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Despite Tunisia's Vote for Change, Enduring Miseries Drive Youth Exodus

Reuters

   SFAX, TUNISIA - It only took 10 minutes for Fakher Hmidi to slip out of
   his house, past the cafes where unemployed men spend their days, and
   reach the creek through the mud flats where a small boat would ferry
   him to the migrant ship heading from Tunisia to Italy.

   He left late at night, and the first his parents knew of it was the
   panicked, crying phone call from an Italian mobile number: "The boat is
   sinking. We're in danger. Ask Mum to forgive me."

   Hmidi, 18, was one of several people from his Thina district of the
   eastern city of Sfax among the dozens still unaccounted for in this
   month's capsizing off the Italian island of Lampedusa, as ever more
   Tunisians join the migrant trail to Europe.

   His loss, and the continued desire among many young men in Thina to
   make the same dangerous journey, vividly demonstrate the economic
   frustration that also drove voters to reject Tunisia's political elite
   in recent elections.

   In a parliamentary vote on Oct. 6, the day before Hmidi's boat sank
   just short of the Italian coast, no party won even a quarter of seats
   and many independents were elected instead. On Sunday, the political
   outsider Kais Saied was elected president.

   In the Hmidis' modest home, whose purchase was subsidized by the
   government and on which the family is struggling to meet the repayment
   schedule, his parents sit torn with grief.

   "Young people here are so frustrated. There are no jobs.

   They have nothing to do but sit in cafes and drink coffee or buy
   drugs," said Fakher's father, Mokhtar, 55.

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