Culled from the Christian Science Monitor:

Against all odds, teens chase elusive African dream

Three brothers from Gambia set out on a journey to find wealth in Angola's 
dangerous diamond fields.

By Danna Harman 

The three Ceesay brothers left their parents' impoverished peanut farm in 
rural Gambia and headed to the capital Banjul to get their passports. That 
was their first time in a city. A day later, they boarded a plane for 
Nigeria. "I wish I could tell my mother about the sky," says 14-year-old 
Sulayman, the youngest of the three Ceesays, who spent most of the six-hour 
flight staring wide-eyed out the airplane window. "I cried when my mother 
kissed me goodbye," he admits, "but I told her I would find a diamond and buy 
her a house some day. And I will too."
 
The following day – dizzy from the flight and holding on for dear life to the 
railings of a contraption they were told was called an escalator – they 
descended into the city of all African cities, Lagos. It was there, explained 
the teenagers, in the concrete jungle of 13 million people, that they would 
begin to seek their fortune.

There are millions of young, poor, uneducated Africans just like the Ceesay 
brothers, traversing this continent looking for the one place – any place – 
where they might find work. No comprehensive data exists on the magnitude of 
child migration and labor, but the International Labor Organization (ILO) 
estimates that in Nigeria alone, about 12 million children under the age of 
15 are on the move, out of school, and working for a pittance. Worldwide, the 
ILO estimates there are some 250 million child laborers, more than half of 
whom work full time, every day, all year round.

Many of these children are lured across borders or into cities by 
unscrupulous syndicates specializing in child trafficking and prostitution. 
Some are sent off by desperate families, and others still are simply 
following their dreams. The more fortunate ones may find menial labor as 
waiters, cleaners, car washers, bus touts, or domestic servants. Others will 
end up selling chewing gum, apples, or rolls of toilet paper at street 
corners, sleeping in filthy shacks or on the pavement.

At immigration in the Lagos airport, the Ceesays encounter their first 
hurdle. They can not fill out the entry forms. Completely illiterate, only 
the eldest, 16-year-old Bakoreh, knows how to sign his name. "But where we 
are going this will not be too important," says middle brother Salimou 
defensively, "... because we are not staying here. We are going to the 
diamond fields of Angola."

The plan, as outlined with great enthusiasm, words toppling over one another, 
is to work in Lagos for a few weeks "or even months," earn the money needed 
for passage to Angola, and then spend the next few years getting rich. Their 
parents had saved money for two years to enable the boys to make the trip to 
Lagos. Now the brothers are on their own. Between them they have nothing but 
$20, "the plan," and a great deal of hope.

Gambia, according to the World Bank, is no easy place to grow up. One of the 
poorest countries in Africa, 85 percent of the population lives in rural 
areas, barely eking out a living on the peanut farms. Sixty percent of the 
population is illiterate, 35 percent can expect to die before their 40th 
birthday. It's no surprise that many, like the Ceesays, try to escape.

But Nigeria is not all that much more promising. In this vast, oil-rich 
country, the levels of corruption and mismanagement have reduced two-thirds 
of the population to living under the $1.40 a day poverty line, and more than 
half the people do not have access to clean water, electricity, or 
employment.

On the streets of Lagos, many are those who dream of riches. "One day I will 
have houses and cars and even more things," says Usman Ibre, a crippled 
teenager who spends his days at a busy intersection rolling between cars on a 
homemade skateboard, selling pens and dirty pads of paper.

"Most of the time no one looks at me. Sometimes they buy a pen," says Ibre, 
who arrived in Nigeria six years ago from Niger, able bodied and filled with 
his own dreams of cocoa plantation riches in the Ivory Coast. "But I still 
hold my plans."

And Angola, the destination of the Ceesays' dreams, has been rated by the 
United Nations as the worst place on earth to be a child, where over 30 
percent of children die before they turn five. It is the country with the 
highest number of landmines per person scattered in its soil. Some 60 percent 
of the population has no access to food and must rely on aid agencies or face 
starvation.

One of the Ceesays' distant cousins struck it rich in Sierra Leone a few 
years back, making enough money, the boys boast, "to buy 12 houses in 
Gambia." So, they used to dream of going to the diamond fields of Sierra 
Leone, too. It was a place where youngsters could toil for the rebels in 
return for small percentages of the diamond sales, or even, if very 
fortunate, smuggle out a diamond on their own.

But the recent peace accord ended rebel control over the diamond fields, 
regulated the sector, and thwarted such plans. "Sierra Leone is no longer a 
place for a young man to work," says Bakoreh. "Its too organized today. There 
is no room for us."

In Angola, meanwhile, while the killing of UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi 
in February brought hope for ending the decades-long civil war, the rebels 
still control the diamond areas, and it is still possible for a young boy to 
find some backbreaking work under the sun there. Many end up sick, hungry, or 
dead. Some do hit pay dirt, but even those who actually find the precious 
rocks are more often than not cheated out of any reward by rebel bossmen. And 
those who try to steal are usually killed.

Finished with immigration at the Lagos airport, the Ceesay brothers find 
themselves in the departures terminal, holding onto a slip of paper on which 
is scrawled a relative's phone number. His name is Kissime, and when they 
find him, they explain, he will give them a mattress to sleep on and show 
them the ropes. And then they wave and disappear into the chaotic world that 
is Lagos.

    
    

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