Camille: “Right now I'm in the midwife room. It's where women sometimes hear the heartbeat of their baby for the first time, because most of the time they haven’t had access to healthcare at all where they were. So it's a really special place.

As soon as we are at sea, the crew starts to prepare and we have a lot of training about how to live in a boat, and about all the various rescues that could happen, because every rescue is different. Because of the kind of boat, or the number of people on board. 

We try to prepare as one crew, but we have different teams. We have a rescue team, a medical team and we have my team, the protection team, with protection delegates and a cultural facilitator.

The work starts well before the rescue. We participate in the lookout. We go on top next to the bridge with binoculars and we look for any kind of boat in distress. We could receive a distress case from Alarm Phone or some news from airplanes that say there is a boat in distress, and this is the moment when we concentrate and focus on finding people who might need our help.

During the rescue, our job really starts. The fast boats go to meet the boat in distress to evacuate people and the survivors begin to arrive on board. We start by welcoming them and  just telling them ‘you are safe – welcome on board the Ocean Viking’.

Because you know, most of the time the journey started a long time ago. They had to flee their country because of persecution, because of really serious matters, and sometimes they think the journey will last only a few days. But most of the time it lasts months and sometimes even years.

Camille: Most of the time they are at sea for days and there is a mix of gasoline and salty water that gives a chemical burn.  So they also need medical help quite fast and one of the first things we do is give them access to shower because with soap, it removes the gasoline.

It’s important to say that the boats they are using are not suitable to cross the Mediterranean. They are really bad boats. Sometimes they are inflatable or wooden boats that can capsize really easily because of the weather, the waves. The inflatable boats, get destroyed very easily.

Plus, most of the time you don't have an experienced captain who knows the weather, who knows where to go. The sea is a really dangerous environment and most of the time they get lost. And most of the time they're not wearing life jackets and cannot swim. So if someone falls from the boat, and it happens like a lot of time, they're not able to save them.

Sara: It is devastating when we are not able to reach a boat in distress on time. Either because of shipwrecks – and in these cases you just find the boat or pieces of the boat or dead bodies – or because they are intercepted and they are brought back to Libya.

Then of course there are specific events as in March last year when we rescued the boat with 25 people on board and we learned from them that there were approximately 60 more people on board, including women and at least a child, who perished between the departure and the moment we found the boat.

They died one after the other, one in front of the other, and there were no dead bodies on the boat because they had become a burden and were thrown into the sea. These are things that you don't easily forget.

Camille: Not finding boats is one of the hardest things because you never really know what happened: Was it intercepted and taken back to Libya or did it not make it and everybody on board died? For me it's really difficult because you never know what happened and you will never know.

Sara: I will be honest, there have been moments when I said to myself that maybe it was the moment to stop, because to be constantly exposed to this kind of situation, it's something not easy to deal with. But at the same time I have to admit, these are only moments. Personally, my motivation never went away. It's still strong and I think that it's so crucial that the search and rescue keeps going.