Meet Baboucarr
Babou (Gamba) 12 days after being rescued. Lampedusa, Italy. 28 April 2017. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
28 April 2017
Published:
2017
Revised:
1/10/25
Meet Baboucarr.
27 years old and from Gambia.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
His trip took about 4 months in total, starting on 26 December 2016.
After arriving in Senegal, he took a bus to Mali, then to another from Mali to Burkina Faso, and finally, one more us from from Burkina Faso to Agadez, Niger. It was one month and 20 days total travel time by bus to reach Agadez.
He remained in Agadez for three weeks, working as a tailor making clothes in a local factory. When he had saved enough money it was time to continue forward.
Babou crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with 23 people and with 5 liters of water on hand. The supply was not enough, so to survive the four-day trip, other travelers shared some of their stock with him. It was a difficult, violent scene across the Sahara.
“I see human skeletons,” said Babou, “I see a lot of things. Even the animals, they are dying in the desert like the rest of the human beings.”
After crossing, he waited in Sicadim*, Libya, for a driver who was to take him to his next stop, but never showed up. It was’t safe in the area, so he stayed in hiding. With the other travelers he pooled his money to buy food and water to survive. Two from the group were assigned to travel into the town center every day to get their daily supplies.
Resources were scarce though, so he often drank dirty well water that made his stomach sick. He continued onward with one night in Gatrone, Libya, a main transfer point before Sabha, Libya, and stayed in a ghetto, or crowded compound for two weeks in the city. The ghetto was marked by violence and guards would cut people if they tried to leave or got out of line. Again, the water quality was dismal and unfit for drinking.
Babou was transferred next to Bani Waled, Libya, remained for 11 days at a compound that held more than 600 people.
It was a “big, big, big compound,” said Babou, about the vast holding space where everyone slept on the floor. It cost 1 dinar for one piece of bread, the sole item on offer to eat, but if you have no money, you will forgo the meal. The traffickers who managed the compound would take pity on people without food from time to time, but not first without a beating, which were an everyday occurrence. Baboucarr was subjected to this violence too, because he didn’t always have money either.
If people were caught with mobile phones they’d be taken away, the nature of their business too precarious to risk people inside communicating with the outside world.
“Everybody is thinking
they’re going to die today.”
He transferred to Tripoli where he stayed in hiding for three days in a compound that held more than 100 people. For two days he neither ate or drank given the scarcity of food and water. The water supply was so low in fact he was unable to bathe, and only once had the luxury of washing his face.
In his next and final stop in Sabratha, Libya, the notorious seaside camp, he remained for over a month, with no shelter and sleeping out in the open.
“It is very cold,” he said about the crisp seaside air, “very cold.” So much so that sometimes he was unable to even sleep.
The water he had was from the tap, which was pulled from the sea – salty and unfit for drinking. He went to work so he could buy food to eat. He made the risky move of leaving the camp daily for this work, and even then, sometimes his Arab employers would not pay him. He often received water or food in exchange for his services.
The first time he left Libyan shores, his boat reached international waters and was then caught by the Libyan police. The authorities cut the inflatable vessel so it could no longer travel, he was picked up, then taken to prison. Babou was in prison for two weeks with no food and only unclean tap water to drink, escaping by unknown means, and returned himself to the coast where he stayed again for another month.
In mid-April 2017 Baboucarr crossed the Mediterranean Sea on a rubber dinghy with 168 people, including six children and 30 women, two of whom were pregnant.
“People are crying,” Babou said, “You can’t see nothing, only water. Everybody is thinking they’re going to die today.”
He was out at sea for 10 hours before he was rescued by the Guardia Costiera and taken to Lampedusa, Sicily, where he landed at 6:00 a.m. Easter Sunday, 16 April 2017.
Baboucarr is an amazing human being.