
Most Dangerous Ways To School: Cameroon, Mayotte & Mexico
Three children, three routes to class. Thirteen-year-old Mabally, a Bagyeli Pygmy in South Cameroon, treks more than three hours through equatorial jungle and over slippery clay hills to reach his fifth-grade classroom. Nasta arrived in Mayotte as a four-month-old on a migrant boat with her mother; now she navigates an hour and a half through a corrugated-iron settlement and clouds of dust kicked up from dirt tracks. In Mexico City, blind since birth, Alfredo crosses the world's third-largest metropolis from north to south by sound, smell, and touch alone, heading for a school for visually impaired children. The film follows each child on their daily commute, using handheld and observational footage rather than narration-driven exposition, letting the terrain, traffic, and family routines around them tell the story. It is one entry in a series documenting children's journeys to school in different countries, and this installment sets equatorial forest, an island shantytown, and a sprawling capital side by side.