Meet Enoch
Enoch (Nigeria) in Naples, Italy. 31 January 2024. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
Based on the testimony of:
Enoch
Correspondent:
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
31 January 2024
Published:
6 October 2025
Meet Enoch.
42 years old and from Ikole, Ekiti state, Nigeria, where he was born and raised.
He later lived in Efon Alaaye, Nigeria, with his family where more work was available, and in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria, before he traveled to Europe.
“I believe in transparency. I believe in hard work,” said Enoch, “I believe in God.”
On 16 December 2023 Enoch boarded a flight from Lagos, Nigeria, to Paris, France, with a sports visa that allowed him into the European Union for athletic training with a team. The flight from Paris connected him to another to Rome, Italy, where he landed on 17 December 2023. With the team, he traveled by train from Rome to Torino in the north. His family called around the time he arrived at the hotel, but his coach said to call back tomorrow after they were settled.
The next day, December 18, Enoch received a video call from his family that their home had been ransacked. There was broken glass everywhere. They were told to vacate or be killed, this on account of his brother, an activist making political speeches that inflamed his political opponents in the state. The family fled.
Enoch’s training in Torino stopped before it even started. His mind was racing, he was too emotional to think of anything else. His coach understood. After all, his family was being attacked. He was now faced with a choice. Stay in Torino where he didn’t have enough money to remain, or connect with a friend he had further south, in Naples, Italy.
The temporary visa gave him a couple of weeks of flexibility, a small pocket of safety before the logistics and uncertainty of an asylum claim process would begin––a decision he knew he would take now that his life was at risk in Nigeria. Naples, in his mind, would be a moment to regroup, find rest and survive. It was a surprise to find his friend, when he met him, on Piazza Garibaldi, outside Naples’ main train station panhandling for change, but he also learned that this was one way to earn while he was in limbo.
“I believe in transparency. I believe in hard work,” said Enoch,
“I believe in God.”
His friend introduced him to a lawyer, one who had previously represented him on his own asylum claim, and he got some advice. Enoch waited for his sports visa to expire, then immediately after the holiday on 2 January 2024 he claimed his asylum at the local Questura, or police headquarters.
At time of recording he is still at his friend’s home in Naples while waiting for his next appointment and interview.
“What matters is not being idle,” he said, explaining how he has been panhandling on the street and outside busy grocery stores while waiting on the next steps of his case. But this isn’t what he normally does. Aside from his athletic ambition, his professional background is in hospitality management and motivational speaking.
He is a husband and father of two young boys, who are on the run with their mother, yet without word saying otherwise, he still believes they are okay. Their house has been abandoned since December 2023. By late January 2024 he heard it had been torched. He approaches the days doing his best to earn and be productive: work is the outlet for his anxiety right now. He was cutting tiles on the renovation of a seven-story building recently, but the work wasn’t permanent. Mostly he is stationed outside of the supermarket bracing against the cold in a puffy coat and beanie cap asking for change. He has to do something.
In fact, everything feels foreign right now, especially racism, which he never before experienced in life until his first weeks in Europe.
“Just yesterday on the bus this guy stood up. I’m like? He stood up and went to the back,” said Enoch. “I was left on that seat alone. It’s not a big deal, but something I don’t see, why the whites should avoid the Black and the Blacks should avoid the white. They are giving me low self-esteem.”
He asked three different people one day for directions, “Please, I am going to [Piazza] Garibaldi,” but a Black man on the streets here is often left without reply.
“How could it be?”
Enoch is an amazing human being.