Mersa, Ethiopia – 20-year- old Yimam Asmare sobbed and buried his tired face, as he recalled the day he fled his family home to migrate to Saudi Arabia.
Yimam was born and raised in Anto village- a small village surrounded by mountainous terrain in every direction, with a river that slices through and around it. Anto village sits on the foot of Ambasalo Mountain, roughly 14 kilometers from Mersa town, the capital city of Habru Woreda in Amhara region of Ethiopia. The village is home to approximately 4300 households, each home made up of an average of 6 family members.
Yimam is the youngest in a family of four. At the age of only 19, with no formal education, his parents gave him a small piece of land on which to grow vegetables for sale at a small town nearby. But following consecutive periods of drought his small farm could not earn him any dividends. Crop failure coupled with a lack of alternative livelihood options doubled his frustration and prompted him to start thinking about ways to leave his village.
In early 2019 he started planning his exit from the village. With little knowledge of regular routes and limited opportunities to use them, he contacted ‘migrant brokers’ for help. Unaware of the dangers ahead of him, he left his village towards the end of April 2019 to start the audacious journey to Saudi Arabia through Djibouti, then across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen all the way to Jabalashe, the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Before leaving his village the ‘migrant brokers’ had informed him that the money he had was enough to cover expenses for the entire journey to Saudi Arabia. His ordeal began upon his arrival in Djibouti, where ‘migrant brokers’ demanded US$ 900 for transport to cross the Gulf of Aden. Desperate and out of options Yimam had no choice but to contact his mother to ask for her prayers and for the extra money.
“He only contacted me when he was about to get into a boat to cross the sea from Djibouti to Yemen; he called to ask for my prayers and for the money. This was the first time I heard from him since the day he disappeared from home,”
said Tayitu Shibeshi, Yimam’s mother with a shaking voice. Fearing the dangers surrounding her son, she moved swiftly to look for loans from neighbors and sold her dairy cow to raise the money he needed.
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