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The Pilgrimage
Project Type
Photography
Date
April, 2019
Location
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
On April the 1st, 2019, the Municipality of Amsterdam shutted down the city’s winter shelters, leaving hundreds of undocumented migrants completely homeless. Temperatures at night dropped down to -5°C, threatening people sleeping in the streets to freeze to death.
NGOs, political parties, churches, volunteers and the migrants themselves gathered to find a way throughout this situation.
Migrants had lunch and a place where to stay but only during noon. Night accommodation and dinner had to be found on the go. The usual settlements were churches, offered for one or two nights.
Once a shelter was found the dynamics were the following: find sleeping bags, coats, breakfast and dinner. Make sure everybody was at the meeting point (the Werelhuis, a local NGO) and walk for forty, sixty or ninety minutes towards a new church. The next morning walk back to the meeting point, wait until the afternoon, repeat the process.
The migrants were from countries such as Gambia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq and Morocco, however mainly from Eritrea. Some of them were physically injured, such as twisted ankles or dislocated shoulders; some were suffering from schizophrenia, panic attacks, allergies and colds. This situation lasted for over forty days, the Municipality of Amsterdam did not give any solutions to these problems
