Aware Migrants

Credits: BBC

In our series of letters from African journalists, Ismail Einashe meets olive pickers from Africa living in squalor and working for gangmasters for little pay in Italy.

The town of Campobello di Mazara on the Italian island of Sicily overlooks rows of olive trees blanketing verdant fields - farm trucks zoom past with crates brimming with plump green olives.

But a short stroll away from this idyllic view is something much darker - a filthy makeshift encampment that resembles a refugee camp.

Still every year up to more than 1,000 migrants - without official papers - fill this informal camp to work for black-market gangmasters to harvest olives from September to November.

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