Running up and down a long hallway, dodging the adults like obstacles, the children are blissfully unaware they are being kept behind bars in a detention centre.
Despite the imposing cream-coloured gates, the padlocks that keep them tightly shut and the ubiquitous presence of soldiers, the Ħal Far detention centre still looks less like a prison and more like a crowded hostel.
Smiling men and women hand each other bread, milk and hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. Others wash their clothes in basins, hanging them to dry on the bars of their windows and using the same water to wash the floor of their bedrooms, each blockaded by bunk beds.
“Thank you, Malta government, you saved our lives. Thank you, soldiers, UN, police and government,” says Solomon Amerga, 28, as his infant son sits on his shoulders and drops bread crumbs all over his hair, seemingly oblivious to the traumatic boat journey he undertook.
Mr Amerga is one of around 1,100 migrants, including many women, children and newborns, who fled the conflict in Libya and arrived in Malta over the past few weeks – arrivals that the government has described as “different” to the ones before the conflict erupted.
The three-storey former barracks in Ħal Far, which was recently renovated during the two-year lull of migrant arrivals, is reserved for families and single women. Single men are kept in the Safi detention centre.
Out of the 370 migrants housed in Ħal Far, about 80 started to be released to the open centres yesterday, just over three weeks after arriving.
Despite the government’s policy to detain migrants for up to 18 months until their asylum request is processed, women and families, who are considered vulnerable, are allowed to leave much earlier, as soon as the necessary medical checks are made.
“It is taking some time, but we are being given everything we need,” one of the migrants says, grateful that the block has become less crowded and they have finally been given the facility to phone their families back home and assure them they survived the treacherous journey.
The general feeling is one of contentment, although some of the migrants have complaints, careful to sandwich their grievances between loaves of praise and gratitude. Some say the food is not what they are used to. Others say they have friends in Malta who want to bring over clothes and shampoo, but have not yet been allowed to do so.
Another complains that, although they were given phone cards, they were not taught how to use them, so their credit was wasted.
“Detention cannot make us happy, but we are very grateful. We never expected to be saved by Malta. It is such a tiny island,” says Ethiopian Dawit Metamu, 35, who worked as an English teacher in Libya.
“The situation in Libya was a nightmare. Every Libyan was armed,” Mr Metamu says, adding that black people became a target because of allegations of African mercenaries being flown in by Muammar Gaddafi’s government.
While Mr Metamu lived in Libya for five years, Ivorian national Gorgette Ameyaw had been there for less than a month. She reached Libya because she was fleeing the conflict in her own country, where one of her 10 siblings was shot dead.
She and her husband left their four children with her parents, who live in a village where the situation is not so volatile. But since their jobs were based in the city, they felt they had to flee to cope financially.
She said she would only return to Ivory Coast if the situation there settled down for a while. “Sometimes a fire becomes small for a while, but grows big again,” she said, referring to the fact that incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo had been captured.
“(The Maltese soldiers) have given us everything we need. They have been our mentors. But there are plenty of people like us, so we appeal to the whole world to help,” she added.
Others made similar appeals, with one saying the rest of Europe should follow in the footsteps of Malta and Italy in helping rescue those fleeing the violence. Malta is too small for everyone, they argued, echoing the concerns of many.