Meet Mohammed
Mohammed (Gambia) in Lampedusa, Italy. April 2017. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by:
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
1 May 2017
Published:
May 2017
Revised:
1/14/25
Meet Mohammed.
19 years old and from Brikama, Gambia.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
His journey to Europe took three years and nine months, part of which was spent with his 13-year-old sister at his side.
At first, he had enough money to survive. But there were always hungry people around when he and his sister would take their meals, “You cannot eat and leave those people,” Mohammed said. He shared his money with them so they could eat, too.
Work became a quick necessity. His stash of money was exhausted by the time he and his sister reached Mali.
He arrived in Niamey, the capital of Niger, and stayed in the city for four months in a single room above a garage with his sister and a friend. He worked as a tailor and in lumbering. He had to keep a close watch on his sister, because in the city there were other migrants, Nigerians, he says, who had tried to rape her*.
Over the course of one week and one day, Mohammed and his sister walked almost 1,000 kilometers (over 620 miles) to Agadez, Niger. He managed a few car rides between smaller cities, but slept on the road, and would eat a simple yam with sugar, and a bottle of water to drink, which he was able to buy twice daily.
He stayed in Agedez working construction for two months, while his sister sold water and ice on the street. They stayed in a compound shared with over 40 people.
“...survival is not always the outcome.”
Mohammed crossed the Sahara desert in a pickup truck with 35 people. He had three liters of water, and again, ate yams with sugar to survive. The trip took four days to complete. He said survival is not always the outcome.
“If it is nine vehicles, know that about five of them will never survive,” because, he says, many drivers do not know the route and do not have a compass. “They get lost, and their customers do not make it."
He saw a mass grave of over 100 people who perished in the desert. There were people who died in front of him. A pregnant woman didn’t have the strength in the heat and died. Another woman, weakened by the hot sun, died. They stopped to bury each of them, a shallow grave on the side of the road.
“We all prayed in our own way, and then we continued our journey,” said Mohammed.
Mohammed arrived in Sabha, Libya, at 9:00 p.m. and was immediately sold, along with his sister and the 30-plus others in the truck, to new traffickers. They demanded money, up to 1,500 euros, and threatened them with death if they did not call family members for the cash transfer.
Mohammed said his Libyan captors would hang around the compound frequently smoking marijuana and drinking. After the first night in prison, at 6:00 a.m. he noticed a door fortuitously left open, grabbed his sister and fled.
“I always heard the crying...”
He stayed in the Sabha city limits evading capture and working construction and tile work, his sister again selling water and ice on the street. They were robbed regularly and it took him about a year to accumulate enough money to transfer to Tripoli.
Before he reached Tripoli, he was brought to Bani Waled, Libya, and held in prison with his sister for six months. He was locked inside of a cage while his sister was raped. He didn’t know how many times it happened because he could not see, but “I always heard the crying,” Mohammed said.
She got pregnant. She would be raped again. She was doused with water then electrocuted, so much so a hole burned through her hand. Others endured the same. Some were electrocuted so much that they would lose fingers or their hands would be “spoiled,” as Mohammed described it.
Even after people would pay ransom to smugglers, Mohammed said they would still abuse or torture them. Other times, people would be taken to the desert and abandoned.
Two months into her pregnancy, while Mohammed’s sister was locked inside of a gas tank (a kind of fuel tanker that trails the engine of a semi-truck) with him and over eighty others, she died. There was only a small hole cut in the tanker for air, and they all choked on the fumes. Only 25 people survived.
With the help of a Libyan man (not a smuggler), Mohammed buried his sister in the desert, and escaped the Bani Waled prison. The man gave him food, and helped him find medicine for his leg that had been hurt. He worked in the man’s garden for one month and three weeks before finally leaving for Tripoli.
In Tripoli he worked as a tailor, but was not always paid. After eight months in the city, he transferred to a place called “27,” an area near Sabratha that was a former army camp that Colonel Gaddafi’s son once operated.
“Freedom was a problem” in this place, he said, but he pooled enough money with the other people there—over 2,000—that he could buy food and water to survive. They boiled water on the fire to use for bathing. He stayed for three weeks, sleeping under a canopy against the early spring Mediterranean wind.
It was the middle of the day when he crossed the Mediterranean Sea with 160 people on a rubber dinghy with 10 women, five of whom were pregnant, plus four children and four babies. The boat was out to sea for nine hours before it was rescued by the Guardia Costiera and landed in Lampedusa on Saturday, 15 April 2017 at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. Everyone on board survived.
His favorite footballers are Diego Costa and Eden Hazard, but he admires Michael Jordan more than anyone. He wants to play soccer professionally in the United States, in New York City.
Mohammed is an amazing human being.
*Mohammed described a parallel Nigerian prostitution business happening across the smuggling route. He regularly saw Nigerian prostitutes, their brothers working as their pimps. Other times, he saw Nigerian men sell their sisters directly into prostitution rings that would grant the girls passage to Italy for their sex work. There is a practice, he says, of Nigerian men calling their sisters to Libya from Nigeria so they can sell them for financial gain upon their arrival. He described the outcome for the girls too, who can be killed by Libyan authorities for the nationally outlawed sex work, or who are often deported. “If you do not sleep with the man, you do not get food,” he said. Nigerian girls and women are dependent on this trade to survive.