Taking chances - Jama's Story
It’s a cold February afternoon in Stockholm. The temperature is below freezing and the deceptively beautiful, snowy landscape reflects light into the quickly darkening day. Jama, a Somali refugee, is seated in the small interview room. Seemingly distant and forlorn, he’s possibly thinking over his current predicament.
Jama has just received word from the Swedish Migration Agency that he will be deported to Italy, where he originally registered as an asylum seeker. Like many refugees disappointed by the limited opportunities and provisions in Italy, he chose to try his luck by traveling north. Now his luck has run out.
His journey ostensibly unending, Jama recalls how it all began in Mogadishu.
Back when I used to work I was always afraid and worried about whether I would get back home alive or dead” remembers Jama. “Sometimes you’d hear an explosion at work or while you were on the bus. That is the main reason I decided to flee.”
With the little money he’d saved, and without his family’s knowledge, Jama left Somalia with the aim of reaching Nairobi, Kenya. Life was not easy in Nairobi. Jama was arrested repeatedly for not having identification, and he managed to bail himself out every time. The situation led to his decision to move onwards to South Africa.
He traveled to the coastal city of Mombasa where he learned he could take a boat to Mozambique and then continue on to South Africa. The evening he was supposed to depart, word got to him that the boat that had left earlier had capsized. Coincidentally, that very same day, while Jama was watching a Somali satellite television station, he heard about the journey to Italy via Libya. Afraid he might suffer the same fate as those who’d drowned in the Indian Ocean, he decided to try his luck and travel to Libya— though he knew, from stories, that it wouldn’t be much easier.
“Those who have travelled before me endured hardship and imprisonment. They really had a hard time. They said that life in Europe isn’t all that it’s made up to be. They shared that with me. But the problems I left behind are much worse.”