Meet Vini “Star Boy, Jr.”
Vini “Star Boy, Jr.” (Gambia) in Emmen, Netherlands. 21 October 2022. ©Pamela Kerpius/Migrants of the Mediterranean
Based on
testimony by:
Vini “Star Boy, Jr.”
Correspondent:
Pamela Kerpius
Recorded on:
21 October 2022
Published on:
8 October 2025
Meet Vini.
20 years old and from Makumbaya, Gambia.
To reach Europe he crossed four countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali and Algeria. In total, his journey to Europe took about ten months, beginning with a ferry boat from Gambia across the waterway to Senegal. The travel moved swiftly initially. A bus from Senegal took him to Bamako, Mali, and while there were checkpoints along the way, the stops were short, requiring him to pay around 200 Gambian dollars before he would be on his way again.
Vini crossed the Algerian border and traveled directly to the northern coast, to Annaba, Algeria, a port city on the Mediterranean, where he remained for 10 months. He stayed in a rented home, and even obtained temporary Algerian papers at the police station. His objective was to work and create a better life for himself. He secured a job at a local bakery packaging cakes, work that earned him 300 Algerian dinars per month. He learned a few words of Arabic (“habibi,” “yallah,” “inshallah”), but in spite of settling in, he maintained his higher ambitions to secure a better future yet.
One day, a friend named Yusef connected him with someone who he knew shuttled boats of people across the Mediterranean. Vini was interested, but played it cool. “If there is life there is hope,” he said about the endeavor. He knew this could bring his life forward, even as he understood the risks. Long before he ever saw the North African shores he had fear of the water. “Me, I hate swimming,” he said, “because I lost a friend in the sea” when he was still in The Gambia.
The connection man, Osama, took him to the shore to see the boat, and “I am very scared,” Vini said. “I was afraid, but [I have] no choice. It’s what I came for.” When he saw Yusef, Vini told him not to worry, that he’d come back to Algeria again. Maybe it was to soften the goodbye. Maybe it was to help disguise the finality of his departure. The pick-up came around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.
“My mind drives me back when I am alone.”
On 29 July 2021 at 3:30 a.m. Vini pushed into the Mediterranean Sea aboard a plywood boat with 9 people, all men, all Arab, with only a package of biscuits and water for the voyage. (He would have brought cake from the bakery, but didn’t want to arouse suspicions among his colleagues. Any stray action, he figured, could do it.)
He spent three days on the water. The moon lit the nights, but “you can’t sleep,” Vini said, when you’re out at sea like that. On the open water during the day the group would stop the boat for thirty-minute breaks. Some would jump into the blue to swim and cool off, but not Vini, recalling his lost friend back home. When everyone climbed aboard they continued again, but they were really just drifting, directionless—the GPS had broken by then—until being spotted by a Spanish rescue ship at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. on 1 August 2021.
The Spanish rescue transferred him to the Guardia Costiera vessel, which landed in Sardegna, Italy, on 1 August 2021, where Vini was immediately tested for Covid and put in quarantine. “I’m very scared,” he said, about that period of transactions that moved him so quickly from moment to moment. There was hardly time to reflect on the immensity of his experience on the Mediterranean, but of course it had left an indelible mark.
“The day I will never forget is the day I cross the sea. It’s not easy to cross from Africa to Europe. Many people died in the sea. I thank God. I’m thinking of the people who lost their lives at sea. I am thinking, Will that be me? My mother will never see my body. Sometimes I sit and think how I crossed the sea. I feel lucky. My mind drives me back when I am alone. I traveled in wintertime. I was cold. I suffered a lot.”
He was transferred to mainland Italy, to a housing camp in the Rome city center that held three people to a room, with around 400-500 total occupants. He remained for a month, then devised a plan with his friend, one who had residency documents and thus more freedom and mobility. His friend bought the FlixBus ticket that would cross international borders before arriving in The Netherlands.
Vini boarded the bus that departed at 8:00 a.m. from Rome on 11 September 2021. There was a stop in Switzerland after it had crossed the border. He held his breath as the local police talked to the driver, and took a long exhale when they never boarded. The bus continued through France, Belgium, then to The Netherlands, which carried him to Amsterdam, where he stepped off the bus and went directly to the police station to claim his asylum.
The police gave him a map and a one-way NS train ticket to Ter Apel, where he claimed his asylum formally with the IND (Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service). He stayed at the camp for one month and four days; was moved to Zuidbroek, Netherlands, to a converted hotel for three months that housed 33 boys. They had come from all over—Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Eritrea…
Vini has dreams of becoming a soccer star, which is where he gets the nickname from his friends, Vini “Star Boy, Jr.” On 15 January 2022 he was moved to Drachten, in Friesland, where he was still living at the time of this recording, in nearby Emmen, Netherlands (the connection town outside of Ter Apel, where he could meet his friends), on 21 October 2022.
Vini is an amazing human being.