BEN

“I had to change to survive: too much poverty around me.”

When he realises this, Ben is not even 14 years old. He finishes middle school and leaves Guinea in various troubles, without a penny in his pocket. “I found work as a dishwasher at a kiosk in the Ivory Coast, the idea of cooking immediately appealed to me.” But even there, recently after the end of a civil war, life becomes complicated and after six months, he leaves.

First contact with traffickers: money, passage to Mali.

Second contact with traffickers, more money to get to Algeria (earned in about a year: dishwasher, bricklayer, unloader and porter).

Third contact with traffickers, more money, “to enter Morocco” and attempt the lunge at Fortress Europe through Ceuta and Melilla. But nothing, intercepted and sent back. “So I went back to Algiers and worked like a slave to try to go through Libya. 

Fourth contact with traffickers. More money. Then finally the departure from the coast. On a dinghy, not even a boat. “One man died on the journey. I saw his and my death together. I never recovered.” Rescued by an NGO, they arrive in Salerno.

With the traffickers gone, Ben has to deal with Italian laws. He gets humanitarian protection, but two years later the then interior minister decides to abolish it, making tens of thousands of migrants illegal overnight. “I paid a lawyer to convert my papers back to a work permit… pending for a year.”

He kills himself with work and quits middle school. “I couldn’t do it, I had to earn money.” Now he works as an assistant cook, on a regular basis, in a restaurant.

“Cooking…”