"In Mali I have no money, no food and no work. But what I do have is courage," said the gangling man in his mid-20s.

He and his friends are exhausted after a five-day march over the barren Rif mountains from Algeria into Morocco, which they had hoped would be the final port of call prior to a new life in Spain.

But instead they walked slap bang into the aftermath of a powerful earthquake. The temblor killed nearly 600 people in this northeastern region and left tens of thousands more homeless.

Camara and his friends also walked into the arms of the Moroccan police, who informed them they would soon be packed off to Algeria, which would in turn send them back home.

"We actually left home three months ago," says Camara, speaking in Imzouren, a town badly hit in Tuesday's quake.

Home is the landlocked west African state of Mali, one of the world's poorest countries where the average annual income is about 230 dollars and where most people die before they reach the age of 50.

Since independence from France in 1960, it has suffered droughts, rebellions, a coup and a 23-year-long military dictatorship.

Opportunity is clearly limited in Mali, as in most African countries, and every year many thousands of its citizens leave, like Camara and his friends, on perilous journeys northwards to try to join the ranks of Europe's illegal immigrants.

"We got a bus to Algeria and then managed to pay someone a little to get us some work in Ceuta," a Spanish enclave near Tangiers on northern Morocco's Mediterranean coast.

"You have to have a little money, or else you walk all the way."

Morocco is a popular staging post for many would-be immigrants from Africa and beyond. Spain, and the European Union, lie just a few kilometres to the north across the Mediterranean sea.

Each year, thousands risk their lives attempting to reach Spain by sea and many drown in the attempt.

Drammen Sidebe, a 23-year-old in a blue woollen hat from the city of Kayes, northwest of the Malian capital Bamako, looks as if he might have walked all the way across the desert.

But in reality he walked only the 250 kilometres (160 miles) from Oujda, an Algerian border city.

Sidebe's stockinged feet poke out through huge holes in a pair of white trainers caked with mud and grime.

"We walked through the towns of Nador, Midar, then we wound up here. We arrived at night. But the police intercepted us," he explains.

Youssuf Tangara, 34, winces as his friend reminds him of their unhappy predicament.

"We'd hoped to earn a bit of money, work for a few months, then go back to Mali," he reveals.

"We were ready to go anywhere. Spain, France, Germany, Italy. We think we can earn a lot there."

Seidou Camara, bursting with indignation after learning that a bus trip back to Algeria is the only reward he and his companians can expect, vows that another failed mission will not deny him his goal.

"I've tried this five times. I got arrested and shot at once in Melilla," Spain's other north African enclave.

"Now I have to start again from zero. But we need the work. I'll go right round the world if that's what it takes, perhaps to Japan. In Mali I'll earn 1,000 Central African francs -- yet that's only enough for a bag of rice and a few cans of coke.

"We only want to work and do business. We aren't terrorists, and neither are we drug dealers."

Asked what the future holds, a pall of gloom descends over the already sombre group.

"I suppose it's back to A.T.T -- but only till the next time," says Camara, referring to the initials of Malia's President Amadou Tourmani Toure.

TERRA.WIRE