Meet Ousman
Ousman (Gambia), about 10 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 Ousman.
16 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 took about nine months.
He arrived in Agadez, Niger after five days and remained in the city for four months. The city is hot, and being the departure point for the trafficking route through the Sahara desert, he found quick work as a water vendor. He delivered gallon-sized water jugs to trucks that were transporting people in the migrant community across the desert.
Ousman crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with 25 people, including one woman, and one child who was about eight to 10 years old. A journey that is typically four to five days in the end took Ousman and his group 10 days because the truck encountered mechanical problems. People onboard ran out of water as a result, and scrambled to find anything to drink at all. Eventually the group came across a source where animals were drinking.
He slept under the pickup truck because the sand unguarded by the shade was too hot. There are no trees. He saw the carcasses of dead animals around. There are graves of the dead. Abhorrent sights that became normal on his field of vision.
Just outside the border of Libya, his truck was stopped and robbed. People who didn’t have money were pulled from the truck and beaten with chains, including Ousman.
He arrived in Baye*, Libya, where he stopped for one night, then proceeded onward to Sabha, Libya, where he stayed at a compound and worked for a local to earn money for further passage.
“It is not a nice place,” Ousman said about Sabha. “I was always hearing the sound of guns.”
“We are so happy for Italy for saving our lives.”
A friend of his, just 18 years old, walked outside of the compound for a break one day, and was shot in the leg after being mistaken for a runaway. The compound was split into two areas, one inside, and the other outside, where Ousman slept on a mat. He continued to work, but sometimes he wasn’t paid. He would often be dropped without any food, water, or earnings for the day, and of course without any leverage to argue.
One day, he was kidnapped and taken to the desert where his captors took all that he had, just 15 dinars. He protested that he was just 16. He didn’t have anything else to give them.
“They don’t care,” said Ousman, “the only thing they want is money.”
From the desert kidnapping, he was then sold to a prison in Sabha where this next band of traffickers could extort further money from him, or use him as slave labor. Conditions were squalid and he faced violent beating every day. He drank toilet water to survive. Food was scarce, and when he did eat, it was crude mixture of flour and water. The limited water supply meant that he could only shower about once a month.
Ousman was sold yet again to another prison in the city of Sabha. But when he was placed on a bus, he managed to escape it and walked for two days until he met a Libyan man who allowed him to stay outside on the grounds of his home.
Sometimes he made a fire to keep warm. On other nights it rained on him. There was no food or water. He stayed here working for the homeowner doing gardening and housework until he earned enough for the man to pay for his passage on the lapalapa (the slang term for the inflatable rubber dinghy used to cross the sea), but he was never actually paid the wage. He moved to Sabratha, the seaside camp, by unknown means and waited there for two weeks before his boat departed.
Ousman crossed the Mediterranean Sea at midnight in a rubber dinghy with 141 people, including 21 women, five of whom where pregnant, and one baby. He was out to sea for 12 hours before being rescued by the Guardia Costiera and landing in Lampedusa at 6:00 a.m. on 16 April 2017.
“We are so happy for Italy for saving our lives,” he said.
Ousman is an amazing human being.
*City name and spelling not verified.