Hodan’s Story: The phone call from Libya
Hodan came to Sweden as a refugee in 2003. She established herself and created a stable life. In 2014, she took a job as a counsellor working with traumatised refugees. The stories they told described the horrors of the journey through Libya and across the Mediterranean. Hodan had never experienced it herself, because she came by plane.
“Many young people have passed through this horror and stress. Some of them killed themselves. Some of them are mentally unwell and surviving with medicines. I met a lot of women who had children whose fathers were not Somali. They don’t know who the fathers were; men in Libya had raped them. When the young refugees I was working with told me their stories, I felt sadness as if they were members of my own family.”
Then, one day, she received a call from a young relative who was being held by traffickers in Libya. This was the beginning of a waking nightmare for Hodan and her family.
“I don’t remember the exact date it happened, but it was 4pm. I was at work with the refugees and he called repeatedly from a number I didn’t know. I thought, ‘I should answer this. It is not a Swedish or a Somali number. ‘ He said he was in Libya and he needed USD 7,000.”
Hodan went into shock. She had raised this relative and felt very close to him. But she never imagined he would undertake the dangerous journey. Composing herself, she acted quickly. She emptied her bank account and called her relatives in Somalia asking them to collect money for the release of the boy. With her savings and money from the relatives, she paid the ransom demanded. But she and her family knew how people were treated by Libyan traffickers and feared their family member would not emerge from his hellish experience alive and whole.
“We lived with so much anxiety and stress. We couldn’t eat or sleep, we worried so much. I knew he was being tortured because I had seen on social media what is happening in Libya.”
He was eventually released by his tormentors and put on a boat to Europe. He arrived, but was a broken man, both mentally and physically, a shadow of his former self.
Hodan thinks Somalis of the diaspora are partly responsible for the exodus of Somalis back home who soon encounter cruel and appalling conditions on their way through Libya. Those who use social media to post photos and stories of a green, beautiful and welcoming Europe are part of the problem.
They rarely (if ever) describe or depict the difficulties of the journey or the problems and daily stress of living in exile. The Somali diaspora must stop misleading those at home, especially the young and hopeful; they must stop posting fake photos and stories on social media, declares Hodan.