Riding on the border

800 people landing in Lampedusa on June 28th

Lampedusa and its 22km2 is a fast ride on two wheels. What you see, darting across the island, is a peaceful and calm island entering on tiptoe in its summer season, made up of tourists, beaches and coves. Right as the tradition would like to foresee. A postcard of normality, including vessel on the background, such as bateaux mouch, teeming with passengers. Unfortunately the company isn’t the Siremar, and the face -you see protruding from the upper deck- is not that of a Caucasian tourist, but a African smiling.

The phone rings in the bag “O scia -my breath- someone told me that a boat is coming to the harbour…800 sub-saharan, all from Libya.” “Ok, let’s go. Skip here, we go down together.” In a rush, you abandon Askavusa, the independent association that monitors the migrants management done by the Italian government in Lampedusa, without moving anything, or turning the lap top off. The only thing you leave is a quick message to friends on the skype chat of the Lampedusa in Festival, who are in front of their pc on the continent working “landing. I’ll catch you later.” You know already that communication will stop for at least two or three hours, because it takes a lot of time for such a landing. Pedalling toward the mooring, it inevitable to think of what expects you: denied entry to the port, the smiles of complicity with the operators of the NGOs you made friend with.
From the coast you can see the boat swaying slowly, surrounded by boats of the Guardia di Finanza, and the Guardia Costiera. You can see them moving slowly through the zoom lens of the camera. The audio is clear and crisp. The sounds carried by the wind bring tears of children, women’s voices and the creaking of wood. The boat is approaching the mooring, and you try to get closer, helped by the fact that the police is engaged in the process of docking, meaning they no longer follow your movements.

One shot, then another, then one more. You look up, and the faces you just saw through the lens a few minutes before, are now in front of you. The Plimsoll line -marking which determines the limit of submersion of a vessel- is not visible on the keel. The lower deck disappears at the level of the pier, and the only visible thing is the scalp of the people occupying it. Passengers stand up all together, trying to get off in unison, while police men run up and down the pier shouting “sit down, sit down”, as the boat is in a dangerous balance.
Women, children, entire families gradually fill the area in front of the ferry terminal. Tired and inquisitive faces, that look happy to be at destination. Nigerian, Eritrean, Liberian, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshi sit all together in the 5m2 of the concrete square. They drink and take a breath, before being transferred to the centre. The night falls and it almost hurts your eyes, kept constantly under stress on the faces captured by the digital apparatus hold in my hands.
Never mind, the police spots us, we are now to visible. The policeman take us away while still taking notes, and trying to establish eye contact with the undefined multitude simply labelled sub-saharan. There would be millions of things to say, as the stories of families that descend from Europe to review and retrieve their children, brothers and husbands, but there is not enough time to tell you everything. The story of today is just the report of a landing on Lampedusa, a routine that we are witnessing, but we have decided to tell you to make you part of our lives.