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A Million Shillings- Escape from Somalia

SHIMBIRO, SOMALIA- NOVEMBER 2007
Standing in choppy shoulder deep water, Somali refugees look back anxiously from the sea as they try to locate friends and relatives left behind on Shimbiro Beach. Preparing to board one of three smuggler’s boats that will depart simultaneously for Yemen, many of the passengers have become separated from those that they had hoped to make this high-risk journey with.As the crew hauls passengers from the water, each is already soaking wet as they step onboard. Before they even depart, the one hundred and twenty eight Somalis and Ethiopians tied down inside the tiny boat begin to shiver as strong winds blow in for the sea. Their fate is now sealed. Only eleven of the people who took this boat were to ever reach Yemen alive.

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