The next time Yafet heard from Segen, she had just arrived at her first destination in Libya. It had taken 15 days to cross the Sahara desert —a route without roads, across desolate terrain. She was safe, she explained, but not everyone had been lucky. It was a journey that should have taken them six days, but the truck that was carrying them had broken down, and they had to wait for four days until another one was brought to continue the journey.

Four people died of dehydration while they were waiting.

Segen was crying over the phone.

“I asked her to give me to Abigail… to let me hear her voice,” Yafet remembers. “She told me that [Abigail] was too tired and sleeping. I was really scared when she said that. I just thought something happened to Abigail.”

Yafet doesn’t lose his temper often. But he shouted at Segen to let him hear Abi’s voice. Segen brought her to the phone.

His fear was not without cause. The desert route she was running is treacherous, and large numbers of refugees and migrants perish without ever reaching the coast, let alone Europe. It is difficult to tell exactly how many die each year in the Sahara because of lack of information and documentation. But with smugglers packing as many as 100 people into old trucks, the number is high.

“All the people had little food and little water. When the water finished they started to drink their urine,” Younes Abdi, a 29-year-old Somali refugee who fled to Sicily, told me about his journey across the desert. Twenty people from his group of about 100 died because complications with fuel and the truck they were travelling in slowed down the trip.

Even those who survive face kidnapping, torture, beatings, and sexual violence.

Mohammed Ali, a 28-year-old Somali refugee living in Sicily, told me about being beaten with sticks by smugglers, stabbed, and having his money stolen. Others are kidnapped by smugglers or militias and tortured until their families pay ransom money; women are often raped or sexually abused before they are allowed to proceed.

The situation doesn’t improve when refugees reach their first destination inside of Libya. Militias and local police often put refugees in jails, detention centers, and even hold them captive in houses and demand payment. If they can’t pay the bribe, refugees are subjected to forced labor and harsh treatment, including torture.

After crossing the desert, Bahousmane, a 33-year-old Senegalese asylum seeker in Sicily, was locked in a house for a year with 150 other people. The group only escaped after two people broke a hole in the wall of the house.

Even outside of prisons and detention centers, refugees face exploitation and abuse as they move through Libya and work to make enough money to afford the journey to Italy.

“They don’t like black people. They use black people like a slave,” said Osaretin Ugingbe, a 35-year-old Nigerian living in Sicily.

When they eventually make it to the coast and pay for their journey — around $1,500 — they are kept in houses run by smugglers for anything from a couple of days up to a number of months, depending on weather conditions and how many people the smuggler has who are ready to make the journey. The human traffickers do not provide much food or water, and violence is common.

The last time Yafet heard from Segen was about a month after she left Sudan. She had arrived on the coast after making the dangerous and trying journey and was in a smuggler’s house waiting to leave for Italy.

“I remember the last day I heard her voice was the 27th of June,” Yafet says. “She told me she would be leaving the next day, the 28th, or the day after. I just told her to be strong, to take care of herself, take care of our girl.”