When Sheikh Faal left The Gambia in 2014, he was fleeing poverty. After a hopeless search for work, he decided that his fortune lies abroad. This is because job opportunities for youths in the Gambia are very scarce. 

According to the 2022-2023 National Labor Force survey, 45.3% of Gambian youth (those under the age of 35) were unemployed, accounting for 56.4% of the total population.

Faal comes from a large family and as one of the older siblings, he’s expected to care for his ageing parents. 

The family is poor with limited resources. He had no option but to take on the perilous journey known locally as the back-way for a better life.

“I embarked on this journey due to poverty because my family were struggling to make ends meet and my father who was sick had no one to support him. And the pressure was too much on me. So, I had no choice but to embark on this journey,” he says.

Before leaving The Gambia, Faal had obtained a Diploma in journalism and skills training in masonry at the Insight Training Centre.  

Faal was born in Banjul to a Gambian business couple but was brought up in Baddibu Salikenni by his grandmother. 

He began his journey from Salikenni on a commercial white van to Barra where he boarded a bus with four of his friends to travel to neighbouring Senegal which is a short journey by road while en route to Mauritania. 

“I spent six months in Mauritania working as a mason in one of the construction companies, and I was paid 90,000 in Mauritania Ouguiya which equate to 12,000 dalasis,” he adds.

But with hope of making better life in Europe, Faal decided to leave his job in Mauritania and continued his journey by bus to the Malian capital, Bamako. 

He joined other migrants and they travelled to the Malian border town of Kidal where they had to do menial jobs like porting to survive. 

On November 8, 2014, Faal and his friends boarded a truck on a 7-hour journey to Algeria.

“We were asked to pay the transportation fee which is equivalent to $400 but because I was able to communicate with the driver, a Bambara man who understands a bit of Mandinka. The languages have a lot of similarities. He reduced the fee for me to $200. Because he asked where I came from and I told him, I came from The Gambia, and he was like ‘we are brothers,” he says.

When Libya was economically prosperous, many Gambians and other African migrants lived and worked there. But the country has been ravaged by a deadly civil war. It’s a failed state now with many militia controlling large swathes of the country.

Many of these militias benefit from the growing illegal people trafficking and have been accused of maltreating migrants.  

It is in this backdrop that Faal and other Gambian migrants entered the war-torn country. 

Thousands of migrants mostly from West Africa have used the Libyan route to travel to Europe. 

According to Samuel Hall, around 11,929 Gambians landed in Italy by water in 2018, with 24% being unaccompanied minors.

Faal joined hundreds of other desperate Gambian migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. 

He was unlucky as their boat was stopped by Libyan navy before they could make the trip. 

“I encountered numerous challenges. And the difficult part was when I was captured in Libya after a failed attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea. I was imprisoned along with hundreds of other migrants at the Zawweya prison for six months and later deported out of the country,” he says.

But before this imprisonment, Faal’s vehicle was shot at by rebels who arrested and jailed them in Talhanda.  They were beaten and their belongings confiscated. 

He adds: “The rebels beat us and took away our belongings. I was having only 500 Dinar on me. They took away gold belonging to other migrants. We survived on a loaf of bread and a bottle water for days before they freed us.”

In June of 2019, Faal was among hundreds of jailed migrants who were freed and repatriated back to their country of origin through the support of the International Organisation of Migration.

Faal, 36, made the most of his repatriation package. He made a promise that he will put to good use his experience working in the building trade in Mauritania. 

“When I returned back to the Gambia, I built a house for my parents and got married. And I went back to the journalism profession and doing a masonry job to survive. Thank God, now I can win a contract of up to D500, 000 in which I employ young Gambians and I make profit,” he says.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba