Lampedusa

The gateway to Europe

It’s easy to understand why Lampedusa is called "The gateway to Europe": just 140 km from Tunisia and 280 km from Libya, Lampedusa represents the easiest way to salvation for those who decide to face the sea in search of one more chance.
If you arrive in Lampedusa alive, you have life ahead of you, or so it seems.

I arrived on the island convinced that I could tell an easy story, a story of salvation, driven by some advice and a couple of contacts, full of initiative and ready to find stories in every corner of the country, and indeed it was, only in a different way than my expectations.

The first thing I notice is in fact the amount of waste that assails the port of Lampedusa, plastic, the remains of destroyed boats, abandoned shoes, life jackets.

Life jackets that have not been abandoned by fishermen, but by migrants who have recently managed to reach the island. There are different types and they are scattered along the south coast and, from what I’ve been able to see, it seems that the Lampedusans have learned to live with them.

But there are not only vests, continuing to walk around the port I notice many small abandoned boats, broken, full of waste. I approach one of these and shortly after taking some pictures I notice what’s inside: other life jackets, thermal blankets and the remains of other boats.
I try to ask for information about it and I learn that the beached boats that are near the military ports are the boats recovered by the Guardia di Finanza and the Coast Guard during the rescue operations which, once completed, are brought to shore in waiting to be destroyed, provided they are not sunk during operations, of course.

March is usually not a very active month for landings, although 2022 is already an anomalous year with around 3000 migrants arriving between January and February, my time here is limited and I can only try to document what the situation is like for an island that according to the news is "invaded by refugees".
I’ve been to talk to a boy from the "Mediterranean Hope" association, which has been dealing with hospitality in the area for several years, he explains to me that for some time now, after each rescue at sea, migrants have been quickly brought to the Hotspot, directly from military boats, through the vans of the Carabinieri, and that no one can come into contact with them. Migrants don’t leave the Hotspot until they are registered, recognized and assigned to another center around Italy, no one is allowed to walk free on the island anymore.
I try to go to the Hotspot, knowing that they would never let me in, especially with photographic equipment, there’s only one road that goes there and, as I was told, I can't even get to the entrance gate.
The next day, however, I try to reach it from a secondary road without any presumption or insistence, just out of curiosity. I reach this secondary road, I can see the Hotspot, and the two military army jeeps that check the perimeter of the hotspot see me.
I don’t try the approach and I understand that it’s better to leave, on the other hand I’m only at the beginning of this project and I am certainly not in a position to get myself in trouble right now.
I take a picture and leave.

The Lampedusa Hotspot (from the Invitalia website) has a capacity of 403 guests.
They tell me that it is currently full, even though it’s now a "calm" period, but they tell me that in the busiest periods there were also more than a thousand people, others say even two thousand, in one way or another. I have no way of verifying, the management of the center is private, surveillance is active all day and very few journalists manage to enter, to say the least.
However, the stories and testimonies about it are so many and it is not difficult for me to believe that it’s all true.

Despite all this, life in Lampedusa continues undisturbed, the fishermen go to the port leaving the keys of the cars inserted and the children play in the street in the evening.

The island is small and small is the cemetery that I decide to visit under the advice of a friend. Inside, some of the migrants who did not arrive alive in Lampedusa were buried. The Lampedusans have decided to give them dignity, not only by deciding to bury them at their own expense, but by inserting the graves of refugees among those of ordinary people, without diversifying the graves of Italians from those of migrants.

On the other hand, at least in the face of death, we should all be the same

For my short stay in Lampedusa I rented a small apartment, the owner is called Francesco, he’s a retired fisherman but every morning he goes out on a boat looking for octopus and squid, like so many others here on the island, he asks me to go with him one morning and I immediately accept.

We leave early and the sea seems calm, as soon as we leave the port, however, a light wind rises and the sea moves quickly.

"Do you suffer from seasickness?"

Absolutely yes, I think, but now I can't back down, so I arm myself with a very convinced "Absolutely not!" and I try to compensate for the constant tilting of the small boat by hoping to postpone my date with nausea to worse days.

In short, I am not really a “sea wolf” and the continuous undulating of the boat, mixed with the terrible smell of burnt fuel that enters my nose directly from the small engine, only increases my sense of disorientation and a terrible nausea that seems to want to kill me.

I throw up what little I ate for breakfast right after taking some pictures.

My maritime experience lasts only a little over three hours, I had already been on the boat and despite this it did not go well at all.
The only thing I can think of is how 30 to 100 people survive on boats just like this one on the open sea, sometimes just for a few hours before they are intercepted, sometimes days without the shadow of a shelter from the sun or a drop of drinking water.
As we return to the port, a boat of the “Guardia di Finanza” also reaches us, returning from the usual control tour around the island, it seems to point right towards us as if to give me the opportunity to fully immerse myself in the point of view of a refugee in prey to despair.

"It didn't go well, but it's still an experience" he tells me.  And he is right.

Before coming here I managed to contact Francesco Malavolta, a photojournalist who knows what happens in the Mediterranean.
He is the one who pushed me to come to Lampedusa, he tells me that I absolutely have to meet Lillo, he has so many stories to tell and he has lived them all firsthand.

So after a couple of calls, we meet for coffee and I just ask him a few questions before I sit in silence and listen.

He tells me about the tragedy of October 3, 2013 (where nearly 400 people lost their lives off the “Island of Rabbits”), about the desperation, about everyone's willingness to lend a hand whenever possible.
He tells me about countless boys, men and women who have arrived over the years, about many unaccompanied minors.

What drives a family to entrust a child to the sea is difficult even to be able to imagine, despair has no limit, but Lillo has always tried to go beyond all this.
Until recently, refugees could leave the Hotspot during the day, and at every opportunity that arose, together with his wife and two daughters, he always helped out, perhaps with some clothes, something to eat or just a smile accompanied by a few words of comfort.
There are so many young people he helped and hosted in his home that he can't even remember all the names, yes because from the first landings in Lampedusa, in the early nineties, the Lampedusans welcomed them into their homes offering them all the help available.

Some of these guys, he tells me, who now live elsewhere, return to Lampedusa from time to time and the first person they ask to meet is Lillo. A couple of them even have house keys, they come in, say hello, exchange stories and thanks and then go back to their life, it's always a party when they meet again.
The stories that I hear coming with the most suffering, however, are those of many children they tried to help, taking them to the playground, secretly from the police, making them play and laugh as much as possible, but always with an eye towards who he could have seen them, because although in good faith, he couldn’t have done so.

Almost with tears in his eyes he confides in me that even if he would do everything he has done again (and which he always does), he struggles to have to live in a world where those who want to help, those who are kind, are badly seen and constantly put in difficulty. 

Lillo is not the only Lampedusan of this type, there are many and they work hard, but today it’s increasingly difficult. All landings are fully monitored and the only opportunity to assist, for those like him who want to give at least a little comfort, is to ask for permission to enter military ports, where it’s not possible to take videos, photographs or questions.
Not to mention that because of the covid all those refugees who unfortunately are positive are isolated on the quarantine boats, in Lampedusa the migrants are not seen at all, it almost seems that someone wants to keep them hidden from everyone's eyes.

Our country is full of stories like these that are just waiting to be told, and I think it's important to do so, because if you don't know a story, then it doesn't exist, but when we talk about it, instead, there is one more chance that things change, and there is a real need.

Soon I will leave for the next stages of this project, in preparation for the photographic exhibition "Who welcomes does not make news" which will be exhibited in Brescia on the occasion of the 2022 Peace Festival.