After soccer star risked all for Europe, Gambia still wrestles with why she left

For much of Fatim Jawara’s life, almost her entire world fit here – into a single rambling stretch of dirt road in a rundown beach town at the western tip of Africa.

It was here, behind the high green walls of her family’s compound, that her mother, a professional cook, taught her to make akara, black-eyed pea fritters, and yassa –chicken marinated in soft onions, lemon, and mustard.

It was here, on long hot equatorial afternoons, that she shared pots of ataya – a tooth-achingly sweet mix of green tea, mint, and sugar – with school friends and a rotating cast of her 30-some older siblings, doing impressions that made them laugh until their ribs ached.

And it was here, in the sandy street sandwiched