Meet Presley
Presley (Nigeria) four days after being rescued. Lampedusa, Italy. 19 April 2017. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
by:
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded:
19 April 2017
Published:
2017
Revised:
1/9/25
Meet Presley.
24 years old and from Benin City, Nigeria.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed three countries: Nigeria, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
Presley’s journey took three-and-a-half months. He left Nigeria on a bus that was packed with more people than he was able to recall or count. It was cramped enough that people were stacked on top of each other’s laps, and on the floor, into the gaps between the legs of seated passengers.
Before crossing the Niger border a tire on the bus blew out. They emptied the bus, and hid in the bushes while awaiting repair. But the repairs never happened, and they were directed to bicycles, which two people were placed each. It was a two-hour cycling trip until he safely crossed the Niger border.
Presley arrived at 5:00 p.m., then waited until midnight to make the next transfer, since he could travel safely only at night, in the dark. He arrived in Zinder, Niger, the country’s second-largest city that lies off the main road to Agadez, where he remained for five days.
In Agadez he was in a compound with over 100 people. There was a raid. Everyone ran. He was told to pay money to his new traffickers, 150,000 NGN, to continue onward. He negotiated his way past this, possibly from the help of a different trafficker who corroborated that he already paid and was clear to go.
Presley crossed the Sahara desert in the back of a pickup truck with 105 people. People were stacked on top of each other’s laps in order to fit. The journey across the desert took six days. Two people died, one girl, and one man, who they stopped to bury on the side of the road. He was scared and saw “so many graves” along the way.
“In that stage we are one.
We have to keep going together as one.”
At one point a Ghanaian girl couldn’t breath and fainted from the heat and exhaustion. Water was scarce and his supply ran out. They all chipped in and shared what remained. “In that stage we are one. We have to keep going together as one.”
He arrived in Sabha, Libya at a compound that held 85 people, including five women. He ate bread, if he ate at all. The food available was dependent on the money. If you have no money, you have no bread, he said, and that together people shared food in order to survive.
Prisoners in the compound were beaten with a stick on the bottom of their feet. People suffered broken bones. The owner of the compound raped the women held captive. If they didn’t comply, they would be beaten, a daily occurrence.
Presley was held as a slave since leaving Niger. Each compound, he said, signifying the management of a new slave owner.
He spent three weeks in Sabha, then left for the coastal camp of Sabratha, bypassing Tripoli altogether. He stayed in Sabratha, in a makeshift tent, for two-and-a-half months eating a pasta made from a mixture of flour and tap water. To drink, he took salty tap water.
Presley crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a rubber dinghy with 152 people at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday. There were “so many” pregnant women on board – not impregnated by their husbands or companions, but by traffickers who had raped them during captivity in Libya. One baby, just a few months old, was on board.
He was rescued on Saturday night, 15 April 2017 by the Guardia Costiera and landed in Lampedusa.
He is thankful to God that he is alive.
Presley is an amazing human being.
Presley was emotionally overwhelmed when MotM met him in the old port, just passing by on an errand. No one else until then had greeted him or his two friends, Michael and Desmond (also both 24 and from Nigeria), since they had arrived days before.