The Worst Thing that Happened in My Life
Five years ago, before I came to Canada, I lived in Sudan for three years. Sudan is one of the biggest countries in Africa. Many Eritreans live there because of the border conflict with Ethiopia. While I was living in Sudan, I had a dream to immigrate to Canada and that dream has come true. However, before I came to Canada, I had gone to Libya to try to cross the Mediterranean Sea to seek resettlement in a European country.
The decision I made was very tough as what I was doing was illegal, and it wasn’t as easy as I’d expected. I had agreed to pay some people 200 US dollars to help us reach the border of Libya. Then I would pay them 300 US dollars more upon reaching the capital city of Libya. The drivers of the vehicles had guns. They shouted at all of the people who had paid money to travel with them: “Give us more money or we are going to leave you in the desert.” We had reached the middle of the desert, so we were very worried about our safety. We didn’t have a choice. They could kill us if they wanted, and no one would ask any questions.
We travelled during the day and at night we slept. The situation we were in was very dangerous. No one could sleep because all of us were worried that they would leave us in the desert. They didn’t care about us; they only cared about money. However, that wasn’t the only problem. Forty-eight people were squashed into one small Land Cruiser. It was a miracle that the car held all of us and our belongings. We were stacked like a bundle of sticks. People were lying on top of others.. One lady screamed out, “Oh, my leg is broken!” but no one could help her because all of us were sandwiched together and in pain ourselves.
On the fifth day of our journey, we reached the border of Libya. Our drivers shouted out: “Do not move from here! We are coming back tonight.” We had to trust them because there was no other option. I knew they had guns. I started to pray to God. Several times, they came back with one bottle of water for each of us.
Then they said, “We can’t take you today. There are too many police.”
I asked, “Do you realize that we don’t have any food, and we need more water.”
One of them said, “Okay. We’ll bring food and water tonight.”
That night no one came, and on the second day it was the same. I started to become very worried and I prayed to God to save us. I didn’t know what had happened to the men. We were in the desert and the sun was overhead, so we had no shelter.
Suddenly, the border patrol police came and they noticed us. At that time I was too weak to explain how I was feeling. The policemen first called for help and then they gave us first aid. Afterwards, they took us to prison and asked us for our passports, but we didn’t have them because we were trying to enter Libya illegally. Then, the policemen did us a favour and asked us to pay them 500 US dollars or spend two years in prison.
I told him, “We don’t have any money at this time.”
He replied, “You can all phone your families to send money to you.”
“Okay,” I said. “We will try.” We did as he asked.
Finally, I reached the capital city of Libya, Tripoli. I stayed there for 10 months and I tried several times to cross the Mediterranean Sea in a small boat. However, I couldn’t cross due to bad weather and I turned back in the middle of the sea to return to Libya. I waited until the following year to try again, but I had to wait because the weather was bad from the end of November until the end of May.
One day, a cousin of mine wrote to tell me to go back to Sudan because my sponsor had arrived there. I returned to Sudan the same way that I had left, but it was not as tough as it had been the first time. I learned some valuable lessons from that experience. In life, things do not always turn out as we hope or expect. Be careful whom you trust and try not to put your life in danger. Life is precious.
Million Mered is a student in Sheila Morris’
Grade 11 English Class.
