'If you don’t cry you’re superhuman': One Direction on their life-changing trip to Africa

When the boys came face to face with children just a few years younger than them struggling in poverty, it brought them down to earth with a bump.


The boys visited the poverty-hit city of Accra with Comic Relief to film a video for their single, a fusion of Blondie’s One Way or Another and The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks, which is out today in aid of the charity.
Harry, 19 tomorrow, admitted: “We all had moments. If you get involved in it and you don’t cry you’re superhuman.
"We’ve seen appeal films before so we thought we knew what it’s like.
"But when you’re there and you get the smells, your eyes hurt from the smoke, you cough, you’re feeling it all.
“The crazy thing is, when I went to school not one person wanted to be there. Yet you go into a school in Ghana and every child loves it.
"It’s amazing to see. There are 10-year-old kids speaking better French than I can.
“It’s crazy how quick you get ­connections with children and people who live there. You feel upset leaving them and saying goodbye to them.”
Life expectancy for women in Ghana is 63 compared with 82 here. And 28% of the 25 million population live in poverty.
Niall, 19, was deeply affected. “It was the shock of people struggling to get water and watching people work 12 hours a day for little money.”



The five stars will appear in a film during Red Nose Day next month that documents their time in Ghana.
The appeal has raised more than £600million to help educate poor children.
One Direction will not receive any royalties for the single. They even shot the video on their own to save cash.
Niall said: “We didn’t want to make a massive expensive video because that’s just a big waste of money. So we kinda made it ourselves.”
Liam, 19, said he will never forget the poverty he witnessed and hopes people will get behind their efforts.
“We just want people to buy the single and help raise as much money as possible,” he said.
Louis, 21, added: “By buying the song, together we’ll change people’s lives. What an amazing thing to do. Buy music that you like and change lives.”
There were lighter moments for the group during the visit as the children greeted them with calls of... “Westlife!”
Liam recalled: “In the slum there were these lads that we were playing football with.
"They turned around to us and were like: ‘Ah, Westlife, Westlife!’
"So, Westlife are bigger than us over there. That’s something we’ve gotta achieve...”