by
Pamela Kerpius

Recorded:
8 April 2021

Published:
13 May 2021

Meet Godstime.

26 years old and from Benin City, Nigeria.

He was living in Lagos for years with his brother before departing Nigeria on 26 September 2014. His journey took about three years.

From Kano, a northern city and connection point in Nigeria, he left by car, stopped, and changed to a bike where he pedaled to the Niger border. From the border he was laying down covered in a bus carrying 10-15 other people; he took this bus for a few hours until reaching Agadez, Niger.

Godstime stayed in Agadez locked in a compound with more than 100 people for two weeks. He escaped after a trafficker attacked him when he accidentally knocked over a mobile phone charging on the table. The trafficker was smacking him around. He rushed out and survived by borrowing for food and water among those near him. He managed to enter a second compound, where he remained in hiding for one more week.

Godstime crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with more than 30 people, including women and children. Their journey took two weeks. He ran out of water. He was forced to urinate in a bottle mixed with some oil and drink it to survive. “If you’re lucky you have [a bottle] and you can do it,” he said.

In the desert there were hills of sand, huge dunes and no trees or bushes. Everyone in his truck survived the Sahara, but there were checkpoints across it that challenged everyone’s survival, and forced him to hide money from corrupt security along the way.

He had 100k Nigerian Naira (around 200 Euros) when he departed and had spend 30-40k so far. He taped his remaining money in bundles. He applied Vaseline around his anus and hid the money inside his body. He went to the toilet to extract money when he needed it for the next expense. He had to keep it inside of him otherwise the small boys would rob him, and sometimes they even knew to look in people’s bodies for valuables if they dared.

Traffickers and small boys are on the lookout for it all, he said.

He arrived in Gadron*, Libya, his first stop after the desert and remained there for two weeks. A friend inside had his passport taken after traffickers claimed he had not paid the full amount of the transport money. His friend called his family for a money transfer, but it didn’t come through – or couldn’t if they had none to send.

Instead, Godstime vouched for his friend and paid to have his passport released. They were both taken to Sabha, Libya, the next stop in the journey. He stayed in a house or complex that kept 10 people per room. A friend inside helped to free him from the overcrowded space, and he moved to Murzuq, to a place that was actually a prostitution house, and stayed for 1 year and six months.

He never felt safe there, but managed to carry on while he worked interior design and construction work – all to save up for the next transfer on his journey. It was difficult to save because he was not always paid what he was promised. The owner of the house (also his employer), for example, claimed he never fully paid the 300 dinars for his extended stay. In reality, Godstime paid well over the initial amount, but with no way to challenge the owner’s authority he continued working and paying off the supposed debt.

The wife of the owner liked him, which sometimes made it easier to live together. She liked his dancing, and hired him to perform occasionally for her clients. But the situation, he says, was entirely untenable with the growing tension he had with his boss who thought he was developing a relationship with his wife.

He left in a car paying the driver 600-700 dinars for a transfer out of the city. In three days he arrived in a small city between Bani Waled and Tripoli among more than 170 people. He remained in this unnamed city for two weeks.

He remembers a Ghanaian man who was beaten and tortured. The man was taken to Sabha and he never heard from him again. Godstime, suspects he may have been involved with trafficking himself.

Godstime slept on the floor of the compound. There was no food. There was just impure, salty tap water to drink. If anyone had food they’d be beaten if they were caught sharing it. At this stage of his journey his SIM card was out and had no contact with anyone outside.

Carload by carload, 20, 30 or 40 people were moved at a time to Tripoli. He arrived in the capital city at a compound that housed more than 200 people and stayed there for one year. He slept on the floor in a open space. Sometimes he didn’t sleep at all it was so uncomfortable. There was no water for a bath. Going outside was too dangerous because you could be kidnapped by the police, but he did anyway so he could work.

He did odd jobs and worked at a car wash. Eventually, he couldn’t go back to the car wash because the area was too insecure. Instead, there are designated street corners where migrants would congregate and queue up for work. The place he went to was located under a bridge, where random employers will arrive to hire people for the day. Sometimes people would not return from work.

Three young men, says Godstime, were taken one day, tied to a drum, doused with petrol and burned alive. All were Nigerian men. Only one survived.

He moved to the coastal camp Sabratha, staying for 9 more months. He was lucky to stay in a rough apartment complex, paying 1,000 dinars to smugglers for the space. He was not working. He was trapped, he says, while the traffickers among him were demanding further payment even if people had already paid.

He moved to an open space beside the sea. He says women were regularly raped and molested there. He stood throughout his first night on the seaside in the rain. At day break he went looking for materials for a tent but was kidnapped. A friend with him broke the glass of the car and escaped, but Godstime was not as lucky.

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He had no money left and was being held for ransom. So he called a friend in Nigeria to make a money transfer, which luckily came through. Other people inside suffered around him. One man was beaten to disfigurement. “They nearly removed his eyes they hit his face so hard,” he said.

“It was better for me to die than struggle like this,” he remembers about Libyan prison.

When he got out, he found work again at a car wash and used the money to make the final step in his journey. A taxi took him to the seaside camp. One boat had already left. It wasn’t clear if he would make the next one. He begged the trafficker to let him go.

Godstime crossed the Mediterranean Sea on a rubber dingy after midnight in late July 2017 with 120-125 people, including 9 or ten women, some of whom were pregnant, and children.

“We arrived at the blue sea at 6:00am,” he said, the signal that he had reached international waters. He was rescued by a German rescue ship, he thinks operated by Sea Watch, and stayed on board for three days, among many others who were picked up from separate rescues.

He landed in Agrigento, Sicily sometime between 26-29 July 2017. He is 30 years of age now and living in a housing camp in Middelburg, Netherlands, where we recorded this story on 8 April 2021.

Godstime is an amazing human being.

* City name not verified