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Forced From Home

We visited Fondation Orient-Occident, a non-profit which serves migrants in Rabat.  We ate a traditional West African meal and then heard from Amir, a migrant from Sudan.   

Amir was kind enough to share his story with us. It is detailed, as accurately as I could, below. 

Amir has a heart condition.  While he was hospitalized in early 2024, his house was destroyed by a missile, killing all his immediate family.  He moved in with his uncle who told him to go to South Sudan.  For the next six months, he would find himself either walking or held captive by various government officials and human traffickers.   

While heading to South Sudan, Amir was picked up and tortured by the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary force operated by the Sudanese government.  Eventually, he made his way to Juba in South Sudan and then a refugee camp in Uganda.  He and some other migrants crossed back into South Sudan and then Sudan.  For days, there was no place to sleep and no food.  They ate leaves.  It rained for days.  There were mosquitos everywhere.  
 
One day, the car he was in flipped over.  The next car was a Toyota carrying 20 people.  They drove through the desert with no food or water.  After entering Libya, Amir was kidnapped by a gang.  He was put in another car with people piled on top of each other.  He said, "you feel like dying but your soul is still hanging on."  The car stopped at the border to Algeria and everyone got out and ran.  Due to Amir's heart condition, he wasn't able to run.  Algerian police caught him and took him to a prison in a mountainous region near the border.   There were hundreds of migrants there.  Some had been there for months.  

Amir and a few others sneaked out one night.  They crawled to avoid being seen.  Amir was captured again and tortured.  It was cold with winter approaching.  His captors took off his clothes and poured water on him.  Amir went into a coma.  A few days after regaining consciousness, Amir jumped off a bus with a small water bottle.  He found himself all alone.  People would throw food and water from their cars.  Eventually, he ran into another guy from the prison who didn't remember his own name.  For unspecified reasons, they parted company.  Amir met another guy, a Nigerian, and the two of them succeeded in crossing the border to Morocco.  He ran from Moroccan police until he passed out.  He woke up in a hospital and was taken to a prison and then back to the Algerian border and forced to cross.  

Somehow Amir managed to cross the border into Morocco again and avoid being taken by the police.  He spent a month at the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and then came to Rabat. Being in Morocco has been very difficult.  All the migrants want to get to Spain.   

As of this writing, Amir turns 18 in two months.  He is writing a memoir.  He estimates that he walked 900km, or about 559 miles, in six months.  He used to dream of becoming a doctor but now he wants to work on immigration issues.