"Her story is more than this." JS's Story

“No one goes anywhere alone, least of all into exile — not even those who arrive physically alone, unaccompanied by family, spouse, children, parents, or siblings. No one leaves his or her world without having been transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in a time of misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence possibly now forgotten by the one who had said it.” (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Hope) 

Her Routes and Roots is a series on journeys of displacement undergone and told by young women, focusing on their resilience and pivotal moments of strength. Stories are drawn from in-depth narrative interviews conducted during Her{connect}Her, a global voice program by Footage Foundation.

(JS is from Cameroon and currently in France. Her story was told through an interpreter and has been edited for length and clarity. Content warning: physical and sexual violence).

JS did not leave her first home, she was sent to get married. He was older than her and "when you marry someone by force, you have to sleep with someone you do not love, someone you do not know." So… she left.

She left her home country of Cameroon and went to Gabon. 

While there, she met someone and had her first child. The father died. 

Afterwards, she met a Cameroonian man, and together they decided to return to Cameroon. While together, but unmarried, JS had her second child with him. Returning home, she began to understand that he was distant family with her first husband. 

She was stigmatized.

She left Cameroon. She took the road. She went to Nigeria, and from there, she went to [Mali]. The traveling was tough. A lot of people surrounding them, men mostly, could be violent [and] took their money… From there, she went to Algeria. She met again, a Cameroonian on the frontier between Algeria and Mali. She was friendly with him… because she needed money; she needed to stay alive. She stayed one and a half months, and then, got the money to go to the desert. She got in the caravan with camels, and she got on the road.

She [spent] two days in the desert with them. They stole everything she had — her clothes, her money… But, she had ten euros… and she felt happy.

When you are a woman in Algeria, you have to be with someone. JS searched for a job for a long time, but struggled to find work as she wasn't Algerian by birth. 

She got with a man, so she could live.

She left Cameroon, because she wanted to go to Europe. She was afraid, but her story is more than this.

With a passport from Mali, she left Algeria and entered Tunisia. 

She thought this would be the good way.

When you are little, your dad gives you to a man. When you go to another country, you have to give yourself to a man again to get help, to get out of the country and to go do something you want.

Like this, when she came to Tunis, she had not to look for a job; she had to look for someone to help her. She tried now to find a way to go to Egypt. But, the people who took them from Tunis to Egypt were bad people. They came back to Tunis, because she could not do what they wanted. Then, she found a person from Cameroon. He told her it was better to go… [from] Libya to Europe.

They took the car to the frontier in Tunis, where they were going to meet the man who was going to take them to Libya. They had to pay 700 euros in cash. When they arrived, he told them that they were going to wait, maybe for a long time, because he did not have the signal to go.

And so, they waited three weeks. Although they had camping, it was not close to the boat that would hopefully take them to Europe.

[The boat] had to leave when they were given the signal… To be at the boat at six in the morning, [they] had to leave the camp at eight at night, the day before. So, they had ten hours of walking… There were women who were pregnant and women who had children. They had to be really careful, because the policemen in Tunis can, if they find you… take your money, and they can kill you.

When they got to Libya, they had big metal walls, and they were scared… They put them in a truck to take them to a camp… They treated them like animals. 

From here, they waited until they found a secure way, a secure time for them to cross the sea, to Italy.

JS arranged [for] five of them, Cameroonians from the same country to stay together… The only thing they gave them was tea with maybe two biscuits a day. 

Meanwhile, in Libya, revolution was happening. This made everything very difficult. There was no security anywhere in the country. 

So, sometimes men from Libya came into the camp and chose a woman to do with whatever they wanted. She cannot count how many times she got raped in this camp.

With a gun to your head, you could not say no. They burnt you with cigarettes.

The two Cameroonian men she came with to Libya wanted to help her and the other. Every time someone came to rape them, they fought with them. But, they were beaten and almost killed every time.

She forgot herself. She forgot who she was. She did not know how to go back, because she traveled all the way and now, did not know the road.

They took her phone; they took her money; they took everything she wore. She depended on them. She depended on the day they were going to tell her, “Now, we go to Italy. Now, you can leave.” Every time they told them, “Okay, now you are going to travel,” they took them to another location to rape them with other men. So, one day, when they said to them, “Okay, now you are going to travel,” they did not have hope to travel. They got ready to get raped again. 

But, that day, they got lucky. They were taken to travel to Italy.

When they got to the port, they saw the ship that was going to take them to Italy. It was… something that could crack anytime. But, she did not look back. “I will die in the sea or I will go back and die there,” she said.

But, she had to swim to the boat. 

If you did not know how to swim, you died… She did not know how to swim, but she got in the water. 

Together, with the four other Cameroonians, driven by fear of returning to the camp they had been trapped in, JS got on the boat. Two months earlier, they had enjoyed talking. About their dreams, and hopes and histories. “I am going to start a new life in a new country, on another continent.” But, as JS says, when you pass two months suffering from rape every night and you look at your friend, who you were happy to be with two months ago, she reminds you of the fears you lived.

They told them, “We have a good captain.” They lied. When they got on the boat, they chose someone on the boat and said, “Come with me. I am going to make you learn how to go north, Sir… You are going to be the commander.” If they died, they died with each other.

She says, “I got lucky. We arrived to Italy.”

Finally, at the end of two months of torture, I found myself in Italy, always having hope.

Four years, she had been on the road. Where she learned how to get to France. She called her sister, and [her sister] sent her money from Cameroon to Italy… to find someone she can pay to get to Paris. She got lucky again… After telling a woman their story, she began to cry and told them, “Okay, I do not care to control you. I do not care that you do not have papers. I am going to get you to Paris.”

Watch the digital story JS created while participating in Her{connect}Her here.

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