Dadaab, Kenya - On a good day, Salat Ahmed and his pregnant wife Sadiyo make two dollars (1.80 euro) selling kilogramme bundles of khat, a leafy green herb that is mildly narcotic when chewed.
They run their business from a corrugated tin shack beside an extravagantly cratered dirt road in Ifo, one of five camps that together form the world's largest refugee settlement, Dadaab in northeast Kenya.
Most of their money goes on rent, food and medicine for them and their two young children, four-year old Farhiyo and her little brother Guled, aged two.
But Ahmed's dream is big, common and dangerous.
He longs to join the exodus of mostly young men who make the arduous journey north overland through Ethiopia, Sudan and Libya, across the Mediterranean Sea and into Europe.
The European border control agency, Frontex, says over 284,000 migrants attempted to enter Europe in 2014, with at least a third coming from sub-Saharan Africa. More than 7,400 came from Somalia.
"I dream of a life in Europe," said Ahmed, who is 21. He knows all about the dangers. He has heard of the mass drownings -- most recently of an estimated 900 people in a single tragedy -- and of the money-hungry militias turning Libya into a facsimile of his own home country, Somalia.
But he has also heard from friends who have made it, and he calculates the risk is worth taking.
"I know about the difficulties, but if you compare them to the difficulties I already have here in the camp? They are more than that," he said. "There's no bright future here, for me or my children."
Ahmed is one of 350,000 Somali refugees living in the Dadaab refugee camps 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border. They have come to Kenya in waves since 1991, propelled by civil war and famine.
The first arrivals fled their collapsing country as warlords wrested the state from dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Famine came after and more crossed the border. Other large influxes followed a US-backed invasion by Ethiopia in 2006 and another famine in 2011.
Fed up with hosting the refugees and suspicious that the camps harbour terrorists from Somalia's Shebab militant group, Kenya now wants the refugees to leave.
AFP
