(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . On the edge of Europe: one man’s search for safety [1] [] Date: 2024-02 “We crossed Libya, Algeria and Tunisia to find safety,” Awadh said. “All we experienced on the way was death and humiliation.” Awadh is 28 years old, from Sudan. He’s currently in Sfax, Tunisia, where he has found a job loading bags of concrete on and off trucks on building sites. He came in June. He will leave again as soon as he can. “I am working to put money aside for a boat,” he said. Awadh is on his way to Europe, but he doesn’t trust the smugglers selling passage to Italy. After all he’s been through, he wants to be the one deciding what is safe and what is not. So, along with some Sudanese friends, he is paying a local welder to build them a steel boat of their own. What do you think? Win a £10 book voucher for sharing your views about openDemocracy. Tell us This isn’t necessarily a better option. Humanitarian organisations warn that such boats are even more unsafe and unstable than the rubber dinghies used by many smugglers. But Awadh thinks differently. “We will fit tyres on each side of the boat to make it float properly,” he said. “I know it can work.” Awadh’s confidence could well be dangerously misplaced, but he doesn’t have many alternatives. Smugglers in the area charge around 3,000 Tunisian dinars per person (~£760) for passage in a boat carrying 80 to 100 people. Awadh earns around 25 Tunisian dinars a day (~£6). It would take him a long time to come up with enough money to pay for a crossing. Instead, Awadh and his friends are collectively saving up 2,500 Tunisian dinars (~£630) to pay for their own boat, engine, fuel and lifejackets. No smugglers involved. “It’s not only about money,” Awadh said. “By this point I can only trust myself.” From war to kidnapping to detention Awadh left Sudan earlier this year to find safety and work opportunities in Europe. The fighting he escaped has claimed an estimated 10,000 lives and displaced nearly 6 million people in less than a year. “Nowhere is safe in Sudan right now,” said Awadh. “Me and my family moved to the border city of Wasat Nukhalia when the war started, waiting and hoping that the fighting would stop.” It didn’t, and Awadh decided he had no choice but to migrate for work. His family returned to Omdurman, the urban extension of Khartoum on the western bank of the Nile, to wait. He knows they’re not safe there. “They have to move house every few weeks to escape the bombings,” he said. Awadh paid a smuggler around £800 to drive him and 125 other people to the Libyan Sahara, where they were dropped off close to the border with Algeria. From there they walked. Awadh said there were at least 10 children and around 20 women in the group. “We knew this part of the journey was going to be very dangerous, but we had no choice but to walk in the desert,” Awadh said. The border area between Algeria and Libya is littered with foreign militaries and armed groups. Among them are Turkish soldiers, who guard oil fields around Murzuq and Al-Qaryah, and tribes with armed militias that aren’t aligned with the governments in either Tripoli or Benghazi. Running transit houses for migrants, and occasionally kidnapping them for ransom, is a good source of revenue for those armed groups. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/on-the-edge-of-europe-one-mans-search-for-safety-migration-sudan-tunisia/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/