Leaving home

At just four years old, Kamila’s life changed completely; her father died and she moved from her home country – which she did not want to share for personal reasons – to Sudan. She travelled with her mother and brothers and lived there for a couple of years.

Four years later, Kamila’s mother died in her eight-year-old arms after battling cancer. At the same age, tradition meant that Kamila had to enter an arranged marriage, and she became a child bride to a much older man. She was forced into an engagement before she hit double digits because in some cultures’ eyes, a girl’s sole purpose is marriage.

“You have to be a housewife, this is what they expect of you,” Kamila said.  “At just eight years old?” I asked, “Yes.”

From Sudan to Libya

Eventually, she escaped the marriage with the help of her brothers and began a journey to Libya alone at 11 years old. She followed a family through the Sahara Desert on foot without knowing where she would end up.

They travelled through the deep sand only at night without any food or water. The harsh conditions left many dead and buried in the sand.

Kamila, however, made it to Libya.

This arrival marked the start of a much more harrowing reality than Kamila had ever imagined; “When I arrived in Libya, I crashed. I dropped myself into a dark place where I could not see any light. I had no hopes, no dreams, and expected to die at any moment.”

After journeying through the Sahara, Kamila and the group she travelled with arrived at a human trafficking camp.

Without money, it is near-impossible to leave one of these places, yet Kamila managed to escape in a garbage bag.

There were two camps: one for women and another for men, and Kamila noted that oftentimes, the men weren’t given food because they wouldn’t be able to pay the traffickers.

So, Kamila took it upon herself to help. She would steal bread from the kitchen and run to give it to the boys’ camp. At points, she was caught and abused as punishment. But her selfless act of kindness paved the way to an escape plan.

She befriended a young Yemeni man who worked in the kitchen and who shared her dream to flee – being that they were so far away from any city, the pair had to get creative.

So, they got the idea of travelling by garbage truck. Kamila fit into a garbage bag and the driver agreed to take them out of the human trafficking site. He gave the pair directions to Libya’s capital city and from there, they walked to Tripoli.

In Tripoli, she and her Yemeni friend got in touch with UNHCR aid workers who gave them $100 and a place to stay for a short while. However, at this point, it was 2017 and while Kamila was waiting to finalise the process of receiving international protection, Tripoli was being ravaged by bombings and gunfire so she had to flee again, but now, the only way out was by sea.

“At that point, you cannot go back.”

Kamila began doing housekeeping work to save enough money to get a place on a boat. She managed and her journey by sea began that same year. However, upon crossing the Mediterranean, the asylum seekers were met with closed borders, thanks to EU-wide efforts led by Malta to curb the flow of migration.

In the first half of 2017, Malta held the EU Council Presidency and it swiftly enacted the Malta Declaration to stem the illegal flows of people seeking migration in the EU. This gave path to the empowerment of the Libyan Coast Guard in the Central Mediterranean which sends refugees back to war-torn Libya to endure the very abuse and exploitation they were escaping.

This is what happened to Kamila.

She spent three days crammed on a plastic boat with 150 people in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. They could not move and had no food or water; their only chance at survival was to return back to Libya and face detention.

“So, I ended up in prison. It was in a state of crisis.”

Life in prison

A small room fit 100 detainees. Kamila would fall asleep on one side and wake up in the exact same position, with no space to move. They were only allowed to use a toilet once every three days and showering was a luxury prisoners could only enjoy on Fridays. A basket was used as a toilet on the days they weren’t given access to a real one and it stayed in the same room the detainees lived in.

There was one doctor in a prison of 900 women while the men had no medical help. Mothers were separated from their children when they were sick, with most people being forced to sleep outside no matter the weather to avoid infecting others in the prison. Many were left outside to die.

In the middle of the night, people were abducted at random, the kidnappers would do “whatever they wanted with them” and no one ever understood why.

However, this torture wasn’t restricted to nighttime.

The head of the female prison would take Kamila out of the room into a pjazza where other prisoners stayed. He would put a gun to her head and threaten to shoot her to scare others into submission. A guard once did this because Kamila asked for milk for a child whose mother had HIV and couldn’t breastfeed.

Unsurprisingly, corruption in these detention centres is also rife.

Kamila explained that international agencies would often visit the centres to check on the conditions and give money to Libyan officials for the wellbeing of the detainees. Money would be given for food, milk, medicine and so on yet it was often used to fund the war. In cases where actual products were provided – like juice for children – officials would sell it to buy weapons.

When these agencies would visit, detainees would be forced to lie to aid workers with their lives on the line if they decided to disobey.

In fact, when asked about the effectiveness of international aid, Kamila said in countries like Malta it helps however in Libya it doesn’t because “they don’t see the truth”. Even if she wanted to be honest about the atrocious conditions, she couldn’t communicate with aid workers.

Kamila’s escape to Malta

After two years, Kamila managed to leave the prison because she completed her interview with international protection and was supposed to fly to Canada. She was able to work with one of the officials of the prison who she described as a “good guy” and was paying her to clean his and his daughter’s home.

When she was preparing herself to leave to Canada, the head of the female prison – the same man who would threaten her with a gun to her head – barred her documents because she “caused a lot of trouble” for him in prison.

Once again, the only solution was to flee by sea. Kamila continued working and began living with the family of her employer and also started working with police officials at mortuary fridges.

She once saw a corpse that looked to be around two years old, his skin was darker than the black skirt she was wearing during our interview, she described.

This became too much and Kamila knew it was time to leave; she couldn’t wait another three years to go through international protection. So she decided she’d flee once again by sea.

In the meantime, she helped multiple women in Libya get out of prison, explaining that she didn’t just work to pay her own way out, but that of others too.

There was one 50-year-old woman who was sick and had a 14-year-old son. Once she got out of prison, Kamila rented them a room and ensured that she was secured a flight out by an international protection agency.

“There were a lot of people I wanted to help; women and children. That’s why I wanted to get out of prison and that’s why I wanted to flee Libya – to help these people.”

Kamila went on to say that there are so many women in these prisons with children conceived through rape.

“They rape women in front of you. They rape mothers in front of their children.  Three men, four men, it doesn’t matter.”

If other people try to intervene and stop it, they’d just get shot.

The night Kamila and her good friend were going to get on a boat to cross to Europe, three men grabbed her friend and began raping her. At the same time, Kamila was also being sexually abused by a man with a gun.

After being raped by two men, Kamila’s friend attempted to escape the third man, but they shot and killed her.

That same day, Kamila made the journey to Malta. It was never part of a plan — it was a decision she was forced to make to survive. The circumstances that brought her here were completely out of her control, and that’s something she wants people to understand.

“Refugees do not come to the EU because they want to, we come because we are forced to escape and find peace. Who would want to be here without their families? I haven’t seen my brothers for 14 years.”

Living in Malta

Kamila arrived in Malta in 2019 and moved into one of the open centres in Ħal Far. While the conditions were far better than what she endured in Libya, life there still came with significant struggles.

A lack of information regarding work, language and regulations makes it very difficult for migrants to build a life in Malta. In her case, she was being severely exploited by an employer and didn’t know until a local family told her that not only was her situation illegal, but that it was essentially slavery.

Kamila used to work six days a week and walk from Żurrieq to Ħal Far between 2am to 3am every day when working at a restaurant. She was being paid some €150 weekly and her boss would consistently deny her request to apply for a work permit.

It was only until she served a family who took an immediate liking to her that she realised what was happening.

This family was dining for a friend’s birthday when Kamila was on shift at her waitressing job. Their five-year-old son, Adam, was instantly smitten by Kamila, calling her beautiful and drawing a picture of a butterfly.

Adam’s mother, Rowena, was moved by this interaction, crying at the wholesome moment Kamila and her son had just shared. Kamila, with her limited knowledge of English at that point, couldn’t understand what was wrong but her boss was annoyed at the fact that she was interacting with customers.

Rowena and her husband Hurston then gave Kamila a €100 tip but as they were praising Kamila to her boss, he was rude and demanded the tip.

This instantly sparked concern in the pair who then asked Kamila to share her WhatsApp number with them; a week later they contacted her. They told her that what her boss was doing was illegal and helped her get a job as a shuffler at an iGaming company.

Kamila now warmly refers to the trio as her family and says that without them, she would have never been able to process her trauma and build the life she has.

The young woman explained that one of the biggest issues of women seeking refuge in Malta is that they are too quick to have children before they kickstart their new lives. Many choose to get married and have children despite not yet having the means to comfortably raise a family.

“Women need to work on themselves before they start a family. They should think before having kids,” Kamila advised.

Today, Kamila is rebuilding the life that was stolen from her — with resilience, determination, and the support of people who saw her worth. Her story is a powerful reminder that behind every refugee is a human being fighting for survival, dignity, and the chance to simply live in peace.

Through campaigns like TAMA’s, Kamila hopes more people will understand that seeking refuge isn’t a choice made lightly — it’s a desperate leap toward hope when all other doors have been slammed shut.

This is the first of a series of interviews in collaboration with TAMA which will be released in the lead up to Connecting the Dots: Migration, Gender Justice and EU Solidarity on 24th May.