Against all odds, teens chase elusive African dream

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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