When the harsh sun beats down on 15-year old Muhammad, he feels like his body is on fire. Smoking rubbish eats at his plastic flip-flops as he scavenges through a dump in a gated compound in Nigeria. Instead of going to school, Muhammad sifts through the smouldering heap for items he can sell.
After two or three days of this painstaking work, Muhammad collects enough to sell for the equivalent of less than one Australian dollar.
But he doesn’t sell everything he finds. “I’m always impressed with photos of children in school or playing football,” he explains. Muhammad used to be one of those children. Then
Boko Haram’s violence forced his family to flee their homes and made him one of 75 million children globally whose education has been disrupted by crisis.
“I used to dream that I could be a soldier, or something like that. But now I’m not in school, so I don’t know what I could be in the future.”