LEAVING
AFRICA

Over 2.5 million migrants have crossed the Mediterranean in an unauthorized fashion since 1970, the International Organization for Migration reported in 2017, while the Missing Migrants Project found that from 2014 to August 2022, a total of 24,413 migrants were reported missing in Mediterranean crossings, 4,055 of them in 2015 alone, the year of Hamsa’s passage.

Hamsa spent two days and two nights on the boat, with nothing to eat or drink and no restroom facilities or place to sleep. “It was impossible to fall asleep,” he remembers, “as there were mountains of waves that vigorously moved the boat. But the best thing to do was to pretend to sleep, as closing my eyes helped reduce the anxiety.” The traumas of the journey as a whole, especially that of the Mediterranean crossing, take emotional and psychological tolls alongside the punishing physicality of the experience – tolls that continue to manifest even after the destination is reached.

“PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] is faced by many [migrants] after going through such scarring and traumatic conditions,” says Asma Dhamac, a Somali psychologist and therapist. “Eventually, most people learn how to live with it, because it becomes impossible to forget these tragic events that happened in such a short amount of time.” For Hamsa, the burden of the crossing itself was especially heavy. “I knew about many people who lost their lives in the Mediterranean, and I certainly didn’t want that to happen to us,” he says. “It was hard to be optimistic about what was to come when I was between life and death as I sailed in the middle of the sea.”

Lacking basic navigation tools while sailing, Hamsa and his fellow travelers didn’t know which country they would reach, only that the boat was heading for Europe, following the directions given by the smugglers as the migrants departed Libya. Equipped with a whistle they could use as they neared the shore, they blew it when land came into view, and their boat was then escorted to shore by the Italian coastguard and a Navy team.

On Jan. 27, 2015 – nearly five and a half months after he had left Somalia – Hamsa and his fellow migrants made it to Italy.

They were taken to a small temporary camp about five hours away that was already filled with migrants. Despite the crowding, Hamsa luxuriated in the first shower he had taken after so long, a change of clothes, and a meal of a small bowl of rice and water. But after receiving food and shelter for a few days, Hamsa and his group were told that no further accommodations would be offered. Italy was dealing with a migration crisis following a dramatic increase from 4,406 arrivals making 12,121 applications in 2010 to 119,369 arrivals making 130,180 applications in 2017, according to a report by the European Stability Initiative. In 2015, Hamsa was one of 153,842 asylum seekers who arrived in Italy.

Now he and his fellow travelers were on their own.

A new life

“We had the option of going to other European countries, and a handful of us decided to take a train and go to Germany,” Hamsa says. “Every man was on his own at that moment.” Bittersweet farewells were said as they went their separate ways in small groups. Hamsa and several others took a train to Germany to explore the possibility of getting hosted there. Asked on the train for identification by a German officer, they told him they were new migrants and then were taken to a transit camp about a three-hour drive from that train station.

Hamsa lived in the camp with hundreds of other migrants, mostly Africans and some Syrians and Afghans, for six months as their applications for asylum were processed. He was released from the camp in August 2015, and with support from the German government made his way to Hamburg, where he received housing, German-language instruction education and a monthly stipend. After two years he received German citizenship in 2017.

Hamsa still lives in Hamburg today, where he works as a courier. “I’ve been very lucky to be accommodated and hosted by this country,” he says. “The most challenging things, even after all these years, are the social life, as Germans are more reserved people, and the language barrier.”