Best mood on the dinghy. Clapping and swaying to Arabic rap. Happy people, smiling faces. But what the 21-year-old influencer Chaima Ben Mahmoude from Tunisia posted on Tiktok is not a cell phone video of excited young people partying. But the documentation of the beginning of a dangerous, potentially deadly hell trip across the Mediterranean.
The recordings were made on December 16, 2021, shortly after the boat left the Tunisian port of Sfax. The price for the crossing to the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost outpost in the Mediterranean, is 1,370 euros, Chaima Ben Mahmoude reports later. In addition to her and her boyfriend, there are 22 other people on board, most of them young men. Altogether, the ferry price of around 33,000 euros is good business for the smugglers. Even if you usually have to completely write off the necessary investments (boat, outboard motor, fuel, life jackets) after a single use. The distance from Sfax to Lampedusa is around 190 kilometers. Return trips are not offered. In Tunisia and other Maghreb countries, crossing the Mediterranean Sea is known as “harka”, a reference to the “burning” of national borders and the destruction of personal documents before departure.
#Influencer #promotes #escape #Harka #fun