“Ahmed!
Ahmed! Ahmed!“
– a breathless voice can be heard at the opposite side of the
square and, like a domino effect, awakens everyone who rests in the
area. They get up and nervously try to find out who is the lucky one,
reverently repeating the name. The one who called out holds a cell
phone in his hand, Ahmed (a made-up name) jumps up from a bench and
runs towards the person to receive a gift that is very precious in
the Italian city of
Catania: a telephone
call from a different European country.
An
Egyptian minor shows photographs of friends and relatives who have
found refuge in Sudan, Ethiopia, Sweden, and Germany (Photograph
taken by Gabriela Sanchez)
He picks up the phone and listens; he smiles. On the other end of the line is his sister; she is calling from Sweden. Ahmed is from Eritrea and has arrived on the Italian island a month ago after having crossed the Mediterranean with a plastic boat, after having suffered weeks of fear, abuse and imprisonment in Libya, after crossing the desert in Sudan and Ethiopia on a pick-up truck without any water or enough food. Ahmed is 12 years old and has traveled alone, without any family, for thousands of kilometers.
The
kid lives with 15 other people – most of them hailing from Eritrea,
children and adults – close to the main station of Catania, which
has become a meeting point for those who want to leave Sicily and,
then, Italy. They try to survive in this area and to save up enough
money to continue their journey to reach their actual destination:
Northern Europe.
They
neither have food nor drinking water; neither a change of clothes nor
shelter. They live off of the help of a variety of organizations and
NGOs whose employees come here now and then to hand out sandwiches,
clothes, and personal hygiene products. Most of them decided for a
life on the streets because they are scared to be forced to stay at a
reception center forever if they remain in one for too long. Italy,
to them, is only one station on their journey, the actual
destinations are called Germany, the Netherlands, or Sweden.
Most
of them flee
from Eritrea, a country that, according to a recently published
report by the United Nations, “systematically violates human
rights.” “There is no freedom. It simply does not exist there. I
fled because I want to live in freedom,” Kabede (another made-up
name), 16 years old, concludes while lying on the lawn of the square.
Because of this he boarded a plastic boat crammed with humans and
stayed there for hours, a whole night, one of his feet dangling in
the Mediterranean. He continued his journey the same way, in the face
of suffering, in the face of being shot at in Libya, in the face of
the fact that he had seen two of his fellow travelers die, their
bodies being left behind in the Sahara. “They
died of thirst or starvation.”
Now
they need 38 Euros to purchase a ticket to Rome, the first step in
this latest phase of their migration. Many of them hope that their
families will send the money. “To wire money internationally, as it
happens in practice, they need documents and need to be of age.
Because of this they often are forced to deal through a third party
who usually want money in return for their services. It is difficult
to find out whether the sponsor is an actual family member or a human
trafficker who becomes the debtor of the migrant,” Andrea Bottazzi
claims, a member of Oxfam Italia’s project “Open Europe.”
“Others wash cars to earn the money. They earn five Euros per car,
so they don’t need a lot of time to save up enough money.”
Ahmed’s
pockets are filled with crinkly pieces of paper full of telephone
numbers like the ones he jots down nonstop while being on the phone
with his sister. “The Eritrean community in Europe is very strong
and very well connected. On their journeys, there is a variety of
situations in which migrants have contact with human traffickers,”
Bottazzi tells us.
Some
telephone numbers are from people who can help them on their ways.
Other numbers, those with international European area codes, belong
to Gyrman, Abdul’s brother, or Fatima, from Sudan, who asks how her
brother Sami is doing, or a mother from Eritrea who wants to know
where her son lives. And the kid who is on the square the whole day
tries to give details on his situation and simply says “I am in
Catania.”
Oxfam Intermon
and other local associations assume that during 2016 there has been
an increase of unaccompanied minors arriving in Italy of
approximately 20%. According to UNHCR,
almost 17% of the 79,851 people who arrived in Italy this year via
the Mediterranean are minors.
They
fear having to stay in Italy because they are underage.
When
asked how old they are, all of them answer the same thing. “I am 16
years of,” Sami sassily answers on the station forecourt. His small
frame, his face, and his narrow back, however, all tell a different
story: that he probably is only 12 years old. His eyes give him away,
they feature a look of childish innocence but also the suspicion, a
result of difficult memories that do not seem to fit with his small
size.
He
is not the only one. All say that they are between 16 and 17 years
old. They say it with confidence and repeat the answer until the
question is stopped being asked. “Everyone of us was told that the
very small children, the 12 and 13 year-old ones, are put in centers
and cannot leave them. The ones who are of age are sent to centers
that are completely far off and where there is nothing to do,” one
of them who is not as small any more tells us.
“All
kids who are younger than 16 have to go to school and because of this
they are under control. On the other hand, those who are of age have
to register after arrival and to give their fingerprints. Because of
the Dublin agreement, they can be sent back to Italy this way if they
go to a different European country and are caught by police.
Unaccompanied minors, on the other hand, are unaffected by this
agreement and can, therefore, stay wherever they went,” Oxfam
Italia explains to us.
“We
read you your rights so that you can freely decide what you want to
do”
Some
of them remain on the square and try to leave Italy, but not all of
them do it because of this. Some stay here because they do not have
any other place to go. To find these people, a mobile unit of Oxfam
Italia travels Sicily looking for newly arrived people who fell
through the cracks in the first-reception system because of
irregularities in the registration centers (hotspots).
Andrea
Bottazzi (Oxfam Italia) talks to some Eritrean minors at Catania’s
main station
Photograph
by Gabriela Sanchez
“The
majority of people whom I have met on the streets do not go to the
centers because they want to leave Italy, but we have also met some
who want to seek asylum and were left outside before they were able
to do so,” he adds. We know of cases where refugees lived on the
streets lost and without orientation because they did not know that
they have the right to go to a center and apply for shelter.
At
the station’s forecourt in Catania, Mechal (a pseudonym) timidly
shows us his documents. He is not completely aware of the meaning of
these documents which he carefully keeps in an envelope of which he
never loses sight. An employee of Borderline Sicilia who works with
Oxfam Italia puts his mind at ease and explains to him the documents’
content. He also explains to him the rights he has in Italy.
“Although they should have already had their rights explained to
them in the reception center, many of them do not know their rights.
We give them the necessary information so that they can freely decide
what they want to do, whether they want to stay here or would rather
go,” the person in charge of Oxfam’s mobile unite adds.
“When
I was rescued, I felt bad, I had a headache and I felt unwell”
Mechal
wants to reach his brother in France. The young Ethiopian is not like
the little ones who do not want to be too small but also not like the
older ones who do not want to be too old. He shows us his papers
which show him to be 23 years old. First and foremost, he does this
because he seems to have an urge to tell people around him that,
after having arrived at the port of Catania coming from Egyptian via
the Mediterranean, he was hospitalized in a mental-health clinic
where he was kept for 8 days. “I was not myself! I do not know what
happened to me, I was feeling really bad. My head hurt…” Mechal
laments. “I was not myself,” he repeats sitting on a bench in
front of the main station.
Ethiopian
minors on the streets of Sicily
Photograph
by Gabriela Sanchez
Sitting
on a worn-out couch in the middle of the square, he tells us that it
took two weeks to get from Egypt to Sicily. “During those 15 days,
there was only the sea, the wide open sea, only the wide open sea.”
This is the last memory of many that live in his mind. To explain his
journey, to make sure to not forget any detail, he asks for pen and
paper.
He
draws Ethiopia, the capital serves him as a reference point but his
journey began in the south of the country. “From here, where I
lived, I reached Addis Abeba by foot,” he describes his journey. He
continues his story and draws Sudan and Egypt.
The
extreme heat of the Italian island tires the children who lie on the
lawn of the forecourt for hours, waiting in hope of a telephone call,
a Facebook message, being sent money or handouts by one of the many
tourists who go the main station every day. One of the smaller
children of the camp walks up to the Proserpina fountain, the basin
in the middle of the square. He bows down over the still water, fills
up his bottle and drinks. “It is water, it is hot here and that is
all we got…,” he says with a smile of resignation.
At
nightfall, the square becomes empty. Mechal and two of his friends
from Ethiopia stand up and begin to search for a place to sleep in
the nearby streets. While doing this, they explain their reasons to
flee from Ethiopia. “I couldn’t go to school there, there is no
future,” Abdul (another pseudonym) explains. “I want to lead a
good life and to study engineering,” Mechal adds. They stop at a
traffic light before finally reaching the place where they will sleep
this night. Here, they prefer to say goodbye to us. “We will sleep
close by, no matter where, we don’t have any money anyway,” they
say sheepishly.
Like
every evening, they will fall asleep to the same thought tonight, to
the same wish: that the idiomatic “see you tomorrow” will become
a true “goodbye.”
“We
will see each other tomorrow in Rome!”
Gabriela
Sanchez
Translation:
Annika Schadewaldt
