I Risked My Life Stowing Away on a Ship — I Now Teach Harbour Boys the Truth
I woke inside a steel box with no air left to waste, my tongue glued to my mouth, and my mother's voice in my head like she was banging on the walls. When the container finally opened in Valencia, men screamed, light stabbed my eyes, and I realised I had survived the sea, only to be treated like a criminal.
Source: UGC
Heat crushed my chest. I lay on cold metal, sweat pooling under my back, forcing myself not to move because every shift stole oxygen. Above me, the ship's engine thumped.
My water was gone. My torch died, and the darkness became something I could touch. I counted breaths, slow and careful.
On the third night, I heard a voice.
My mother.
"Kwame, come and eat," she said, as she stood in our room at Tema Manhean.
I tried to answer, but only a rasp came out. On the fourth day, I pressed my face to the door and sobbed without sound. My tears would not fall. They dried like salt.
Then the container jolted. The ship slowed. A hard clang rang through the walls. Footsteps. Light leaks through the edges.
The doors flew open.
Men jumped back like they had seen a ghost. One yelled, another lifted his phone, and a third pointed at me.
Source: UGC
I crawled forward, blinking, and in that moment, the first thing I saw was fear in their eyes.
Not pity. Fear.
That was when I understood the truth: surviving was not the same as arriving.
I am Kwame Mensah, thirty-three, born and raised in Tema Manhean.
My childhood fit inside one small room. A mattress on the floor. A plastic cupboard that smelled of damp clothes.
My mother, Akosua, sold kenkey by the roadside near the harbour junction. Some days she added fried fish. Other days, we ate plain pepper and pretended it was enough.
My father worked around the port in a reflective vest. When I was twelve, he died in a worksite accident at the harbour.
People came to cry and promise help. Then they went back to their lives.
No compensation came. No officer called. No envelope arrived with his name. My mother stopped dreaming out loud and started counting everything.
Source: UGC
I tried to stay in school, but I dropped out of SHS in Form Two. I couldn't pay fees or buy books. I could not sit in class hungry and pretend education would rescue me.
So I joined the boys at the port.
I carried loads for traders and ran errands for men who still called me "small boy" even as I grew taller. Every day, I watched containers leave Ghana full of goods, while people like me stayed stuck on the same dusty ground. My chest filled with envy each time a ship's horn sounded.
Then the online photos started. Old classmates abroad, clean clothes, bright smiles, captions like, "God did it." The hunger in my stomach grew into hunger in my mind.
One afternoon, Yaw "Captain" Donkor leaned on a railing and spoke like he held secret knowledge.
"You know some people no dey go plane," he said. "Dem pass through sea."
I laughed, but it came out weak. Yaw smiled. "If you get heart, the world is wide."
Source: UGC
That night, I watched my mother sleep and felt like love was not enough to change our story. I sold my phone, borrowed money from my uncle Kofi, and paid Yaw to help me escape.
When my mother asked where I was going, I lied. I said I had found work in Takoradi. I did not say goodbye suitably because I knew she would stop me.
Yaw moved like he owned the port.
He greeted security men by name and joked with drivers. He spoke with easy confidence, and that confidence made me trust him more than I should have
That night, he pulled me behind stacked cargo and warned, "From here, you be on your own. No noise. No panic."
My mouth went dry. I wanted to ask a hundred questions, but pride blocked my throat. I only nodded.
Hours later, my world became metal and darkness.
Source: UGC
The smell hit me first, a sharp mix of oil and rust. Heat rose from the floor. I sat with my knees to my chest, listening until only the ship remained. The container jerked, stopped, then moved again, and time lost its meaning.
On the first day, I forced calm into my body. I rationed water as if it were gold and chewed biscuits slowly to fool my stomach.
On the second day, my torch flickered and died. Darkness thickened. Sweat poured even when I stayed still. My shirt stuck to my skin. My thoughts ran wild, then circled back to one fear: air.
By the third day, the air felt thin and heavy at the same time. I breathed like a man sipping through a straw. I lay flat to save oxygen, but fear kept speeding my breaths.
By the fourth day, reality slipped. I heard my mother's voice again, close and firm. "Kwame, you didn't bath today."
Source: UGC
I laughed, then cried, then went silent, listening for her footsteps that never came.
When the container finally opened in Valencia, bright light cut my eyes. Port workers shouted. One man stumbled back as if I were a snake. I raised my hands, palms out.
A uniformed officer arrived and unleashed a torrent of words in a language that crashed over me. I managed, "Please. Ghana. Tema." He either did not understand or did not care.
They marched me into a cold room with grey walls.
Two nights passed there. Cold punished my bones. Hunger twisted my stomach. They questioned me with papers I could not read, and I kept repeating, "I no get passport. I no get anything."
A tired officer slid a form towards me and tapped a date. Fourteen days. Leave the country.
I stepped outside with nothing but fear. I walked back to the port because ports were the only places I understood.
I slept near a fence with other undocumented men from Senegal, Mali, and Guinea. We shared bread when someone found work.
Source: UGC
People crossed the road to avoid us. Shop owners chased us away. The police stopped us constantly.
"Papers," they demanded.
I shook my head. "No papers."
They searched my pockets as if I carried an answer.
I tried day labour at construction sites. Some men pointed at bricks and said, "Trabajo," meaning work, and I jumped at the chance. But once they heard my accent, their faces changed.
"No. Finished," the men said, waving me away.
Hunger became normal. Shame became routine.
At night, I sent voice notes home, forcing brightness into my tone. "Maa, I'm fine. Work dey small small. Don't worry." I spoke as if it were a prayer, hoping words could become truth.
Sometimes my mother replied with joy. Sometimes she replied with worry. But she always ended the same way.
"Come home, my son."
I never answered that part. I could not bear returning empty-handed. I told myself suffering was temporary, and success was waiting.
Source: UGC
I did not understand that abroad could swallow you quietly, and you could vanish without arriving anywhere at all.
One night, I slept behind a supermarket with my head on a folded carton. Cold sank into my bones, and my body shook from exhaustion.
A shadow fell over me. I opened my eyes and saw a Ghanaian face in a jacket, smelling of cigarettes and cooking oil.
"Ei, brother, you be Ghana?" he asked.
"Yes. Tema."
He clicked his tongue. "Why you dey sleep here? Stand up."
His name was Nii Lamptey. He had lived in Spain for over a decade, and his Twi sounded slightly foreign.
He led me to a cramped apartment where seven other Africans lived. Mattresses covered the floor. The room smelled of sweat and instant noodles. People slept in shifts, always half-awake. Nii pointed at an empty corner. "You go fit there."
That night, I did not sleep well, but I felt safer than I had in months.
Source: UGC
Nii found me under-the-table work washing dishes at a roadside restaurant. I worked fourteen-hour days, hands deep in greasy water, scrubbing until my fingers cracked and my back burned. The owner delayed my pay.
"Tomorrow," he kept saying.
When I pushed, he leaned close. "You want trouble? You have papers?"
That sentence cut deeper than hunger. I swallowed my anger because I could not report anyone.
One evening, police raided the restaurant. Panic erupted. Nii grabbed my sleeve. "Back, quick!" I slipped through an alley while the police arrested two coworkers. I never saw them again.
That was when the fantasy collapsed. Abroad was not about making it. It was about staying invisible. I sent voice notes home talking about "opportunity", forcing confidence while my stomach growled.
After three years, Spain tightened immigration checks. Police vans multiplied. I crossed into Portugal on foot with a group of migrants, hoping the fear would ease. It did not.
Source: UGC
Local boys cornered us near a quiet stretch and beat us while shouting slurs. "Go back to the sea," they screamed. I tasted blood and dirt, and something inside me snapped.
I stopped chasing the story I had risked my life for. I finally admitted the truth.
I was not rising.
I was disappearing.
I met help in a place I never expected.
An NGO‑linked church group visited the corners where migrants slept. They brought food, blankets, and quiet questions. Not the kind that judged. The type that listened.
A woman with kind eyes spoke slowly in simple English. "Do you want to go home?"
The question landed in my chest like a stone. Home felt like shame. Home felt like failure. But home also meant my mother's hands, rough from years of work. I nodded before pride could stop me.
They helped me apply for voluntary return support and covered part of my ticket. They guided me through steps I had feared for years.
Source: UGC
When the plane touched down in Accra, my heart raced with anticipation. I stepped out, smelled hot air and familiar dust, and my eyes burned. For the first time in years, I felt human.
In Tema Manhean, my mother stood by the roadside, older than I remembered. She stared at me like she was searching for my face, then touched my cheek.
"Kwame?" she whispered.
My voice cracked. "Maa."
She pulled me into her arms and cried into my shirt. People gathered and stared. Some whispered, "He has come back." Others asked, "Ei, so abroad no work?"
I heard every word: I carried them like stones, but I refused to let them crush me.
I used my small savings to start a phone-repair kiosk near Tema Station. I rented a tiny space, bought basic tools, and learnt fast because hunger had trained my mind to adapt. Work did not come easily, but it came honestly.
Soon, people trusted me with their phones. Students brought cracked screens. Traders brought dead batteries. Drivers brought devices soaked by rain.
Source: UGC
One afternoon, I saw harbour boys near the port, eyes bright with the same hunger I once carried. They spoke about Europe as if it were a miracle waiting to happen.
I sat with them on a low wall. "You people, listen," I said. "The sea no be joke."
They laughed, so I told them the truth. Darkness. Thin air. Hunger. Concrete nights. Police eyes. Being treated like you should not exist. I told them how survival abroad could turn you into a shadow.
I did not call my journey a mistake, but I refused to glorify it. I survived the sea, the racism, the invisibility, and the hunger. Survival is the only thing I refuse to be ashamed of.
People cling to one story about leaving Ghana.
They make it sound like courage always becomes a reward.
They post photos with clean clothes and captions about blessings, and you think the blessing is a location.
I believed that lie because I wanted hope more than truth.
Source: UGC
I also believed that suffering had to lead somewhere, or else it would mean nothing.
But I learnt something hard.
Pain does not automatically turn into progress.
Sometimes pain only makes you smaller until you decide to fight for yourself differently.
When I stowed away, I told myself I was brave. I told myself I was doing it for my mother. I told myself I would return as a changed man with money and pride.
What I did not understand was that ambition sometimes masks itself as desperation.
It can whisper, "One risk will fix everything," when really it wants to push you off a cliff.
Now, when I speak to harbour boys, I do not insult their dreams. I know what it feels like to watch ships leave while your life stays the same.
I only tell them the truth.
No shortcut does not collect its payment.
Some payments come as hunger.
Source: UGC
Some come as humiliation.
Some come as years you cannot get back.
I came home alive, but I did not come home untouched.
I carry scars people cannot see.
Still, I choose life.
I choose work that I can look at without fear.
I choose my mother's smile, even when the world tries to call me a failure.
If you feel stuck today, and escape looks like the only answer, ask yourself this one question before you run towards danger:
Are you chasing a dream, or are you just trying to stop the pain?
This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.
Source: YEN.com.gh
