Africans Seeking Better Lives Pass Through Ethiopian Town

Metema, with about 100,000 people, is one of a handful of towns across the region that serve as feeders for a booming trade in migrants from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan, many hoping to make their way to Europe. The authorities are cracking down, yet the migrants just keep coming, often risking death. Since 30 Ethiopian Christians who passed through Metema were killed by the Islamic State group in Libya a few months ago, the Ethiopian government has become far more vigilant. Getachew Merah, a rail-thin 30-year-old aspiring migrant from Ethiopia, agreed to talk to the Associated Press, but only outside Metema, because he was afraid police would arrest him. With the government sweep-out, migrants are no longer showing up at the clinic, and the temporary shelter built for migrants in the middle of the town sits idle. More than 96 percent of people in the country's rural areas are still barely eking out a living, according to Oxford University's poverty index. According to accounts from several migrants and officials, here is how the trade works. Often the migrants don't carry all their money for fear of being robbed, so payment is made through their families, via hand transfer to the smugglers or affiliates in their hometowns. In a statement written to the Associated Press, Metema officials said they have repatriated more than 1,100 migrants arrested while trying to cross to Sudan illegally. Another young man, Abinet Yirga, 23, said his job in a billboard advertising company in Addis Ababa did not even leave him with enough money to buy clothes.

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