Exodus

   

Canary Islands

    The ocean to me is one of the most beautiful things to behold in this world. I love nothing better than just to sit in silence and watch the waves break against a rocky shore. If I've told you this before, please forgive me.

    However, for thousands fleeing war torn and deprived areas of Africa, the waters off the coast of the Canary Islands, are the last stage of a perilous journey in a search for a better life. Their trip in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats, they believe will be the beginning of the life they dream of.

    Those migrants who do make it to dry land, will find that the money they paid for the trip doesn't provide them with a better life, but only lines the pockets of the human traffickers who transported them there. Unfortunately many lives will come to a tragic end, as did those trying to reach Italian shore's last week. With less than half of the men, women and children who set sail from North Africa for Sicily surviving following rescue near the island of Lampedusa.

    If you holiday in Europe you will come across male African migrants regularly selling counterfeit goods in the tourist resorts. Living on their wits and dodging local police in fear of being arrested. Whilst we tourists sip our Pina Coladas we have no real grasp on the motives behind their persistency to make a sale. An insistency that can become more than a little tiresome at times. What the future holds for the women and children in the dark seedy underworld, I will leave to your imigination. Although for them it is not a fictional plot.

    Many of the men and women are obligated to send back money to repay their family and friends who helped pay the traffickers. For others it's a down payment for the fraudulent papers they  need to make the next leg of their illegal journey, in the search for that green and pleasant land.

    These merciless seas are unlikely to deter this continual mass human exodus, but we can hope that a worldwide solution can one day be found. God bless.