Network Africa

The journey, according to James, could last two years. After the 2002 episode, he set out again. “Having repackaged myself from Benin, Edo State, I left Lagos for Mali and through the desert to Algeria and subsequently into Morocco, where I was arrested by the Moroccan authority while trying to make my way to Ceuta or Melilla and deported back across the border into Mali,” he said.

He set out in a group of 170, which included Ghanaians, Senegalese and Ivorian nationals. Only 110 made it into Algeria. “The others died of illness, lack of fitness, dehydration, food and money,” James said.

Another major cause of death according to James lies in the insincerity of the Arabs and Nigerian traffickers, who after collecting huge sums of money from the would-be immigrants, dump them in the middle of the desert (instead of few kilometres to the Algerian border), where the travellers are expected to pay their way through again.

In Bamako, James lives in a filthy motor park with ten other Nigerians, among them a lady with a little baby. They are willing to return home, but cannot as yet raise the transport fare.

However, recently, the focus is gradually moving from the desert to the sea, where illegal migrants travel in open boats for ten days from Senegal, Gambia and the Mauritania to the Canary Islands, in Spain. In two years, about 30,000 Africans sneaked into the Canary Islands illegally, forcing the Spanish authorities and the European Union to patrol the seas more than ever to stop the migrants from reaching the islands. Those arrested on the high sea are forcefully deported. Poverty, occasioned by lack of jobs, infrastructure and oppressive regimes across Africa are mostly responsible for this never-ending flow Africans to the more developed and stable western countries.

In Morocco, I sought out more illegal immigrants. But they don't come cheap like is the case in Mali. So my visit to Oudja and Nador was fruitless, more because I was denied exit from the Morocco side of the border into the Spanish territory of Melilla.

But I did meet some at a camp in Ceti. Like James, they look largely unkempt and the pains in their eyes are glaring. A Nigerian that I was able to speak to at the camp said it was a matter of life and death, despite the fact that he was now comfortable at the Spanish camp for illegal immigrants.

The camp is located on the outskirts of Ceuta. On my arrival at the camp from the centre of the town, the security at the gate told me through an interpreter (himself an illegal immigrant) that I would not be allowed into the camp or be able to speak with anyone in the camp without an authorisation from the governor of the island. I noticed cameras and security lights. The camp is encircled by barbed wires. I made my way down the hilly road from Ceti to the centre of the city, where I picked a taxi to the harbour. There, I boarded a ferry that took 30 minutes to across the Mediterranean Sea to Algaciras, in mainland Spain.

Unlike in Morocco, there are black Africans everywhere in Spain, nearly all of whom are new people in town. Most of the ones I met asked for one form of help or the other; some had not eaten and hadn't enough money to make the final part of their journeys.

However, the difference between these set of migrants and the ones on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea in Morocco was psychological: they could move about with the confidence that they had set foot on the Promised Land.

Consistently, Morocco continues to deport hundreds of illegal immigrants to their native countries, signaling a new anti-immigration tactic by this North African kingdom. As the nearest gateway to Europe for many sub-Saharan Africans fleeing poverty, Morocco has been at the centre of an immigration crisis in recent months. Hundreds of Africans have stormed razor-wire border fences protecting Spanish territories, and at least scores have been killed and thousands drowned using all forms of makeshift boats to cross into Spain and italy.

Apart from the injury sustained when charging on the barb wire separating Africa from Europe, Moroccan police often opened fire as the illegal immigrants rushed the post, killing several of them. In an incident, six illegal immigrants died of suffocation. On the African side, Moroccan guard posts were located in the dense Gurugu pine forest on a hill overlooking Melilla where would-be immigrants spend months living in forests on the Moroccan side waiting to cross over.

Recently, Spain announced the expulsion policy that it has struggled to cope with an overflowing holding facility housing 1,600 immigrants in Melilla and so also the facility in Ceuta. As a result of this new development, Africans housed there expressed horror at the prospect of going back to Morocco.

In Morocco, government officials only deport Senegalese illegal migrants, while the authorities have dropped off others along the country's desert border with Algeria, a practice that has provoked criticism from humanitarian groups, who pointed out that they had no shelter, food, or water there.

Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) reported that at least 400 Africans (including pregnant women and children) captured by the Moroccan army at forests near the Melilla border have been taken to a desert without any assistance, water or food.

“The immigrants have been forsaken by the world, abandoned in the middle of the desert,” said Carlos Ugarte, a Madrid member of the organization. “Morocco is deporting those immigrants to places where their lives are seriously in danger,” Ugarte added.

George won the 2006 European Commission Lorenzo Natali Award for Journalists Reporting Human Rights and Democracy.