Eight-year-old African boy who travelled 3,500 miles to Italy just so he could ‘go to school’ is doing well and has an ‘incredible smile’ on his face, aid workers reveals as plans are made from him to start education
An eight-year-old boy who travelled 3,500 miles from Africa to Europe so he could ‘go to school’ is doing well and has ‘an incredible smile’ his new temporary carers have said.
Little Oumar was picked up by a humanitarian vessel called Ocean Viking a week ago in the Mediterranean as he crossed from Libya to Italy with almost 100 others in a dinghy.
The ship then sailed to the Italian port of Ancona on the Adriatic Sea, where he was picked up by volunteers and put into temporary accommodation with other children.
An aid worker who is looking after him said: ‘He has the most incredible smile and is settling in well with the other children.
‘He is playing football and is drawing and painting and is looking forward to going to school.
An aid worker who is looking after him said: ‘He has the most incredible smile and is settling in well with the other children’
Little Oumar was picked up by a humanitarian vessel called Ocean Viking a week ago in the Mediterranean as he crossed from Libya to Italy with almost 100 others in a dinghy
‘Intellectually he is very clever for his age and when he starts school, he will quickly pick up Italian.
‘He’s spoken to his parents, and they know he is in good hands.’
Oumar’s harrowing story emerged earlier this week after the Ocean Viking arrived in Ancona following a three-day voyage from just off the coast of Libya.
He told astonished rescuers he left Mali in November and made his way across Africa to Libya with a friend and made an initial attempt but were caught by Libyan coastguards.
The pair were thrown into a Libyan jail at Ain Zara before managing to escape, hidden in a rubbish truck before getting on a dinghy heading for Europe.
Oumar told his rescuers he had earned money working as a painter and welder to scarp enough money to live on.
He added that being in Libya ‘was hard’ because he was ‘black’.
Home was a village called Tambaga, western Mali, where he lived with his parents, but he fled after a jihadist group attacked the area and they were separated.
He carried on walking and eventually ended up in Libya where he worked for several weeks before making a first failed attempt to cross the sea.
Pictures drawn by Oumar of the house where he is staying and the ship that he arrived on
Oumar left his tiny village near Tambaga in the west of Mali, then travelled on foot through the Sahara before sailing across to Italy
Migrants are helped evacuate a partially deflated rubber dinghy earlier this month. File image
Libyan coastguards picked him up and threw him into jail before he managed to escape in the rubbish truck.
While in jail he was beaten and suffered a fractured foot which was diagnosed by doctors in Italy.
Since his arrival he has settled into a temporary home ran by a charity called CEIS where he will remain until a permanent foster family can be found.
Pictures shared with the MailOnline show him drawing pictures with other children including one stick drawing of a little boy with a broken heart.
Others include pictures of the house where he is staying and the ship that he arrived in Ancona on.
