By Joel Gunter of BBC Africa Eye
It was close to midnight when the young man crawled into the desert. All around him was darkness. A hundred metres away, a handful of Tuareg rebels and people smugglers, who worked together ferrying migrants through this unforgiving stretch of the Sahara, were gathered around three trucks, drumming and dancing and letting off long bursts of gunfire that rattled the night sky. He could just make out the faint light from their phones, and every fifth bullet they fired was a tracer that lit a bright arc towards the stars.
The young man, who had given himself the name Azeteng, was somewhere in northern Mali near to the border with Algeria. Behind him lay El-Khalil, a bleak and brutal waystation on the West African migrant route to Europe. Ahead of him, sand stretched for miles in every direction. He was a speck on the dark sea of the Sahara. Slowly, painfully, he pushed his body on, trying to keep as low as possible to the ground.
Azeteng was on the run. A few hours earlier, the smugglers who controlled El-Khalil had swiped his glasses from his face, just to mess with him, and refused to give them back. Azeteng was 25 but he was small for his age — 5’ 5” and slightly built, with a shy manner and a way of moving through the world that suggested he was always trying not to be seen. He was powerless to stand up for himself, so he backed away.
If the smugglers had stopped then to look closely at his glasses, they might have seen the strangely thick frame, the mini-USB port under one arm, the pin-sized hole in the hinge — and they would surely have killed him. He had seen enough already to be sure.
The month was May 2017. The migrant routes through northern Mali were controlled by the Tuareg rebels, who worked with smuggling and trafficking networks connected to departure points across West Africa. Azeteng’s journey began in Ghana. Others came from Guinea, the Gambia, Senegal, Sierra Leone. In recent years, tens of thousands of men, women and children made their way into the Sahara, drawn by the distant promise of a better life in Europe.
A Ghanaian migrant who set out in 2016 told me he turned back in fear after hitting the desert. His friends persevered, towards Libya, he said. “Only one succeeded, to Italy. Later he told us that the rest were dead.”
Those who attempt the desert crossing travel along ancient trans-Saharan trade routes through Mali and Niger to Algeria and Libya and on to the sea. News reports have focused on the grim toll of the Mediterranean, which claimed the lives of more than 5,000 migrants the year before Azeteng set out. But according to UN estimates, as many as twice the number of migrants have died in the desert.
A few weeks after Azeteng crawled out of El-Khalil, 44 Ghanaians and Nigerians, including young children, died of thirst in Niger when the smugglers who brought them that far ran out of fuel. Weeks later, at least 50 migrants died when three trucks were abandoned for unknown reasons. Those were the headlines. Many more would die uncounted in the sand. Continue reading on https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/secret_spectacles_migrant_spy?ocid=socialflow_facebook&fbclid=IwAR0scBz4UH6OuymMyxH7ojHOyVPs8vEcD6mVQcfdttEbW7eN_7eUsPqw6mM

I feel very sad for our brothers and sisters out there in the middle of nowhere in the Sahara desserts and unfriendly Mediterranean seas,sandwiched ny monstrous human smugglers,rebels,traffickers and death staring at them in their eyes as am typing with no relative or friend to comfort them.You don't judge,condemn or justify their action because we all know the hell of A continent we all survive in.God be with them

anyone with similar migrant experience whether direct or indirect experience through a relative,friend or any narrator or narrative,including any comment on this monster experience which will be with us for a long time like a dessert curse and ways our respective governments,opinion leaders and the society can avert this unfortunate do or die journey