Smuggling boats are often much too full and not always fully sea-worthy. Those things, and having to travel in secret, often under the cover of the night, make the sea journey to the Western countries very precarious. Thousands of people die this way every year, while escaping violence and poverty and taking the risk in hope of reaching safety, better life and, or being able to support their families.
Those deaths are not a necessity. They are a result of political decisions by European leaders. And the very reasons people feel they need to make those precarious journeys, leaving their homeland and loved ones and everything they know behind, are because their home regions are destabilised as a result of hundreds of years of colonialism, and because of tensions brought about by unfolding climate catastrophe. Both the legacy of colonialism and climate catastrophe are results of greed, and have benefitted rich Western nations while making other places less stable and more dangerous and difficult to live in.
As Zerya and her little sister Revi take passage West, things don't go according to the plan. Waves is a tale of hardship, but also of mermaids, friendship, laughter.
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