26
Carelinks | Italy ... continued ~
They managed to escape and tried crossing
again- and this time, they were successful,
and were picked up and rescued by the Italian
coastguard near the island of Lampedusa.
When the coastguards come to them, they
give them life jackets, and then guide the
‘balloon boat’ or dinghy to a pick up station or
vessel. There are many pictures of this on the
internet, with the migrants all wearing life
jackets. But that is not how they left Libya and
made the crossing. The shores of Libya and
southern Italy are full of bodies and damaged
“balloon boats” washing up on them. The
brethren commented that they had seen the
bodies, and yet they were the ones who
survived; and burial in water in baptism
seemed so appropriate; to die with the Lord
Jesus, and yet to rise again with Him.
Further South, we baptized King. The effec-
tive advice of Italy to the thousands of
migrants turning up is to go north to Germany.
Many do so, but are not accepted there. And
so they return to Italy, where they are given
documents allowing them to remain; but they
get no state support and are left without
accommodation and food. There is a huge
underclass of such people, and King is amongst
them.
Often they move out of the competition in the
larger cities to small towns, in King’s case, in
the mountains of central Italy. The economy
in southern Italy isn’t strong; there aren’t jobs
for local Italians, let alone these thousands of
young migrants. Many of them have no docu-
ments enabling them to return to where they
came from; Liberia, in King’s case. So they are
stuck in an awful limbo, with no income,
nowhere to live and nothing to eat. These
people are really hungry. Many turn to crime,
especially drug dealing, or the women to pros-
titution. King has a room in a tenement block
inhabited by other Africans in the same situa-
tion. But he clearly was different. Amongst
those petty criminals, this African migrant is
different. Instead of crime, he literally begs
for money and food on the streets, and gets
clothes from garbage cans. And he sells socks,
caps and umbrellas. Whenever there’s a down-
pour of rain, he rushes outside with his
umbrellas to sell; despite notices being put