"You are waisting your best years" Kisma Barries father had warned him. "Du you even understand how dangerous it is? Do you understand how big the risk of failure is?". Kisma Barrie is 22 years old and from Sierra Leones capital Freetown. In 2013 he started saving up for his journey. First he sold an old computer he got from a friend. He bought some old shoes for the money, sold it again and continued that way until one night in February 2016 when he had the 150 USD he needed to begin his journey. Next morning, he told his father he would make his way towards Europe. Now he sits in Ceuta, a small Spanish enclave in Morocco, waiting to be sailed across the sea to mainland Spain, where his case can be processed.
Behind a hill, close to the center, Wimbo has his hair stitched. Some of the boys work as hairdressers and trim the others' hair with razor blades and paper scissors. It's on the customer to get hold of a blade. It's a blade per head.
CETI, the center that the boys live in, is heavily overfilled and they don't like the food, which often consists of rice and a piece of fruit. Instead, they spend most of their time in small homemade huts around the area. Next to the luxury apartment-complex "La Colina" it's possible to catch some Wi-Fi.
The number "612" has taken on an identity for the boys. They tag it on the trees and rocks around the center.
Mustafa (top left), 19, from Guinea. Wants to go to Denmark. Or France. They guy on the right doesn't want to share his name, 18, from Niger. Would like to stay in Spain, but not Ceuta.
Bottom from left: Diallo 19 years old, from Guinea. Wants to go to Switzerland, Germany or Canada. Polo, 19 years old, from Guinea. Wants to go to Germany. Alhoussene, 22 years old, from Guinea. Wants to go to Amsterdam.
Kaba (above) and Sama have made their own corner behind a small abandoned house. The days go by, smoking cheap hash and cooking, if anyone has gathered enough money to get food. Kaba tries - like so many others - to make some money by helping the cars on the harbor with parking.
"Don't think that just because we sit here and do nothing, that we don't think" says one of the 612. "We also have dreams and ideas."
Kisma wants to be a football player in The Netherlands. If that doesn’t work out, he wants to create an NGO to help poor women and children in Sierra Leone. He will call it ‘The 612 Foundation’. But he keeps the dreams to himself. That’s mostly how it is with Kisma. He is one of the boys, but he doesn’t tell the others what he thinks about, when he sits in his own thoughts. He doesn’t tell them that he thinks a lot about his mother who drowned, when Sierra Leone was flooded in 2015. Or about his seven younger brothers in Freetown and his father who struggles to provide for his family after a knee injury. And nothing at all about the time in Mali, during his journey, when he saw his best friend get shot.
“You don’t understand how shameful it would be to fail in getting to Europe. That’s why people die on the fence and the Mediterranean. Better that, than to return home as a failure” -Kisma
In the border police, Guardia Civil's, main office, nine screens show images of the border fence. The only mocement is a little wind in the trees. Guardia Civil also monitors the activity on the ocean around Ceuta, to avoid migrants swimming past the fence from Marocco, to get to the enclave.
On a clear day, you can see the Gibraltar-rock looming over the small strait separating Africa and Europe from here. This is where Kisma spends most of his time alone
