Sicilian hotel offers first refuge for migrant survivors

In the green hills of southeastern Sicily, the Don Bosco Oasis hotel is turning tourists away this season.

Instead, it has taken in 112 African migrants, survivors of the kind of risky, clandestine crossing of the Mediterranean which has cost at least 900 people their lives this year alone.

Across southern Italy, where the bulk of migrants seeking a better life first set foot in Europe, an unprecendented influx has filled the usual processing centres.

The interior ministry has had to turn to hotels and other residential structures to take them in.

For 29 euros ($31) per person per day, the hotel Oasis Don Bosco responded to the call and prepared its rooms for the influx: each has three beds and a bathroom, with a small balcony.

Construction has begun to expand the hotel's capacity to 200 beds.

The premises include a big recreation hall, a little classroom for Italian lessons and a football pitch.

For security reasons the huge pool has been fenced off and will be drained.

The latest batch of migrants, who arrived late Thursday in the nearby port of Augusta, spent their first night in Europe in tents.

"Hi, I'm Ciccio," says Francesco Magnano, the director of the centre. "I'm here to give you dignity, something to drink and eat, a bed to sleep in, and honour."

Then he does the roll call, cheerfully mispronouncing all the names.

- 'Where are we?' -

Visibly exhausted, the migrants begin to relax.

Then the questions gush out.

"Where are we?" "What day is it?" "Where is there a phone so I can call my family?" "Are there any cigarettes?"

Most are from sub-Saharan Africa -- Nigeria, Guinea, Senegal, Mali, Congo -- and their stories are familiar.

They begin with a costly and exhausting trek from their home countries, crossing unforgiving desert before reaching Libya.

There they face violent militias and arrogant traffickers before finally boarding a rickety, leaky vessel that will take them to the safety of the "big boat" -- when the Italian coastguard comes to the rescue.

"I paid 400 dollars to come to Italy. When I saw the inflatable boat I didn't want to get in. It wasn't a boat, but those vultures told me that if I turned back they would kill me," said 24-year-old Mamadou Bari, from Guinea.

"There were Christians and Muslims on board. When the water started coming in we bailed it out together, praying together."

"Now I am happy to have a future," Bari said.

Oasis Don Bosco has officially become an emergency intake centre, where the migrants are supposed to stay 72 hours as their situation is clarified.

"In reality, we know it will be much longer, unless they escape," Magnano said.

Police will soon be along to take the inmates' fingerprints, which many want to avoid, knowing that EU rules will bar them from seeking asylum in Germany or France if it is established that they arrived via Italy.

On Friday morning, several dozen new immigrants who had arrived a few days earlier in the Sicilian capital Palermo were sleeping in Catania in the shadow of Mount Etna.

They all escaped processing in the hopes of pushing further into Europe -- "France and Calais, then England where you can have a residency permit in three or four months," one said.

Meanwhile, Magnano wants to make the new immigrants feel at home in their temporary shelter, with plans to convert the reception area into a mosque and make space in the grounds to grow vegetables.

He has a bitter memories of the last centre he managed, whose owners "just wanted to make money" off of 170 minors housed in deplorable conditions.

Violent fights broke out regularly between Somalis and Gambians, and a riot was narrowly avoided the day the owners decided to cut food rations in half.

Magnano himself blew the whistle on the centre. "It wasn't a good start for possible future European citizens," he said.