The beating caused so much pain and noise in my head. It has never away. When I finally got out I decided I had to leave Sudan, because I thought the next time they would kill me. I didn’t tell anyone at all I was going. I just ran.

My name is Sadam and I class myself as Sudanese, from the capital Khartoum, although I was born in Tripoli, Libya and grew up there. I had a good childhood, got a good education, and in 2010 I went to do a banking and finance degree at university in Khartoum. That was just before the fall of Gaddafi and Libya’s disintegration. After university I did the mandatory year’s national service, but when I went back to Khartoum I was shocked that I couldn’t get a job related to my study, because I wasn’t a part of the ruling political party.

I couldn’t go back to Libya either as the country had changed and I was no longer welcome, so life became difficult. I had to do lots of different jobs like repairing mobile phones and working in a restaurant, but then in 2018 the revolution against Bashir started. I joined the protests everyday and I was detained and beaten up many times – every time I ran away and they’d catch me again. But then I had the serious beating, and I knew I had to leave.

My only choice was to go to Chad and then Libya. I couldn’t go to Egypt because you need money to get over the border, but I thought I’d be OK in Libya because after all I’d grown up there. But the country had changed so much.

It was a very scary place. In south Libya there are many tribes who catch refugees coming over the border, and if the refugees can’t pay a ransom, their captors put them in a big warehouse and sell them to whoever needs workers. I was in this system over a year, I worked on a farm and carrying bricks. When you had finished work they sold you on to another person.

Finally I escaped and I made it to Tripoli where I met someone who could get me to Europe, where I my brother lived. I paid the smuggler, and I went to the boats.

It took five nightmare days to cross. After two days we ran out of petrol and no one could get a phone signal so we just floated for two and a half days more. In the day you could just see sea and sky and where they joined it was the same colour. At night the waves were high and threw the boat around, we were waiting to die.

On the fifth day we must have floated into a network range as someone got a phone signal. The red cross came and rescued us and took us to Italy.

After being in quarantine for 10 days in Italy we were told to walk to the train and get out of the country. With some others I went from train to train, sometimes sleeping on the train and sometimes in the station; finally we got to Ventimiglia in and stayed in a camp there.

Many times I tried to cross the mountains and forests on foot, but everytime the police caught me and sent me back. Then one day I met you someone who would get me over the border for money.

He had the keys to some lorries and one night he got me onto one. The lorry stopped in Marseille, and I got out there and stayed for a long time, living in the station. Eventually I went to Paris but that was worse, and I had to survive on the streets. Then I heard that in Calais there were organizations that would help me, and so headed off to northern France.

I met Care4Calais there. They allowed me to survive.

They gave me clothes and food and some shelter. I really would not have minded staying in France, but there was no help from the state, no one to help me understand what I needed to do to be able to stay in France. So that left the UK.

I hated the thought of getting on a boat and travelling on the sea again. I tried the lorries but they are so hard to get on and dangerous, you have to run behind them to try to find one you can get on. One of the refugees I was with fell from the lorry he was on and he was trapped under the wheels, he died that way, it was horrible.

So I ended up getting a boat. I said it was better to die in the sea than stay in France and live like a beggar being chased from place to place.

On the 12th of June I got to the UK. I was sent to a hotel in Bristol after Dover. I was happy to be here, straight away I felt safe in the hotel. I was thinking I could have a future and maybe have help for my head injuries. Josie, a Care4Calais volunteer said she would help me find a doctor to treat them.

But then I got the letter that said I had to go to Rwanda. This was not a good day. In my hotel so many people have mental health problems, from their journey or from their injuries or what they have seen. Getting the Rwanda letters has made it worse, people are cutting themselves and having nightmares. Someone through himself at a glass door and broke it. People try to commit suicide. Often the police are here. We do not feel safe, the letter makes us feel we will be removed at any moment. It is the worst feeling, it is like being back in Sudan waiting for the executioner.

Rwanda is not safe, and I’m scared all the time, I don’t eat or sleep, and I just think all my journey was for nothing. Three years of hell for nothing.

The thing that helps me feel better is Josie calling me everyday. She is so good; everyday she tells me, you are not alone, we are here for you, we will fight for you,

And everytime she says it, I feel a bit better.

The post Sadam’s Story appeared first on Care4Calais.

Libya is like hell for African men, but for women it is worse than hell. It is a living, never-ending nightmare they cannot escape from. You never hear their stories. Because they never escape.

In Libya I lost the woman who took care of me when my own mother died. Even when I had nothing, she made sure I had something to eat and she sacrificed herself for me.

I’m from Eritrea but I left when I was five or six. My family were Christians so life in Eritrea was so hard. My father died when I was young, I never knew him and my mum could not get work so we went to Ethiopia. We were there until I was seven years old but always illegally, and we could be sent back at any time.

When I was seven we moved to Sudan so my mum could get a job as a housekeeper. It was just in a normal house and they hired illegals as they did not have to pay much.

It wasn’t much of a life for me, because I had to stay in the house nearly all the time so that I wouldn’t be seen. As time passed things got harder for us in Sudan as the authorities were jailing and deporting migrants. The only thing I remember is that there was a small river near where we lived, sometimes I would go there and I learned to swim. That was good. I like to swim.

When I was 14 my mum got sick, and passed away. She had a friend called Hannah who worked in a house nearby, and when my mum died she took charge of me.

Hannah was Ethiopian and a migrant like us. At the time the Sudanese police were raiding homes more and more often, and she knew it was getting dangerous for us to stay there.

After thinking a long time about it, she decided she would try to get the two of us to Europe. But that meant passing through Libya.

When people from Sudan head to Europe, we know we have to go through Libya. There is no other choice. We know that kidnapping, jail and torture await us there, and if there was another way no one would try to pass through. To head to Libya shows how desperate we are to escape our countries.

Hannah paid a smuggler to get us out of Sudan and into Libya. Once over the border we were put in a warehouse with about 300 other people. We were moved around to other warehouses and different people. This is when Hannah started getting raped.

Women cannot get through Libya without being raped, and usually it is not just once by one man, but so many times by so many men. You can’t imagine the horror of it. I knew what was happening, and I wanted to help her, but I couldn’t. I was still only 14 years old.

We escaped, hoping to cross the sea to Europe, but we were caught and sent to a prison in an area called Kufra. The prison was like a big field of concrete, with no beds and no roof. The guards there told us they wanted our relatives to send money as a ransom. They wanted $6000 which was impossible for us, but I have an uncle in Israel who tried to find money for me, and he managed to get $2000. With that, the guards let us out.

They let us go, but instead of freeing us they sold us to another smuggler, and we were passed around different traffickers for 15 months. It was a very bad time. Hannah was raped again and again by gangs of men. She eventually became pregnant, but didn’t know which man was the father.

She realised now that she would never be able to leave, and would be kept there as a sex slave to these men. In time, as my 16th birthday approached. My uncle sent more money, and she told me I had to go. She made me leave her, and I have not heard from her since I left, as she has no phone or way to communicate. But I am sure she is still there, and will die there.

My uncle found a smuggler who said I could work for him to earn a passage on a boat to Europe. I did hard labour on a farm, and after six months he said I could go.

The boat was an inflatable and not big, but it had 112 people on board and we were on the sea for 60 hours. It was very scary because the boat got a hole in it, and began to deflate slowly. The coast guard rescued us, and took us to Malta.

As soon as I got to Malta I was put in detention, and after a year I was told to leave. I was sent to accommodation where I was told I could stay, but after six months I was thrown onto the streets. Eventually I made my way to Italy, then Belgium then Calais, where I managed to get across to the UK in another boat. Now I’m in a small place near Birmingham.

It is good here, because at last I feel safe. I love the feeling of safety in my hotel.

I hope now I can have a normal life, like a normal teenager. I really want to go to school, as I never had the chance to go before. And I’d love to go swimming again.

I think I have a chance of life here, but when I think of Hannah in Libya,, I feel panic rising up in me. and have to shut my mind.

But I still think of Libya. I want you to know how bad it is. There are still so many people there, so many die and so many are in prison. I don’t know what you or anyone can do to change it, but if someone tells you they have been in Libya, please be kind to them. You really have no idea what it is like.

The post Jonas’s Story appeared first on Care4Calais.