Meet Emmanuel

Meet Emmanuel.

26 years old and from Delta state, Nigeria.

In total his journey to Italy took about four months, starting with a bus trip in the evening from Delta state, with about 300 USD in his pocket, money he had saved after hearing from a friend who had made it to Europe. The bus traveled through the night until it arrived the next morning at 6:00 in Kaduna state, in northern Nigeria.

A smuggler connected him to a taxi for his next transfer. It was strange, a kind of magical moment in a blank, foreign space waiting for a taxi to show up, and yet it pulled up. The surprise of its arrival held in his mind, but he was swept away into the next period of movement too quickly to linger on the thought.

At night the taxi left. The first stop was at a connection house, still in Nigeria, that held numerous people – men, women and even children. Emmanuel was there only for a few hours until he took a motorino, a motor bike to the northern border with Niger. The whole trip took about an hour with two people on the bike.

He arrived in the morning, then followed direction to another connection house. Criss-crossing around him were mobs of people. It was a chaotic scene. There were animals in the open space. He saw a giraffe. It was safer inside the compound since it ensured his security from checkpoint controls on the outside, but still it too had its own kind of chaos. He lost $100 of his money at the compound when he went for a shower.

At night, smugglers entered the room calling names from a list and began filing people out, but not by their own first names. The smuggler’s name was that which determined who would leave next.

“Who is your connection man?” they’d ask individuals in waiting. “No, no – he owes me money” was the reply to those who would remain behind. At first that included Emmanuel, who knew he had paid and insisted on calling his smuggler, finally clearing his name for departure. He was not about to be left behind for a mere clerical error.

“In life, if you are determined to do it, you have the confidence,” Emmanuel said, a calculated risk-taker at every turn.

At 6:00 p.m. he entered the back of a pickup truck with 25 people inclusive of him, and including 5 women, and began the Sahara desert crossing. It was a mix of people from Gambia, Mali and Nigeria. Water, he said, was “causing confusion.” People were angry about it – about not having enough. He isn’t sure how he survived the eight days in the desert with so little, and for so many other discomforts too, which were constant. The heat was one, of course. But the cold that would bear down on him so acutely at night was what he noted specifically.

At some undefined point along the way he found 50 Libyan dinars on the ground, pocketed it, and later bought bottles of 7-Up and Coca-Cola. He was totally exhausted. While others have carried packages of gari or biscuits in a separate bag for the desert crossing, for Emmanuel it was a different story.

“A bag for food?” he gaped, “Oh my God.” No, there was no food.

“At a point I think God helped me,” he admitted. There were regularly new checkpoints where bribes would have to be paid to authorities. The days were unrelenting, draining and bleak. On the bright side, the driver of his truck, a fellow Nigerian man, made a pointed effort to advocate for Emmanuel and the others. He would keep them safe, or else. At one checkpoint, now nearing Libya, he told the men strong-arming them at the checkpoint that if anything happened later along the line to anyone in this group he would find them at their houses.

Emmanuel eventually surrendered more from the 50 dinar balance he had in his pocket to pay further bribes. He survived the desert, arriving in Gatrone, Libya, where he stayed for months, working by day at a car wash. His cousin, who had been traveling with him, left after just two weeks – more like a pause than a stay, given he had a more direct impulse to get to Germany, where he intended to reunite with his brother.

Emmanuel stayed behind working in order to continue the journey ahead, unaware of the fact that a friend in support of him had wired money to his account on the day he left Nigeria. With this gift in front of him, he was able to help others. He shared enough money to help a friend’s sister whose family had pushed her into prostitution. His car wash salary saved her.

Then controversy erupted at work, where his boss accused the team of theft. They were going to be forced to work for five days without pay as punishment, so Emmanuel fronted the cash, the team paying him back as they collected their salaries later.