PRESSING ISSUES with Robert Kyei-Gyau

PERILOUS JOURNEY TO EUROPE

In search of work, several thousands of desperate African youths risk their lives crossing the Sahara and the Atlantic to reach European shores. Nelson Badu, asurvivor of that journey says Europe's closed-door immigration policy kills Africans. Robert Kyei-Gyau reports.

Nelson Badu has cheated death many times. His sojourn from the West Africa to the United Kingdom took four long years. Along the way, he survived the Sahara and its numerous woes but only just, because he nearly died of hunger and thirst. Badu faced his sternest test on the Mediterranean Sea but once again he held fast to life. The Ghana national attributes is survival to divine intervention rather than indulging in selfaggrandisement.

"I could have died like the others but I am alive today because it is God's will," he says. He finally made it to Italy in 2002 and continued to England two years later. Having achieved his life long dream of coming to the West, life should have been much better for him. But with the current state of anti immigrant sentiment high in the UK and indeed on Europe's political agenda, the 27-year-old failed asylum seeker sees no end in sight for his struggle for survival and betterment.

"I have seen and endured so much suffering and tragedy, that I can hardly describe or convey it to you properly. I saw people drink other people's piss to survive the desert; many "friends" died and we left their bodies there on the desert and continued, all in efforts to come to Europe to look for work," Badu says.

Africans fleeing the desperation and poverty of their regressing states have been washing up on Europe's shores or dying in the attempt, for more than a decade now. Thousands have staggered ashore on Lampedusa south of the Italian island of Sicily where Badu landed, in Gibraltar and Malaga or they have scrambled over the triple fence of razor wire at Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the Northern coast of Morocco, into the unwelcome arms of European coastguards. Efforts by European governments to stop these deadly voyages have so far proved futile. Landing on the beaches of the Sicilian town of Lampedusa, on the dawn of August 23, 2002, together with about 80 migrants crammed like sardines on a tiny fishing boat, was third time lucky for Badu, one of several thousands of Africans trying to flee joblessness and hopelessness on the continent. His two previous attempts were botched; one by Tunisian security personnel at the country's border with Libya and the second effort three months later was shipwrecked.

"We floated on the ocean for two weeks, drifting to nowhere until we were rescued by Tunisian coastguards and sent back to Tunis," says Badu.

Badu's real name has been changed because he is a failed asylum seeker and is living in the UK illegally.

Background

He is the youngest of his 70-year-old mother's 10 issues and he also has lots of half siblings from his father's side. "My late father had two other wives apart from my mother and the two women shared 16 issues between them and therefore I have 25 more siblings, but I am older than seven of my siblings, I am sure. It is confusing, isn't it?" he asks jokingly.

Badu says all his siblings are subsistence farmers but he was not prepared to follow them into that trade and thus went to learn masonry, right after completing junior school in 1994, when he was only17. He says he was not brilliant academically and that suited his late father, who never sent any of his children to the secondary school, let alone college, no matter their level of academic potential. Thus his elder brother who is a cocoa farmer in the Western region of Ghana raised some funds to pay for his apprenticeship as a mason. He went through with the training for five years, graduating in 1999, the same year in which his father died.

According to Badu it was difficult getting mason jobs to do in Techiman, a market town in the Brong Ahafo region, his hometown. "Life was hard in Ghana, my brother," he says sarcastically. Consequently he decided to travel to Italy, where he heard there were many jobs on farms for African immigrants, even those with no education at all. But he did no know how to go about it.

Preparation for journey

"I was relaxing under a mango tree that stood in front of my home one sunny afternoon when a friend came around to inform him that someone was looking for boys from our vicinity to take to Libya, where there were an abundance of jobs.

This guy wanted my friend to enquire from me if I was interested," says Badu. He tells of a boy from his village he knew, who went to Libya by crossing the Sahara desert and managed to reach Italy safely, where he got asylum and has been living for the past 14 years. The proposal, therefore, sounded like music to his ear and he signed up for the journey immediately.

The charge for the trip was 1.5 million Ghanaian Cedis (about £100 at the current exchange rate), which was a lot of money at the time but he wasted no time in raising it. In addition,he was asked to and did purchase 150,000 CFA Francs  (about £120) as pocket money for the journey through Burkina Faso and the Republic of Niger. The two countries are in the CFA Franc monetary zone. "We were to leave by road in a week's time.

According to Badu, the journey was to be by road and not by air because Libya, at that time, was under UN sanctions. "But the truth is that the cost of travelling by air would have been beyond me financially," he admits.

Nervous

Badu recalls: "The days leading to the trip were the most nerve wracking I have ever been. I heard that armed bandits in Niger attacked and robbed travellers who pass through their territory. A story also went that trucks that transport travellers sometimes break down in the desert, which sometimes led to travellers starving to death. I also heard of the energy sapping heat and dangerous animals on the Sahara. Therefore my preparation was punctuated with deep worry despite assurances from the 'connection man' that everything would be alright."

Leaving my country

According to Badu, his departure from Ghana on the evening of 6 February 2000 into the unknown world of the Sahel, the Sahara and later lands beyond the seas, was unknown to his family except his elder brother who had helped him raise the money. "Even my mother was not aware and I wished I had told her because I could have died anywhere along the journey."

"After I had secured the basic necessities for the trip which included, among other things a large water bottle (filled to the brim), loafs of bread, a jar full of shito (pepper sauce) and a good quantity of garri (a West African food made from processed cassava which can last for many months) and a few clothing and footwear, I was certain of my readiness for the challenges that laid ahead," he says. After saying a long prayer in his room, he grabbed his bag and hurriedly joined the others who were already waiting at the station and they set off by bus heading northwards towards Ouagadougou, capital ofBurkina Faso.

Badu says: "The journey was uneventful but before we were allowed to proceed any further, we paid bribes at every border crossing in Burkina Faso and the worse was to come in Niger, where their gendarmes were notoriously ruthless and corrupt.

If we hesitated in paying the bribes or tried to bargain with them for a lower charge, they would tell us to return to our bloody Ghana."

He says four days into their journey; they reached Niamey, capital of Niger, slept overnight and continued the next day towards Niger's mountainous region town of Agadez. "The bus was full of locals who had not washed up for days and their collective body odour was overwhelmingly irritating but we had to endure it for the three days the journey lasted," he says.

In Agadez, he says they met several African men and a few women who came from all over the West Africa region on the same mission. But the majority were from Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso Sierra Leone, Liberia and obviously Ghana. And they were all there for the same reasons: looking for transportation to Libya."

Regret

"It took our new 'connection man' Mohammed, a tall slim northern Nigerian in his late thirties three days to find another vehicle, this time a cargo truck which was fully loaded with empty drums. We boarded, several dozens of us; human beings standing on the drums, and the discomfort was felt right away. Our water bottles hanged outside of the truck with mini pipehoses placed in them and meandering into the truck so that when one was thirsty, he would suck from the end."

Badu says his instinct and prior anxiety was proving right by the day as the journey progressed and regretted his decision to travel. But they were so far away from home that there was no way he could go back.

They arrived at Drogu after three days their exhaustion was an overwhelming. "Almost three weeks had elapsed since we left Ghana but we were nowhere near our final destination," he recalls. Drogu was a hamlet built around an oasis in the Sahara. It had few inhabitants and served purposely as a transit point for would be immigrants en-route to Libya.

Chilling news

"Here, we were told we could not continue for the foreseeable future because the road was blocked. The reason for the blockade was that a number of people had left two weeks earlier but their truck broke down and had all died in the desert of starvation and thirst. The news was chilling and several thoughts raced through my mind. The prospect of a similar tragedy happening to me was very frightening.

After three days, news came around that we could proceed and as the driver shouted, we all boarded the truck and departed Drogu," says Adu.

Accident

He recalls: "Thirty minutes into the journey towards Libya, one side of the truck, reeling from the intense stress exerted by sheer weight of the human load gave way suddenly. One unlucky chap got trapped under the metal frame of the truck and died within thirty minutes. Several people were injured but I was only shaken. Some people decided to discontinue with the journey. But we were warned that anyone who decided to cut short the journey would forfeit his or her money.

The metal frame was reattached to the truck again with ropes and some welding. I was not strong enough but we got on the truck once more and set off again."

Break down

According to Badu four days from Drogu; their truck broke down and right away thought they were going to die. "That is it, our doom has been sealed," I said to myself. "There were two smaller cars in the convoy and since the journey ahead was farther than backwards, the smaller cars were dispatched to go back to Drogu to pick up some parts to repair the damage. They came back four days later with the spares and it took five hours to fix the truck. As we were preparing to leave, one boy from Ghana (not part of my original group of nine) had passed out and frantic attempts could not revive him.

He was gone to his maker and was buried in the desert." Back in the truck, we set off again and after three days my hunger and thirst knew no bounds. I felt so weak that I believed I was not going to make it." 

Collapse

"I entered a surreal phase at this point of the journey. I relapsed into a dreamlike trance and saw my mother. We chatted. But in actual fact I had collapsed and was dying, as I was told later. A Nigerian man saved my life. He gave me some drops of water and rubbed my face with the little water they could find to revive me. As I came around, I found how close death is to mankind. Five gruelling days later, weak and dehydrated, we arrived at the outskirts of Tajarni, a town in southern Libya. Here, the traffickers abandoned us and after a while the whole group dispersed. We were now on our own. The town's folk were very kind to us, offering us water, food and rest places."

Life in Libya

Badu says: "After a couple of days in Tajarni and after having recuperated from near death, I continued the journey with Bio, one boy from my hometown who was part of my original group to Tripoli, the Libyan capital. On the way to Tripoli, we spent days and sometimes months at Al Qatrun, Murzuq and Birack where we worked and earned enough money to pay for our onward journey.

I found jobs in Libya and made enough money but after a year the desire was to continue to Europe. After all many of my acquaintances I was on the journey with had succeeded in reaching after the other side of the Mediterranean and why not me."

Italian connection

Badu says in Tripoli, there were plenty of traffickers. A friend found him one and after paying $1,000 they agreed to ferry him together with several other Africans from Tunis to Italy. However on the day journey, Tunisian police busted our convoy at the country's border with Libya and we scattered. I made my way back to Tripoli on foot all alone in the night.

In the second attempt, this time from Tripoli, the boat's engine developed a fault. Two men fell into the sea when strong waves hit our stricken boat. A 35-year-old woman from Ghana also fell into the sea but I managed to hold on tightly to her hand even though I was weak from hunger and could have lost my life in saving her. Others helped and we pulled her out onto the boat's deck. After drifting on the Mediterranean for three days, we thought we were going to die because many before us had perished, making this short but perilous journey. However luck was to shine on us when Tunisian coastguards found and rescued us. They sent us back to North Africa though and thus ended my second attempt to reach Europe."

Success

"On the eve of October 21, 2002 and at the outskirts of the Libyan capital, we set off from a derelict beach on a fishing boat bound Italy. This journey was peaceful and 12 hours later we spotted Lampedusa, on the southern Italian island of Sicily. Italian immigration officials accosted us and I told them I came from Liberia, giving them a new name in the process.

"Thus ended my long quest to reach the promised land of Europe. " Badu says.