– “Day and night I’d see photos of my friends in Europe, they lived good lives. My friends who travelled with smugglers and live in Europe would always tell me, ‘There’s a good future for you here. Come out.’ That’s when I had the idea of that new life and good future. I’d try to be part of the life my friends were in.”Ridwan is a young man who grew up in Hargeisa, Somalia. He was satisfied with life, with his family, and his friends. He wanted to become a journalist. In the afternoons he used to play football and drink coffee with his friends.
Then one day he started to get messages on social media from friends who had gone to Europe. This disturbed him.
He contacted a smuggler who arranged his journey through Ethiopia, Sudan, and Libya. He told Ridwan that the journey would be easy, with no problems and not too long. Ridwan had heard some rumours about how dangerous the journey was, but the smuggler told him not to believe them.
“I asked the smuggler if there is suffering, beating, death and problems there. But the smuggler never tells you the truth. The smuggler always looks out for his own interest. It’s because he wants the money, there is no other reason. He will never tell you the truth.”
When he reached Sudan, Ridwan found out that all the smuggler had told him were lies. He was taken to a trafficker camp where he witnessed people being beaten and women abused. Then he was handed over to traffickers in Libya who put him in detention with hundreds of other people. He was told to call his family and ask them to pay USD 8,000. He was beaten badly every day until the money arrived. He was then taken to the seacoast for the last leg of the journey, the crossing to Europe. It was an overloaded boat with 130 people on board. They had to row the boat themselves.
“We rowed the boat for long time, until the lights of Libya disappeared. We travelled the whole night. The person steering the boat didn’t know the right direction. We circled around, around in the sea.”
The sea got rough and the boat started leaking. They were finally rescued by a Libyan ship and taken back to shore. Ridwan spent one year in a detention centre under horrible conditions. When he was offered repatriation to Somalia, he accepted. He returned to Hargeisa, where his family gave him a warm welcome. Today, Ridwan says that if he had known what he knows today, he would never have gone on that dangerous trip to Libya.
“The journey had a huge impact on my life. It’s not something you can easily forget. I faced a lot of things that I didn’t expect, beating, robbery and pain. I saw a lot of suffering that I hadn’t even imagined before. Things I had heard about but thought were lies.”