BOSSASSO,PUNTLAND STATE OF SOMALIA - This is where Africa ends. In this decrepit port city at the easternmost tip of the continent, thousands of Africans are waiting to get out -- to escape from the unrelenting war of Somalia and the hopeless privation of Ethiopia for the glimmer of a better life, 200 miles away across a roiling, shark-infested sea.
Their destination is Yemen, gateway to the rich countries of the Persian Gulf, where they dream of jobs and security. But getting there requires a journey in many ways more harrowing than what they left behind.
Putting their lives in the hands of smugglers who cram them by the scores into small, motorized fishing boats ill-equipped for the high seas, hundreds of migrants each year don't survive the illegal crossing. Many die of dehydration during the two-night journey, their bodies thrown overboard by smugglers to lighten the load. Others are weak swimmers who drown if their boat fails or while trying to swim the last few hundred yards to shore.
The reward for making it? It's rarely better than a $2-a-day job at a car wash or factory in Yemen or Saudi Arabia and the constant threat of deportation -- a familiar kind of poverty and fear in a new and unfamiliar land.
I have accidentally seen during my first work days in Puntland, that many are still, the sandy streets and alleys of Bossasso are lined with people who are ready to trade one hellish struggle for another. Last year, at least 29,000 made the journey across the Gulf of Aden, according to the U.N. refugee agency, which calls this one of the world's biggest and most neglected illegal migration routes.
A similar number are expected to cross this year, including many repeat travelers who know the risks. They'll pay between $50 and $100 to the smugglers, whose boats leave far from town and under the cover of night, easily evading local authorities.
Safe passage isn't assured."Imagine somebody who hates himself, who puts himself on a path leading to his own death, but he can do nothing about it," that what Kasahoun Gorabat told me, a migrant from the harsh desert of eastern Ethiopia, describing a journey he's made five times in six years.
The rail-thin 26-year-old was still a teenager when he left his family and set out for the Persian Gulf for the first time. Each time he crossed, he found work for a few months, only to be discovered and deported.
On his third trip, Gorabat recalled, smugglers forced him and about 100 other passengers at gunpoint into the heaving sea more than a half-mile from the Yemeni shore, where the coast guard is notorious for firing on the boats. In the dark he swam for his life, and when he reached the beach, he collapsed on the sand, exhausted, with a few dozen others.
When they woke at dawn, they found that the tide had crawled up the beach and dragged 21 weary travelers, mostly women, back into the shallow water, where they drowned.
"That was the worst thing I have seen," he said. "You always see a few dead bodies floating in the water when you're going across. When you say it's a very good journey, it means only five or six people died."
Last year, according to U.N. figures, at least 328 people died making the crossing. Another 310 went missing and are presumed dead.
Traditionally, the migrants are unmarried Ethiopian and Somali men in their 20s and 30s. This year, aid workers including my organization Shilcon for the first time found Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians making the trip, a sign that the transit route is growing more established.” The young people are desperate. They know the dangers, and they're willing to risk everything.
For the dozens of smugglers operating here, demand is booming, so there's little incentive to carry fewer passengers or invest in sturdier boats.
"We take care to minimize the risk of death. But it does happen," said Mohammed, a boyish 34-year-old who's run a smuggling business for five years and agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his last name be withheld to shield him from local authorities.
During a clandestine meeting in his car, far from the center of town, Mohammed's cell phone rang at least 20 times in a half-hour. It was a few days into peak season and his two boats were filling up fast.
"The customers are so many, especially when there is conflict," Mohammed said. "But we don't take pleasure in that. We see it as our job to take people to a place where they can live, eat and survive. We are kind of rescuing them."
Authorities in Bossasso say they want the smuggling to stop but complain that their forces are too small to compete with the many well-armed boat owners.
But the real reason that smuggling thrives, Mohammed said, is that some police officers take a cut of the receipts.
By Mohamed Omar Hajji