always been to live in America. And so, in
August 2018, Mohamed paid for a six-day drive
in the back of a pickup to Gao, in Mali. Along
the way, he and the 19 other passengers were
robbed and several of their water bottles slashed
by bandits. They walked the final 70 miles in the
desert to Algeria.
Mohamed spent a month working as an auto
mechanic in the border town of Bordj Badji
Mokhtar. He then traveled by foot and hitched
rides into Morocco, hoping to find passage by
water to Spain and from there to the U.S.
Instead Moroccan immigration authorities
jailed him for five days. He then escaped back to
Algeria, where he was briefly jailed again before
being relieved of the last of his money. Finding
no further use for him, Algerian authorities
deposited Mohamed onto the back of a dump
truck, which drove him into Niger and left him
in the desert. After several days on foot, he
Robert Draper has reported from a dozen African
countries as a contributing writer. Pascal Maitre,
a frequent contributor to National Geographic,
has visited Niger 15 times on assignment.
arrived in Agadez, four months from the begin-
ning of his fruitless journey.
When the mechanic had finished telling me
his story, he did not seem particularly discour-
aged by it. Before I could offer any sympathy,
he blurted out, “I don’t want to go home. I’ve
decided on my goal.”
Mohamed had a new plan. He would return
to Ivory Coast, make money, get a passport, and
buy a direct flight to Morocco, bypassing the des-
ert altogether. And then to the sea.
“If God gives me the chance,” he said, “and
I arrive in Europe alive and healthy, I think I
can make it”—by which he meant make it to
America, a land of millions of vehicles in need
of a clever mechanic. j
134 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC