African dream of a better life

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By Jenny Cuffe BBC News

Police on Europe's southern shorelines fear a summer wave of illegal migration from Africa. Some will come from Niger where traffickers are ready to cash in on people who are desperate to leave.

Ferienetu said her parents would be mad with worry and would search the world for her

The girl - she said she was 19 but I would say more like 15 - slept fitfully between bouts of coughing.

She was so small she could stretch out beside me on the back seat. The motif from her t-shirt had left a sprinkling of glitter dust on her shoulders.

We had 400 miles to travel but every jolt and lurch in the road took us further south from the desert and closer to the border with Nigeria and her home.

I had met Ferienetu three days earlier in Agadez, a sprawling town of red mud buildings on the edge of the Sahara, where goats mingle with motorbikes in the dusty street and temperatures at this time of year are in the 40s.

Hostile reception

After nightfall, I met some young men in their 20s from Cameroon who told me they were penniless and marooned, unable to go forwards to Libya or backwards to their lives as casual labourers or the unemployed.

They said they avoided certain parts of the town because of hostility from the locals. They only ventured out if there was money to collect - an instalment sent by Western Union from relatives with a vested interest in seeing them complete their journeys.

But there was no-one at home to send Ferienetu money because no-one knew where she was.

Illegal migration is big business in this part of the world and there is good money to be made guiding hopefuls over the desert

Appearing from the shadows, she started pouring out her story: the woman who had come to her village offering good work in Libya (a stepping stone for Europe), her arrival in the garrison town of Dirkoo and the "sexing", as she called it, that started in the early hours and went on through the day at 500 Central African Francs (50 pence) a go, and the beating which left her covered in blood but finally prompted her escape.

Desperate for education

She said her parents would be mad with worry and would search the world for her.

Yet when I asked Ferienetu what she planned to do next, she said she still hoped to get to Europe to complete her education; that she was clever and could make something of herself, if only she had the chance.

It's what they all think. Yes, they say, they know the dangers of the crossing.

They know there are robbers who may attack them in the desert, smugglers who will run away and leave them in the sand.

And if they evade capture by the Libyan or Algerian police and make it to the coast, well then - and here the woolly hat gets pulled further over the eyes as a crack in the bravura shows - then it could get really scary.

And we stay silent for a moment thinking of the leaky boats, the waves and bloated bodies.

Meeting the people smugglers

"You're 27," I say to George, who has a cousin called Kevin somewhere in Europe.

"You might die."

And with that youthful mixture of realism and fantasy, he replies, "But if I make it to Lampa Lampa..." (he means the Italian island of Lampedusa) "... I'll get to Italia and then I want to join a football team."

Illegal migration is big business in this part of the world. There is good money to be made guiding hopefuls over the desert.

These young men do not want to stick around the farm with mum and dad, they want to be out there experiencing the world they see on TV screens

Middlemen circle the bus station, promising tickets and accommodation with no awkward questions asked about passports or visas.

Sarki is a smuggler - a Tuareg with sand-worn feet and a white turban covering everything but his glittering dark eyes.

For generations his family has guided people across the Sahara, a journey that used to take 40 days but can now be done in four or five.

He drives me out of the town past an army checkpoint and off the Tarmac road into the desert.

This is where the smugglers collect their passengers and, sure enough, there are two Toyota trucks already laden with water cans and provisions and about 80 or 90 young men sheltering under a couple of scrubby trees waiting to climb aboard.

Again I ask them what drives them away from home to a country they know nothing about.

The response is almost automatic: "Poverty. It's because we have nothing."

Dream turned sour

But when I probe, several admit to leaving jobs and stable families. A tall Ghanaian lad explains: "I want to make it my own future."

These young men do not want to stick around the farm with mum and dad, they want to be out there experiencing the world they see on TV screens.

But for Ferienetu the dream has turned sour.

When we next meet, she says she is desperate to go home and, as I am travelling south, I offer to give her a lift part of the way.

At the Nigerian border, she tells police about the woman who trafficked her into prostitution and they say they will investigate.

They promise to put her on a bus to Lagos. From there she tells me she will go straight to her parents' village and beg their forgiveness.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 16 June, 2007 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the <a class="inlineText" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/3187926.stm">programme schedules </a> for World Service transmission times.