Kwabena Mensah said his mother thought sending him into virtual slavery to work as a fisherman's helper on Ghana's Lake Volta was the only way to earn money to send him to school. The 15-year-old spent seven years at the dangerous job, earning little beyond regular beatings.
Free from the British detention centre where he had been on the brink of despair, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker has £10 () to his name -- not enough for the train fare needed to report to immigration officers, which could mean another trip back to detention.