Tension is rising in Lampedusa: ‘We are a people in solidarity. But we feel abandoned’

Didi walks like an Italian flag. Red pants, light gray sweater and a bright green headscarf to protect the five-year-old boy from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, from the killing Sicilian sun. He smiles shyly. Maria Bamba (31) left her two daughters with her mother and fled to Europe alone with him. The long journey, through five African countries, ended in a boat trip from Tunisia, Maria says. And that crossing frightened her so much that she lost her voice along the way. “I screamed my lungs out,” he said hoarsely.

Since Tuesday, mother and son have been in the overcrowded shelter of the hotspot, the first shelter, on Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island close to the African coast. It’s a difficult situation. They haven’t eaten or drunk anything for a day. The center is so packed that food distribution is chaotic. “The men just push us aside,” she says angrily. „The Son of Sauvagesthey behave like savages.”

Is that really necessary? Are they also going to sit on our doorstep?

Outside the center, which is operating at more than ten times its capacity, it is buzzing with activity. Large Red Cross trucks drive back and forth, carrying even more goods and equipment. Buses pick up migrants to take them by ferry to asylum centers elsewhere in Italy, to relieve the hotspot of Lampedusa, which has been bursting at the seams for days.

But that is very difficult. At one o’clock in the afternoon, at the hottest time of the day, a group of hundreds of African men wait in the middle of the street in the blazing sun for a bus that never comes. “They have been here since eight o’clock this morning,” said Aldo, a Red Cross volunteer from Genoa. “And so do we. I didn’t expect it to be this hard. This is no longer sustainable.” A young man approaches Aldo, who asks if he wants a bottle of water. “No!” says the young man. “I just want to get out of here.”

Decrepit telephone booth

Normally, the procedure provides that newcomers are not allowed to leave the hotspot in the first days after their arrival. But with such an overpopulated center this is now untenable. That is why groups of men, with towels on their heads against the heat, walk into the center of the town, looking dazed at the tourists drinking cappuccinos on the terraces. A young Ivorian tries to get a dilapidated telephone booth working again. He takes out forty euros. “How does this actually work? I want to call mom.” But the telephone booth only works with telephone cards, and they are no longer sold.

He then heads towards the parish church, where an impressive queue of hundreds of hungry African men forms around lunchtime. Local residents have also heard that the Red Cross is not doing well with food distribution. “So we did some shopping and started cooking,” says Grazia Migliosini (60), owner of a shop selling jewelry and ceramics. “We are a people of solidarity,” she says, pouring water into a migrant’s plastic cup. Plates are constantly being distributed at the church with pasta or rice with tomato, couscous with black olives or fresh lasagna. The migrants eat their portion on the edge of the sidewalk.

Not to everyone’s joy. “Is that really necessary, are they also going to sit on our sidewalk?” an older man shouts. Local resident Caterina (77) agrees: “This is hell. At least Berlusconi stopped them. He made an agreement with Gaddafi and it worked. But yes, now Berlusconi is dead, and we are left with it.” But Grazia too, although she has been a volunteer for twenty years, is gradually reaching her limit. “Of course we feel tired and abandoned.”

There are several white sheets hanging on the village square, with black and red slogans on them: ‘No more deaths at sea!’ and also: ‘Regular immigration, now!’ A little further on it reads: ‘Europe and Rome: where are you?’

From state of emergency to state of emergency

Mayor Filippo Mannino (40) feels exactly the same way. “The problems in Africa and Tunisia are nothing new. Yet we keep bouncing from state of emergency to state of emergency, and there will never be a sustainable solution.” What he wants? Ships that lie in front of the island pick up the shipwrecked people and then immediately take them to reception centers with much more capacity. “Like the Italian rescue operation Mare Nostrum, which was started after the major shipwreck of 2013. We should do something like that again, but with the support of all countries bordering the Mediterranean.”

But according to Totó Martello, hotel owner, chairman of the local fishermen’s association, and until last year mayor of Lampedusa, Italy does receive financial help to run the hotspot. “The EU promised 14 million euros to better manage and decongest the hotspot,” says Martello, on a bench in the shade in front of one of his three luxury hotels. “With that money one can also purchase boats to take the migrants away faster,” says the former mayor, a member of the left-wing opposition party Partito Democratico (PD). But that doesn’t happen, says Martello, “and now the ferry is used, with which the inhabitants commute between Lampedusa and Sicily, and the island’s fishermen also have to transport their merchandise. As a result, they arrive a day late at the market in Sicily, where they only receive 50 percent of the price for their fish.”

It is difficult and takes time, but the migrants are indeed being removed, says Francesca Basile, the Red Cross coordinator at the hotspot. “Two thousand migrants will leave on Friday, and another two thousand on Saturday, as long as the machine can handle it,” she says with a tired smile.

Next stage

For the migrants, such a transfer is merely the next stage of their long journey. They can end up anywhere in Italy, but on Saturday 780 migrants from the hotspot of Lampedusa arrived at the reception center of Pozzallo, a port town in southern Sicily. Earlier this week, 142 men, women and children were already sheltered there.

Exceptionally NRC access to the Pozzallo hotspot, a large, yellow building with a spacious courtyard, completely fenced with a three-meter high bright blue fence, which is strictly controlled by the police. Entering the hot spot in the port only turned out to be possible after a long bureaucratic procedure and an avalanche of phone calls to the mayor and the prefect. He is the representative of the Ministry of the Interior in Rome, which must first approve any visit by registered letter. Talking to the newly transferred migrants is allowed, but making recognizable photos or audio recordings is prohibited. Officers and surveillance cameras keep a close eye on whether these rules are being followed.

The migrants are housed in two large dormitories, one intended for young men, the other for families with children. The large, white-painted rooms are full of rows of blue bunk beds. Some migrants put a brown blanket over their heads to sleep off the dangerous sea crossing.

But Oumar is wide awake. In the family dormitory, the three-month-old baby looks at all the activity around him with wide, amazed eyes. He laughs mischievously when his mother Absetou hugs him and plays with him. She fled all alone, from Bamako, Mali. “The journey took five months. I gave birth on the way, in Algeria.” She now wants to go to her sister, who has been living in Rome for several years.

Migrants take a shower in the men’s section. Next to it is a table football table, and opposite it is a stack of mobile phones charging at the numerous sockets. Rachida, a 27-year-old woman from Benin in a red T-shirt and bright yellow skirt, walks into the room to say she couldn’t call her parents yet. An African mother asks for milk for her baby.

The migrants are disoriented. They were only transferred to Pozzallo a few hours earlier, in the middle of the night, and most of them have no idea where exactly they are. The care providers first wanted to let them get some sleep.

After the umpteenth question, I draw a map on my notepad and indicate Lampedusa, Sicily and Italy on it. “So we’re still in Italy, right? Happy!” says Ayed Kedeir, from Tunisia, relieved.

Police officers kick a ball with some children in the courtyard. Tunisian and African young men play a game of football among themselves, barefoot in the scorching Sicilian afternoon sun. “You wonder how they tolerate that heat on their feet,” says an officer. “Some are very good football players. They mark out a very small goal with plastic bottles or flip-flops, so that scoring becomes even more difficult.”

Painful hernia

Now the atmosphere is calm, until Pozzallo is also full, fears Fatiha El Arbaoui, a Moroccan-Italian aid worker who has been working in the hotspot for ten years. She speaks from experience, because two years ago some migrants set fire to a pile of mattresses. In the chaos that ensued, about thirty of them managed to escape. The large television in the men’s dormitory was also destroyed in the fire. The door to the infirmary and the toilet are still broken. According to Fatiha, the fire was started by the Tunisians: “They are often frustrated, afraid that they will be sent back.”

Afraid that their application for protection will soon be rejected because there is no war or conflict in Tunisia, the Tunisians talk about their medical problems in great detail. -Ayed Kedeir (42) fled the Tunisian city of Mahdia with his wife Wafa Berim (34) and daughter Ayett Allah (1) and is struggling with a painful hernia. His wife suffers from polyps and cysts, while Ayett is dealing with a nasty bronchitis.

But the sub-Saharan Africans in this hotspot now also face a difficult fight for residence papers. Some readily admit that they did not flee war, but pure poverty. Like Abdellah (25), a tall, burly young man with a small beard, from Benin. Calmly, he answers every question. He was at sea for three days, and that was “un peu difficile” – a bit difficult: “Our boat had a leak. We had to pump water the entire trip to make it.”

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He was in Tunisia for two weeks, where “they shouldn’t know anything about Africans. They abuse us there.” He does not provide details. Leaving Benin was not even his choice, his family decided that for him. “Dad is dead, and mom is left with nine children.” He had to go to Europe to make it here, so that he can later support the entire family in Benin with his income. He wears a yellow T-shirt he received at the shelter and smiles politely. He seems fit and strong, but his tired eyes reveal the burden on his shoulders. He may have reached Europe safely, but he is only at the beginning of a whole new journey.

A version of this article also appeared in the September 16, 2023 newspaper.