by
Pamela Kerpius

Recorded:
29 July 2022

Published:
16 October 2023

Meet King.

32 years old and from Gambia.

To reach Italy he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Libya.

His journey took about a month-and-a-half, beginning on 30 October 2015, when he left Gambia for Senegal. Once in Senegal, he traveled by bus for one week, direct across Mali, and Burkina Faso, where he finally stopped for two days.

In Burkina, there were security controls patrolling the area and many people, he said, were returned to Gambia if they were unable to pay them the bribes required to stay. King himself paid to ensure the continuation of his travel, a fee of around 10,000-15,000 CFA (West African franc) at each of the multiple times he was stopped.

From Burkina, it was one day by bus until reaching Niamey, Niger. The stop in the city was brief, a pause to transfer buses and continue onward to Agadez. It was another day on the bus to Agadez, where he waited for one week and two days in a connection house that had another 27 people held in three small rooms inside. They slept lap-to-lap—“lapalapa,” the shorthand phrase used to describe any cramped quarters where people are forced in place flush with the next person’s hip, whether at a connection house or on an inflatable raft pushing into the sea.

The fee for this connection house was inclusive of food and water, which the traffickers provided, keeping King and the others off the streets, and securely hidden from view of police and border control.

When the wait in Agadez was over, King crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with 30 people, including one woman, a Gambian. He had known her since his stop in Burkina Faso and took to protecting her. It was four days traveling in the desert until reaching Sabha, Libya. His water ran out, he said, “but you can ask your friend to help you,” and so whatever water remained was shared among the group until Libya.

It was three days in Sabha after the driver of the vehicle ended his shift there, full stop, with no new transfer arranged for onward travel. King remained in a compound run by Libyans before he found a new link. This one took him again in the back of a pickup truck at night over back roads—a small voyage that stretched across two nights. The destination: Bani Waled, Libya. He was in the city for just seven hours and found himself stopped by control and threatened with imprisonment. His trafficker negotiated on his behalf and paid the frontmen a fee for his freedom.

He moved northward from Bani Waled, stopping for one night in an unnamed city. “Food was the problem in that place,” said King, “We don’t eat for two days.”

He moved onward to Gargarish, an area outside Tripoli near the coast, where he stayed in a camp for 11 days under extreme duress. There were more than 100 people at the camp, split up in groups of 15-17 people in separate rooms. There was no place to sleep, and for all 11 days he didn’t. It wasn’t possible to relax. Insects infested the rooms and scattered over the floors. He had a bit of food to survive, but the water quality consisted of whatever came from the pipes at the compound.

He left, dodging “small boys” before reaching Sabratha, Libya, the coastal camp where by his estimation nearly 500 people sat in waiting on the dusty shore. King stayed in a shelter for five days, the “white house,” a former palace, now abandoned and left to disuse, and frequently named in testimonies of others who have passed through the same area before too.

He watched waves of boats push off the shore. One would take thirty-five, another held thirty. Yet another taking 30 this time. Many people, King emphasized, were left behind. It was insecure around the shelter and on the shore. Sometimes armed men would open fire. It was best, he said, to stay inside.

“Thursday,” King said, that was supposed to be the day he himself left the Libyan shore. It was finally on Saturday that he stepped into the “balloon” inflatable boat alongside 30 people, all men, at 11:00pm, and crossed the Mediterranean Sea. He saw the light of the moon overhead, but nothing more from his spot low in the center of the raft. He was on the water for twelve hours before he was rescued by an Italian vessel and taken to Siculiana, Sicily, on 7 December 2015.

He is 40 years of age now and living in Martinszell, a township in Allgau, Germany, where we recorded this story on 29 July 2022.

King is an amazing human being.

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