In the middle of the Nigerien desert, it’s the start of what migrants call the “path through hell.” That’s where I was headed. The first hurdle on the route to Europe, through the desert in the hands of smugglers, often culminating in nameless, faceless death. The border between Niger and Libya is known as “the snakebite” because if anything happens to you there, you’re a goner. It’s perhaps the most desolate border in the world, a silent place in the desert, entirely uninhabited without so much as a road. It couldn’t be more different from my home in the Ghanaian jungle, lush with vegetation
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