Alhassan, 14, from Freetown, Sierra Leone

My name is Alhassan, I’m 14 years old and attend secondary school in Freetown. I have two sisters and one brother. I live with my parents.

My house is made of aluminium. We have two rooms, one bedroom, one parlour. But there are two beds, one in each room. I sleep on the floor with my brother, and my sister sleeps on the bed in the parlour. I don’t have a mosquito net - we cover ourselves with a blanket before sleeping.

We live in a compound with so many people - maybe 50 of us. There are many houses attached together and there are so many children! There are only two toilets and two washrooms.

I walk to school every day. It takes 15 minutes. My favourite subject is mathematics. I don’t like woodwork class because it’s physical and I don’t like that kind of work. The best thing I like about this school is that the teachers come to the class to teach, and we understand them. The school also puts on sports activities for the children. After school we play volleyball and football. I am captain of the football team in my compound. I also support Arsenal.

I don’t like it that sometimes the teachers aren't on time, and some teachers don’t come to school at all. I go to the school library if there are no teachers in the classroom. I like to read storybooks from the US and the UK.

There are 43 pupils in our class. In some of the classes there are 98 children. My father pays my school fees term by term. The money my parents earn, they usually put together to save for our school fees.

After school I go home, and fetch water from the tap. The tap in our compound runs very slowly, so I go away from the compound to where there is a burst pipe and collect water. I use it to wash my uniform. Then I go to buy kerosene in town. When I get back with the kerosene we sit down and cook and have food together, something like rice and sauce. My favourite food is cassava with fish.

After we eat, I sell the kerosene to neighbours, for 1,200 Leones for a pint. At the end of the day, I will make a profit of 2,000 Leones, and that buys my lunch at school.

I stop selling kerosene at 7pm, as it’s getting dark. We come in and the family goes to bed. We close the house quickly because at dusk we’re worried that the place is full of devils. My father normally wakes me up at 2am and I read my books and work till around 4am. At 4am I wake up my brother to study and then start the fire and fetch the water for the house.

I don’t own a mobile phone because my father can't afford it. If he bought me a phone he wouldn’t be able to pay my school fees. Some of them cost 120,000 Leones. One term’s school fees costs 75,000 Leones. I joined a club to know more about computers. They taught me how to open a computer, how to close it and how to use a Word document. I told someone to open me an email address, but I don’t know how to check it.

I want to become a doctor. My parents want me to become a doctor, but the instruments and even the books, I don’t have the money for. Even my parents don’t have the money. So I don’t know if I’ll be able to become one. I want to be a doctor because a doctor has more knowledge and can cure people. If someone comes to me and is sick I can fix him.

Some countries are poor because they are not united. In Sierra Leone we are not united, but thank God we have a new President. I am praying to God that he will make change, because we children are sleeping in the street. Some of us are not living with our biological families. Some are begging, with no food. I admire the President.

I want poverty not to be in our country. It is a dangerous disease. Without money you are nothing in this world. For me, if I am rich, I will secure a big place for the poor people, give them food three times a day and even wash them. If I could, I would totally stop poverty.