[log in to unmask] (Latir Downes-Thomas) wrote:

CONAKRY, Aug 7 (AFP) - Scenes of mass grief greeted the return
here Saturday of the bodies of two African teenagers who froze to
death while stowing away 30,000 feet (10,000 metres) up in the
landing gear of an airliner bound for Europe.
   The tragic adventure of Yaguine (eds: corr) Koita, 14, and Fode
Tourkana, 15, ended where it began, at the airport of the Guinean
capital Conakry, where they smuggled themselves aboard a Belgian
Sabena Airbus, bearing a letter to European officials appealing for
"kindness and solidarity" to come to the rescue of Africa.
   "Help us, we are suffering enormously," it said. "We have war,
disease, not enough to eat... a great lack of education, of
teaching..."
   Koita and Tourkana were found frozen to death inside the landing
gear well after the plane landed in Brussels Monday.
   Outside the mortuary in Conakry girls rolled on the ground in
grief as the two bodies arrived.
   Members of the boys' families, officials and clergymen formed a
cortege  amid scenes of hysteria from a large crowd of relatives and
friends, mainly youngsters.
   Poverty and lack of opportunity in a country with 65 percent
unemployment were apparently among the reasons that drove the boys
to a desperate attempt to seek a new life in the El Dorado of
Europe.
   Yaguine explained his act in a message left for his father in
Conakry. "Here nothing works, nothing is going right. If I stay,
we're going to live unhappily until we die," it read.
   The two boys were being buried Sunday after prayers at a
mosque.
   Hundreds awaited the arrival of the Sabena flight at the airport
and a wave of grief erupted from the crowd as the two coffins were
quickly lowered to the tarmac.
   The letter found on the boys' bodies in Brussels read: "We young
Africans are asking you for a large and effective organization to
bring about real progress in Africa."
   The letter also implied that its carriers knew they might not
survive the journey.
   Koita's weeping mother, Saran Dumbaya, a divorcee living in
France, was first off the plane in Conakry. A Guinean diplomat based
in Brussels helped her down.
   Her son had lived with his father in Conakry.
   Security was heavy at Conakry airport where several government
ministers were present for the arrival of the bodies, police said.
   Guinea sees more applications for visas to leave the country
than anywhere else in Africa, the national assembly said last year,
blaming the catastrophic unemployment rate of 65 percent or more.
   The difficulty of many Africans in obtaining visas for European
countries was widely seen as an important cause of the tragedy.
   "If Yaguine had been given a visa in all due form to join his
mother he would not be dead today," said Lamine Kamara, Guinea's
public services minister.
   "If they opened the frontier, the vast majority of young people
would leave Guinea," a Conakry businessman said.

CONAKRY, GUINEA, 7-AUG-1999: The elder brother (L), the mother (C)
and father 's second wife (R) of the late 15-year-old Fode Tourkana
cry at Conackry Airport August 7 1999 after his body and that of his
14-year-old comrade Yaquine Koita were flown back to Guinea. Both
teenagers were found frozen to death in the undercarriage well of a
Belgian Airbus after it landed in Brussels August 2 1999. Their
deaths have sparked sympathy in Belgium and focussed attention on the
plight of many African states.
***********************************************
l cannot  stop crying as l read this.This is what happens to our youth in
Africa because of the kind of leadership we have.How tragic, how sad, how
infuriating this is.What  a toll poverty, lack of opportunity, manipulation
and victimization by those in power has taken on the people of Africa. Our
leaders see their positions as  tools to enrich themselves and their cohorts,
while the masses of the people are  dying from want of even the most basic
and most fundamental of needs, i.e education, jobs, and opportunities for a
brighter  future. The  level of abuse , mis-management and dishonesty
displayed by our leaders is very clear to the youth, so that they are looking
to others instead  of at home. It is simply too tragic and heartbreaking such
that l cannot even find the words to express it.

Jabou Joh

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