entire six months. Sometimes he’d be served a bit of sticky macaroni. It was so overcooked you could cut it into a slice. He had no utensils. The pasta would get stuck under his fingernails.

He escaped on 21 December 2021, moving immediately to the coastal city Zuwara, where he stayed for about a year at another connection house. He worked. He loaded bags for delivery orders, packed cars with shopping bags, and even learned to drive a car. “Small boys” were driving—anyone could drive if they wanted to. It was a land without law. “No rules. No law,” Foday said, “No nothing there.”

He attempted a different route after so much waiting, to Tunisia. He left Zuwara but was caught at the Tunisian border in the desert by authorities, and was sent to prison for the second time as a minor. He remained imprisoned for three months until Tunisia brokered a deal with Libyan police for his release.

But it wasn’t a diplomatic transfer between two nations.

“No, not send,” said Foday, “Sell. We were sold back to Libya from Tunisia.” He stated it again so it was clear, “They will sell Blackman. They will sell Blackman like that.”

Now in Libya, there was a ransom set by its own authorities to offset the cost of his sale from Tunisia’s. The ransom didn’t come. But one day when officers were arriving with food, he conspired with the others to rush the door and escape. He returned to Zuwara. It was July 2022.

For more than a year there was only waiting at the camp. He didn’t try pushing off the shore again until 27 October 2023 when he was promptly caught. There were two camps people were split into: one for deportation, one for prison.

Foday spent three months in the notorious Ain Zara Detention Center in Tripoli, Libya, where he was badly abused, attacked once with a knife, another time having the butt of an automatic rifle struck bluntly at his shoulder. “They beat me serious,” he said, but almost as quickly as he was captured he escaped, on Sunday, 29 October 2023.

He didn’t have anywhere to hide. First he went to a mosque, but there was nowhere to sleep. He found a parking garage where a van was parked. It’s doors were left unlocked, so he crawled in the car and step there overnight. At 7:00p.m. the next day, Monday, 30 October 2023, he found a taxi that would take him to Zuwara. He waited there at the seaside for ten days.

Foday crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy on Friday, 10 November at 11:30p.m. with 89 people, including 4 women, 3 children and multiple babies. They were spotted twice by Pilotes Volontaires**, then rescued by the Geo Barents, a rescue ship operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). All passengers survived. He spent multiple days more at sea, waiting to reach the assigned port, and landed in Civitavecchia, a city about an hour northwest of Rome, on 14 November 2023.

He had a medical check at a hospital in Civitavecchia and was transferred immediately thereafter to a housing camp for minors in Santa Maria Capua Vetere. It is a town in the Campania region in southern Italy, outside of Caserta, where we recorded this interview on 18 January 2024.

Foday is an amazing human being.

*City name and spelling unverified and written as spoken phonetically during interview.

**Pilotes Volontaires is a French-run NGO that dedicates itself to reconnaissance flights over the Central Mediterranean route, which then relays location coordinates to local NGO ships for rescue, in this case, the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) operated Geo Barents.