(Reuters) – When police arrested Lamin Darboe’s father two years ago, the 16-year-old had to quit his studies and work on his uncle’s farm in Gambia. Desperate to go back to school, he stole his uncle’s bull to pay his way to Europe. “I sold his bull … before he found out, I was gone,” said Darboe, who still does not know how his father fell foul of the law. “I want to have a future, and become someone responsible in the future,” he said at an old villa in the hilltop Sicilian town of Caltagirone that now shelters 50 minors. Darboe is just one of thousands of migrants who have risked the deadly boat journey from North Africa to Italy this year, piling pressure on a shelter system that is bursting at the seams even before the expected summer spike in arrivals. About 27,000 boat migrants have reached Italy since Jan. 1, slightly up on the same period last year and following a total 153,000 arrivals in 2015 and 170,000 in 2014. The numbers are expected to rise this year because countries along the “Balkan route” – starting with a short boat ride from Turkey to Greece and continuing