 |
| Photo credit: Nick Jaussi |
This week’s Womxn of the Week is Jessica
Breakey, who recently completed her second Masters Degree at Cambridge
University, and shortly thereafter attended a sea rescue school in the United
Kingdom. She has kindly and openly
written about her experiences, and the paths that led her there.
I seem always to be drawn to the
elements; that being air, earth, water and fire. Shortly before I moved to
Cambridge University I completed my Masters Degree at Wits University on the
symbolic and political uses of fire in protests. For more than a year I was obsessed with the
burning, the anger that ignited it, and all of the possibilities that the ash
left behind. However, the process of writing my dissertation, and all of the
coinciding personal consequences, was a kind of fire that I needed to go
through myself; the letting go of a relationship and a nasty break up, and grieving
my father’s long and painful illness.
I left for Cambridge a year ago with
my insides burning and a very charred heart.
Since I have been back in South
Africa I have often said that although I didn’t find a deep intellectual
mentorship in Cambridge, I was constantly learning from my peers, my fellow
course mates and my housemates. I was truly blessed with three of the best
housemates and somehow, amidst these three very different people from three
very different contexts, I found myself thinking not about fire, but rather of water.
I like to think of myself as someone
who is up to date with what is happening in the world, and as someone who engages
with the challenges facing humanity; but I quickly discovered one of my biggest
blind spots- the European Refugee Crisis. Sure, I had read a few articles in
the Guardian and had seen the horrifying images depicting the mountains of
life-jackets abandoned in Lesbos, but I feel ashamed to say that I had not yet
thought deeply enough about one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of our
time. In reflection I think this is because I dismissed it as a European crisis,
thinking of it as something that European leaders and activists needed to deal
with. I no longer hold this view, instead I very much believe that this is a
Pan-African issue; that those who care about the continent need to be thinking
about.
I smile as I try to think back to the
initial trigger; I didn’t read a book from the library or attend some big
public lecture, rather, sitting at dinner one night I scoffed in disgust at the
number of warts on my housemate’s hands. Bill wasn’t too bothered by our
revulsion and explained that it was from his time on the Sea Rescue Boat, the Luventa. He began to share his stories from his last mission on the
Mediterranean Sea. I was completely overwhelmed- with his bravery, the
immediacy and importance of the work, and the desperation that leads so many to
make the horrific journey across the sea.
Let me break it down for those who
are less familiar with the situation. In 2015, over 1 million migrants crossed
the Mediterranean Sea, most fleeing the active slave trade in Libya, but many also moving up north from the middle of the African continent desperate for safety
and seeking a better life. The movement of people across the Mediterranean has
continued and, in many ways, worsened over the last three years. The situation
is far more complicated than the space I have now to explain, but in many ways,
it is also incredibly simple- no one deserves to die at sea.
Libyan smugglers are one of the worst
cogs in this awful chain of inhumanity; charging those fleeing huge amounts of
money to get onto a “boat” (picture a dinghy boat suitable for 20 people crowded
with over 100 people) and then pulling off the engines as soon as the boat
leaves the shore, so that they can use the same engine on the next boat and
maximise their profit. Now we have a boat loaded with over a hundred people (including
babies and unaccompanied minors), with no belongings, no water and no food
drifting through the ocean, praying that somehow, they will reach the Italian
shore. With the European Union willfully refusing to engage in this issue, international
NGOs began to send out Search and Rescue vessels to help those refugees lost
and dying at sea. It is against International Refugee Law to send a refugee
back to a country where they may be in danger, so the Search and Rescue teams
would take the refugees to a safe harbour in Italy where they would then be
moved into the refugee camps.
Although I do consider myself an
activist, I have spent the majority of my life engaging in the beauty of ideas.
I love to write and think, and could happily do nothing but sit in a library
for days. Of course, I want to live consciously and make some sort of
meaningful contribution, but I had always thought that my way of doing that
would just be through research and writing. The problem with being a researcher,
I have found, is that given enough thought, everything becomes problematic.
Refugee camps, state borders, the EU, volunteering- all incredibly easy to
critique, yet no matter how hard my brain tried I could not find a problem with
sea rescue. To me, it was incredibly urgent and necessary work that had a
tangible and direct form of action. I
knew I needed to do it, that I needed to get on those boats.
I knew I was intellectually on board of course, but I had to think deeper about whether I was emotionally strong
enough to handle it. I wasn’t naive, I know that what rescue volunteers see on
sea missions is incredibly destabilising and haunts you long after you have
returned to shore. I found it incredibly frustrating to talk to my family and
close friends about it. I have a history of mental health problems and I felt
like I was constantly being undermined and patronised by those closest to me.
Of course, these are the people that love me the most and are simply looking
out for my well-being, but I interpreted it as, “you are not strong enough”;
which infuriated me and made me just want to scream. I had lost my father to
cancer a few months earlier, I had endured the most terrible loss imaginable
and I was still waking up every morning. To me, I was invincible, and I knew I
could do it.
The next step was attending rescue
school. Atlantic Pacific (AP) is a sea rescue NGO that runs training programs
at the United World Colleges Atlantic College in Wales. Although AP is
intentionally non-political and not specifically directed towards training
volunteers for refugee rescue, many of the people that found themselves on the
course in June 2018 were focused on the humanitarian crisis. I met the most
amazing people at rescue school; doctors, nurses, paramedics, lawyers and
scholars from all over the world, all united by our concern for the atrocities
being allowed to happen at sea. For me, an eternal library goer, the
exhilaration that came from using my hands was euphoric. It may sound silly,
but I feel as though I had always been typecast as a girl who didn’t know how
to tie knots, and here I was learning every knot needed on a boat. I felt
capable and useful. I learnt to drive a
rescue boat, how to perform basic casualty care and how to locate and help a
man overboard. I knew, more than ever before that I needed to get on the refugee
rescue boats.
However, while we were at training
school everything changed. Following the recent Italian elections and a change
in policy for the EU, Italy closed its ports to Search and Rescue vessels,
taking away the most utilised safe harbour available. Soon after, Malta did the
same and went on to charge the captain of one of the biggest rescue boats with
human trafficking. It was clear that the political situation for Search and Rescue
had radically altered and that search and rescue teams were now being
criminalised by the EU.
I am now back in South Africa, unsure
of what is next for me professionally and desperate to get on the boats. I know that my chances are slim, many of the
boats aren’t allowed to operate and some have even been charged and
compounded by the Italian government. Although I may not be on the boats, the
whole experience has instilled in me the value of thinking with my hands. Of
thinking and doing. I am filled with
respect and admiration for all those putting their bodies on the line for a just
cause. I live inspired by the courage not just of the search and rescue teams
but of those prepared to step into a boat with nothing more than hope for a
better life.
No one deserves to die at sea.
Together for Rescue.
 |
| (Image from Reddit) |
