Jemila sits on an old butter container at an abandoned fuel station waiting for a client. She works as a head porter and also does odd jobs – anything that involves the moral use of the hands.

“If a get a job to wash clothes or I am hired as a hand to cook banku, I can make 50 cedis a day,” she says. 50 cedis a day is out of reach for many in Walewale, where there are very few jobs.

Thick tribal marks on both sides of her cheeks and her strong pronounciation of the consonants betray her as a Northerner.

Originally from Walewale in the Northern region, 691 km or 9 hours 31mins from Ghana’s capital Accra - by road.

Jemila is homeless in Accra. She sleeps in front of a store close to the fuel station where she works. Her bedsheets are the faded cloth that she wears around her waist during the day.

 “Everyday mosquitoes. As for Malaria, it is normal. We struggle to sleep because its very cold at night and also because of this tree it is breezy in the evening.”

“Of course I came here to make money” Jemila served us a look of surprise that we couldn’t know by mere sight the obvious cause of her stay in Accra.

She sat by the street with more than a dozen other women. Almost everyone of them had a baby strapped to their backs or stuck to their breast for a quick breakfast.

Short of perhaps an official acknowledgement, this abandoned fuel station at Darkuman in Accra still shows all the signs of being a refugee camp.

A piercing, almost sulphurous stench is generated by body odours of several women who use the dirty cement floors as beds at night and eating area by day.

When we zoomed in on Jemila sitting in a cluster, the other headporters distrustful of inquisitive interest scurried away from her.

Each morning, Jemila walks from her ‘cement bed’ to a public washing facility to pay 1 cedi for her bath and visit the toilet.

Even after bathing, she hardly changes clothes. There is not much to change into anyway.

The scene at night is awful. It's a community of bare-floor poverty as several scores huddle on the ground.

A van blows its horn at us to interrupt the conversation. The driver is entering the space to park infront of the shop which is exactly where Jemila sleeps. Living side by side with traffic and business puts the porters at risk. Kwaku Kwarteng, th shopowner recalls a near tragic incident two months ago.

A van almost run over a baby of one of Jemila’s friends sometime ago. Her mother hid the baby under the stationary van to shield the child from the seering heat and left for work.

 “We shouted to the driver, a baby is under the van, a baby is under the van” he recalled. The driver had to spend 250 cedis as hospital bills to the child.

“If it hadn’t been for God, the man going in reverse would have crushed the baby”.

There is a permanent conflict between the poor newcomers and the established businessmen. Kwaku Kwarteng complains a lot about his neighbors.

“I am going through hell here. When I come to work in the morning, their babies would have defacated over the place. Left-over food…everyday I wash this place”, he says. 

As the conversation wears on, several head porters suddenly flock to a bus trying to pull to a stop. Jemila runs too, screaming as the head porters wrestle to get the chance to carry an intimidating load.

Life for the homeless here goes on.