Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Photo | Liban pictured on his Facebook page last year
(ERGO) - Liban Khadar Jama, 24, feels like a very lucky man. He is one of the survivors of the migrant boat disaster tragedy in the Mediterranean in April, in which hundreds drowned.
Liban was a third year law student at the University of Hargeisa in 2015. In the university holidays, he travelled to Ethiopia. While there, he heard that one of his friends from Hargeisa had migrated to Europe. He decided to take a chance and get to Europe as well. He made his way over the course of seven months across Sudan to Egypt.
He told his story by phone from Greece to Radio Ergo’s Fowsiya Omar Barre. She asked him first where he got on the ill-fated boat.
Liban: The migrants were brought together from different places. Twenty one Somalis including me left Alexandria on 7th April by bus. The smugglers took us to stay in different places for five days. On 12th April, we set sail from Tobruk, the coastal city of Libya near the Egyptian border. The small boat we were in cracked and there were big holes so it started to take in water. Three people including a young boy and a girl drowned. We were transferred to another small boat which was already full of migrants. After 15 hours in the water, they brought us to a big boat carrying more than 200 migrants that had been waiting for us on the sea for two days. The big vessel was meant to ferry different groups of migrants like us who were brought by many small boats from different places.
Fowsiya: How did the accident happen?
Liban: The small boat was brought up alongside the big boat and they tied it to the vessel with ropes. The passengers started to rush to the big boat to take positions, making the boat tip to one side. Then, the smugglers told them to move to other side and people rushed to other side. This made the boat lose balance. With the added weight, the boat capsized and went down within a minute. Everyone was in the water and the sea swallowed them up.
While the disaster was happening in front of us, 30 migrants including me were still on the small boat, as we had decided to just stay there and wait until everyone else had boarded the big boat before we moved. God saved us. It was a shocking incident. We threw ropes and managed to save 10 of them. Only seven people survived from my group [of 21] that had set off from Egypt together.
Fowsiya: How did you reach Greece?
Liban: The Arab smugglers gave us telephone numbers of the Italian coast guards before they left us and took another boat. They told us to talk to them. We called the Italian coast guards after we had spent many hours in the water and used all the food and water we had with us. We asked them to help us but they said, ‘We are very far away from you so we can’t help you.’ They asked us if there was any ship near us and if so to describe its colour. We said yes, there is one and we described its colour to them. The coast guards got in touch with the ship. It was a merchant ship. They were men from the Philippines. They rescued us and took us to Greece instead of Italy.
Fowsiyo: You are in Europe now. Do you think it was worth risking your life and leaving your university for this?
Liban: No. It is not worth the money my family used to finance me, and the time I wasted. I was a third year student at the university. I cannot compare that situation to now. To our youth, I would say, Brothers and sisters don’t ever try to cross the sea. Count yourself lucky if you live with your family and are enrolled in a university. It is a fact that no hungry man can afford to migrate. Only those who can afford do migrate. Thank God and stay in your country. Currently, there is no war or fighting in our country so you don’t need to flee from the country. There is no tangible reason to migrate. Smugglers won’t care about you even if you all die. They are only after your money so be wise and think twice before you risk your life.