Advertisements of hope, people of desperation

0.3 per cent of the solar energy in the Sahara could power Europe.

This was the message on a HSBC poster advert we passed on the gangway heading into the plane. It seemed a good omen – a story of potential – one of many we believe exist in Africa.

But of course Africans do not export solar energy to Europe. In fact in Greece (our first stop for five days as we stock up on my aunties’ dinners and the beauty of my ancestral village) the most obvious African export is people.

Under freeway overpasses handsome black men sell elegantly carved wooden giraffes – a scene you would think more likely in Accra then Athens. For almost 20 years Greece has acted as a first staging point for many an economic refugee heading into the EU. But, with this country going through incredible economic turmoil itself (today yet another general strike will take place) in some streets of Athens the desperation of those economic migrants is asphyxiating.

On Sunday we head to Cairo. Will it be the uplifting potential or the asphyxiating desperation that hits me most? I know what I hope it will be but life doesn’t always work out the way we hope…