Patricia is sobbing on the phone.
This morning, around 12 Tunisian police officers came to her camp to inform her that she and other refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants were ravaged in the olive groves outside Sfax, the coastal Tunisian city.
They gave them 48 hours.
Police did not tell them where to go, but simply that they were unable to travel to any of the 15 or so camps that have grown outside the city since police first expelled the refugee population in September 2023.
A nurse, Patricia worked for several months from a makeshift clinic, 33 kilometres. This, like all temporary settlements except SFAX, is far from the city.
Now she doesn’t know where she or her children, or nursing mothers gather around her clinic, go. No one has an illusion about what will happen at the end of the deadline.
Other camps were swept through a 3 week old police operation and burned with heavy equipment to clear the olive fields. Those who resisted were arrested.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she says. “I don’t know where I’m going.”
Patricia and others wanted their camp to be safe. Elders, or “interests,” resolving conflicts among camp residents, contacted security officials and pleaded to spare 33 kilometers, a relatively quiet kilometre.
It’s not going well.
Now she has to wait for help or police arrival.
A few months ago, she applied for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and went home to Sierra Leone.
She is still waiting for a response.
Life as a midwife
A few days ago, in the cry of her clinic, Patricia explained that she wanted to be a nurse as she was a girl who lives in Makeni, north of Sierra Leone with her parents and sister.
She remembered her father, a mobile network driver, and took her on a trip from Makeni to the family village where she saw how the other children lived.
“I tell my kids how important it is to take water and medication and take their medication,” she said.
“There was a nurse there, Aisha I’ll help. She told my dad, “Look at her. This will become a nurse.”
Patricia has qualified as a nurse and ultimately decides to focus on midwifery.
“I’m still a nurse here. I have my license,” she said.
“My dad was very happy when I graduated. [in 2020]. He thought everything was fine. I especially wanted to be a midwife. I liked delivery and worked with the kids,” she said.
However, Patricia’s world ended on April 22, 2022, when her father was in a car accident.
Without the funds for his treatment, the hospital where Patricia had been working for many years refuses to treat him, and only offers him the bed he had died a few days later.
Walking for days without water
A call from a friend after her father’s death changed the course of her life.
The nameless man from her family village was ready to travel to Tunisia to Europe seven years ago to help.
Patricia recalls the conversation. “He said: ‘You have nothing, how can you survive?’ And asked me if I wanted to go on this journey. [to Europe]. I said, I don’t have the money and he said it was okay. He would pay, but I couldn’t fly. I have to transport and walk. ”
It was easy to find a transport to take Patricia through Guinea and Mali. But in Algeria, she had to walk.
“Sometimes, we walked for days and there was no water. I saw people die. Sometimes my friends call me and give me courage. He’ll say, ‘You have to keep going.’ But that was very difficult. ”
Eventually, in April 2024, a young woman who had never left her home country traveled to Tunisia to meet a smuggler, or “Bogan.”
“[When I arrived] They said they would leave tomorrow,” she recalls.
But “If that’s the case [a smuggler] I brought some plastic [to set up a shelter] And I wondered why I needed this if it was just one night? ”
“The next day he said the weather was bad…every time there was an excuse.”
More calls were made from Patricia and her friends, and more smugglers were contacted. In June, just over two months after her arrival, she attempted the first of three failed intersections to Europe.
The third, after her second attempt in October last month, she and others reached international waters, but were pulled back to Tunisian security forces, only to lose phone, money or direction in the desert.
“We were there for 16 days. I often felt like I was going to die. There were no signs of rescue.
“We were bad people around us. Police, Tunisian mafia. [robbers who attacked, hoping they had something to steal]She says.
There is no fourth intersection, she says.
It is unknown how human rights are respected.”
Throughout her time in Tunisia, authorities have harassed people living in camps outside Sfax.
Now, reportedly, under President Kais’ personal orientation, they promised to clear them all, and justified it in response to a complaint by Tunisian farmers that they had no access to the olive groves.
Announcement of the program in early April, a National Guard spokesman said camps in Al Amra and Jeveniana regions north of Sfax have already been cleared “peacefully” with the support of Red Crescent, the Ministry of Health and the Civil Protection Agency.
They said about 4,000 people of various nationalities have left one camp.
However, there were no refugees Al Jazeera spoke to after he knew the support the operation was being provided to vulnerable people.
Tunisian Home Office, which oversees both the police and the National Guard, has yet to respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
“[Authorities are] Romdane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) is about to frame the latest business, which was accompanied by a propaganda campaign, perhaps, to respect human rights.
“It is unclear how human rights are respected through actions such as bulldozers, heavy machinery and burning small cloth and plastic tents from immigrants,” he said.
Address unknown
The current location of many people expelled from the camp remains unknown.
Al Jazeera told anyone who said they were still wandering through the olive fields and hiding from the police.
Ben Amor suspects that others were on a bus on the border with Algeria and abandoned in the desert.
The question of where these people ended and where Patricia goes is focused more on what Ben Amor calls justification for what he calls “propaganda.”
Speaking to the radio station earlier this month, members of Tarek Mahdi Congress led the president’s claim that “impending danger” was held in February 2023, as “the births of immigrant women reached 6,000 births in a short time.”
Meanwhile, Patricia wants to know where she and her patients sleep in two nights.
She is unable to continue her journey to Europe and authorities have yet to contact her about returning home.
“Why do they want to hurt us?” she asked. “We are human too.
“The only difference is our skin color.”
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