Travelling in hope

BEFORE dawn the Dignity 1 has completed her first rescue, scooping 114 migrants without lifejackets from a rubber dinghy adrift in the Mediterranean. The crew, who include a doctor and two nurses from Mdecins Sans Frontires(MSF), the charity that operates the boat, check the arrivals to see who needs immediate care. No sooner have they finished than the ship is called to assist the Samuel Beckett, an Irish military vessel also engaged in search-and-rescue. Several migrants she has picked up need urgent medical help: they have chemical burns from fuel leaking in their sinking boat. In the evening the Italian coastguard brings 196 more people on board. By midnight the Dignity 1 is carrying 417 migrants. Cordoned off at her prow is the body of Joy, a 23-year-old Nigerian who had been six months pregnant. She died of a heart attack after getting petrol in her lungs.Some people the boat picks up have fled persecution. Hassan, a 14-year-old Somali picked up the previous day (see picture), is escaping civil war. It has taken him five months to get this far, three of them in Libya,...Continue reading
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