Camilla

Day twenty-two, Montenegro. At the Namaste I meet Camilla. She is the reason the place is clean, the beds are made and the kitchen is always in order. She arrived two weeks ago.

She types something into her phone, turns it around and holds the screen up to me. Google has made it: „They just took my passport and my bag.“

Took them? Who?

Camilla is from Ecuador. She has three children and shows me a photograph, moving her thumb over their faces. She hasn't seen them in months. There is no work at home, and there is family in Italy, so she and her brother set out for Europe to earn something their children could live on.

She travelled to Colombia and flew from there to Turkey, because a visa is not a simple matter for an Ecuadorian and this was the way around it. In Turkey the authorities took almost everything she had. Passport. Luggage.

„They never told me why,“ she types.

They let her brother through. She stayed six months waiting for new papers, working, until she could get out to Montenegro. That was two weeks ago. Here she can work.

Italy is the plan. „As soon as I can, I'll keep going.“

She calls Ecuador every day over the internet.

„I'm staying strong,“ she says.

I have been telling myself for weeks that this journey takes courage.