Cape Town - “Rosalind had a striped white and blue cotton dress, it looked a lot like the one I wore this summer.
“But Rosalind’s dress is wet, not from sea water, but from fuel, and despite her smile she told me it burnt her skin.”
Lindis Hurum, a project co-ordinator from international medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF), aboard one of three MSF search and rescue ships for refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, on Wednesday described meeting Rosalind, a refugee from the Ivory Coast.
Hurum was part of a briefing in Mowbray Wednesday where MSF provided insight into the global refugee crisis and its rescue efforts since May this year.
MSF Southern Africa president Mohammed Dalwai said one in four people living in Lebanon were now Syrian refugees.
“But only a quarter of a million people have made it to Europe – that is less than 2 percent of the total number of those displaced,” he said.
MSF’s medical teams have rescued 15 699 people from the deadly waters.
To date more than 400 000 people have faced the perilous crossings on the Mediterranean in a desperate effort to escape violence. Nearly 2 750 people have died or have gone missing this year alone, MSF said.
Hurum said she soon discovered the woman she had helped had worked as a nursing assistant before she fled her home to Ghana in 2011 during the civil war.
“I never met Rosalind (before), but it doesn’t matter because I met her now and it was as if I knew her already,” she said.
Rosalind and her husband do not speak English and did not find jobs.
They then continued their journey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Her eyes changed as she said ‘it was not good either. We had to leave. Then there was only me and my man’.
“I didn’t ask details; her pain, thinking of maybe a child she lost, was visible,” Hurum said.
Rosalind only spent a few months in Libya before she fled. “Rosalind said it is horrible in Libya.
“I really can’t imagine. To have nothing left but your husband and a striped dress. But still smile and hug me, saying the burns on her thighs are not too bad even though they really are, and our doctor said she will need to go straight to the hospital. At least she is alive, Rosalind said.”
Hurum said: “None of the boats we rescued people from would have made it all the way to Italy from Libya.
“They were utterly unsafe. Most boats have hundreds of people aboard, some up to 600 to 700. They could easily capsize, and then people would risk drowning in a matter of minutes.”
Hurum said at first, when they approached the smuggler boats, refugees were frightened. “They don’t trust anyone and they are traumatised by their horrific journeys. There are always many children aboard and pregnant women. People suffer from hypothermia and dehydration, others have more acute medical problems – septic shock, pneumonia and wounds they suffered on the journey,” she said. Over time Europe’s policies had grown more restrictive and it had put some of the world’s most vulnerable people in greater peril, MSF Humanitarian Adviser on Displacement Aurélie Ponthieu said.
“Sealing its land borders, Europe forces people into the hands of smugglers and into overcrowded boats,” Ponthieu said. “We are not asking for the end of borders – but putting people’s lives, or health at risk for the sake of border control is not the solution.
“People who seek asylum have the right to ask for it at all borders,” she added.
Dalwai appealed for support from South Africans.
“South Africans stood with us during the Ebola crisis, donating to support our field teams,” Dalwai said.
“And today we’re calling on them to take a stand with us in solidarity with vulnerable people fleeing to Europe because of violence and unliveable conditions.”
You can donate to MSF online by visiting www.msf.org.za/donate or SMSing “JOIN” to 42110 to donate R30 once-off.
@lisa_isaacs
Cape Times