adminSFAX. – As the number of migrants trying to reach Europe grows, so does the number of deaths in the Mediterranean.
And, on the shores of Tunisia, it’s leaving a deadly mark.
As the sun creeps above the horizon off the shores of its eastern coast, fisherman Oussama Dabbebi begins hauling in his nets.
His face fixes anxiously on its contents, because sometimes fish are not all he finds.
“Instead of getting fish, I sometimes get dead bodies.
“The first time I was afraid, then step by step I got used to it.
“After a while, getting a dead body out of my net is like getting a fish.”
The 30-year-old fisherman, clad in a dark, hooded sweatshirt and shorts, says he recently found the bodies of 15 migrants in his nets over a three-day period.
“Once I found a baby’s body.
“How is a baby responsible for anything? I was crying. For adults it’s different because they have lived. But you know, for the baby, it didn’t see anything.”
Dabbebi has fished these waters near Tunisia’s second city of Sfax since he was 10 years old.
In those days he was one of many casting their nets, but now he says most fishermen have sold their boats for vast sums to people smugglers.
“Many times smugglers have offered me unbelievable amounts to sell my boat.
“I have always refused because if they used my boat and someone drowned, I would never forgive myself.”
A short distance away a group of migrants from South Sudan – which has been hit by conflict, climate shocks and food insecurity since its independence in 2011 – are walking slowly away from the port.
All ultimately hope to reach the UK.
One explains that they have reluctantly abandoned a second attempt to cross to Italy because of an overcrowded boat and worsening weather.
“There were so many people and the boat was very small. We were still going to go, but when we pushed away from the shore it was really windy.
“There was too much wind.”
According to Tunisia’s National Guard, 13,000 migrants were forced from their often overcrowded boats near Sfax and returned to shore in the first three months of this year.
Between January and April this year some 24,000 people left the Tunisian coast in makeshift boats and made it to Italy, according to the UN refugee agency.
The country has now become the biggest departure point for migrants trying to reach Europe.
The boat involved in last week’s disaster off the Greek coast, which has left at least 78 people dead and an estimated 500 missing had sailed from Libya.
Another stark reminder can be found at the cemetery on the outskirts of the city.
Rows of freshly dug graves lie empty in an extended part of the graveyard, waiting for the next loss sea disaster. – BBC
Mathew Masinge
Online Reporter