Javier Alvarez / SOS MEDITERRANEE
Every year, women cross the Mediterranean in the hope of finding a place of safety. Some of them have been victims of violence and trafficking before setting out on the journey. Bliss is one of these women.
Click bellow to listen the Bliss song
This is the voice of Bliss, originally from Nigeria.
Bliss liked to sing in the women’s Shelter. She sang about God, about freedom and hope. On board, she was with other women from Nigeria, and they all loved to dance and sing. It seems to be a way for them of relieving the pain.
During the first days, I would see some of them crying silently. I could feel the heaviness in their hearts, the sadness in their eyes. Some horrific things had happened to these women.
After spending some time together, one of them left me a note in my notebook while I was away:
“I’m free from suffering, pain, crying, and selling my body. I miss my family. I hope to see you again, if possible. I love you.”
Most of them had been kidnapped in Nigeria and trafficked to Libya, where they were forced into sexual slavery for years. Forced into the worst, reduced to the worst things one human being can do to another. And yet, despite these horrific events, sometimes they danced, sometimes they sang, listened to music, sometimes while breading their hair. Something joyful, something normal, like a revenge on life.
Bliss’s voice is one of the thousands of women we meet at sea.
This story is for Bliss, and to all the women whose voices have been silenced by violence and sexual slavery.
