“Her Eyes Were Still Full of Terror”.

Yesterday our staff on board the Open Arms Vessel joined the rescue of 83 people.
They were there, crammed into a wooden boat adrift in the midst of the Mediterranean.
Among them about 15 minors and 4 women.

They left Libya the previous night and were abandoned a few hours later by the smugglers. Alone and without sea route.

Two of the four women rescued from the Mediterranean are pregnant.

One, travelling with her husband, is in the first month of pregnancy. The other is only 18 years old, and arrived alone.

“While we were doing the ultrasound in the ship’s infirmary, we asked her if she wanted to tell us more about her. What she told us is really dramatic,” Eleonora, our nurse on Open Arms, tells us.

F., travelled from Somalia. She had been stuck in Libya where, one evening, a man collaborating with her jailers raped her at gunpoint. She was stranded there for a whole year before she could escape.

Eleonora continues, “When we told her that the condition of the baby she is carrying was good, F. looked at us and her eyes were still full of terror“.

How much courage and strength will it take for this young woman to be able to look to the future and forget such a horrifying experience?

Every single life, every single story deserves to be saved. Always.

This is the right thing to do.