bild
BURUM, YEMEN- MAY 2008 .Following up reports of recently disembarked migrants and refugees that often come from local fishermen, a two or three man team from NGO Society for Humanitarian Solidarity (SHS) will set out to verify sightings and provide basic assistance. Based in villages along the length of Yemen's southern shoreline, and on standby twenty-four hours a day, the teams usually respond to numerous calls every week. With the smugglers' boats often arriving en-masse when the weather is good, the alerts can come several times in a night. With each unit covering hundreds of kilometres of coast, it can sometimes take hours to reach and locate the often remote dropoff points. When SHS do arrive, they provide fresh drinking water, milk and biscuits to the weary and dehydrated arrivals, before tallying numbers and nationalities. Coordinating with UNHCR, trucks are then sent in order to transfer new arrivals to a dedicated reception centre at Mayfa'ah.For the majority of Somalis and Ethiopians arriving in Yemen, SHS are the first people they encounter, and despite the reassurances, the onward drive to Mayfa'ah can be disorientating. Huddled in the back of a tightly packed truck, passing Arabic-speaking men in uniform at checkpoints on a smooth metalled road, most of the passengers spend the entire journey looking back out across the Gulf of Aden, keeping their eyes fixed on the horizon. They have come a long way, and have survived thus far. For now though, they have no idea where they are headed. (KEYSTONE/NOOR/Alixandra Fazzina)