Desperate journey – the new Atlantic crossing
Reported in El Pais 28th May.
This is a translation of the El Pais report – please allow for errors!
On the night of 25th December 2005, 53 Senegalese, most from the village of Casamance, left by boat from Cabo Verde to the Canaries. The boat was relatively large (see annimation link below) but had no cover or shade. There appears to have been some chaos around the departure of the boat as apparently the Spaniard in charged jumped ship at the last minute. 5 of the Senegalese also left the boat and another got scared after the boat set off and jumped out and swam back to shore. He managed to get his money back from the Spanish “pirate” and later made a report to the police.
The boat is thought to have gone past Mauritania but when it reached Nuadibu (Nouadhibou, Mauritania )there was a storm and they lost control of the boat. They then started to call friends and family. One of the people they called was the Spanish pirate. A few hours later they were rescued by another boat which towed them to the middle of the ocean and then abandoned them. They only had 40 litres of fuel which ran out plus they had to cope with storms and high seas of the Atlantic.
According to the medical report the people died in the first month. There were a series of storms, the first on January 6th then one approximately every 10 days and with the high winds they were pushed towards Barbados over the 4 month period. The people died of hunger and thirst with bodies being thrown overboard one by one as they died.
Some messages were found on the boat.
“I don’t think I will live (survive) – please call my friend”
“I am from Senegal, I was living 1 year in Cabo Verde. Things are going very badly. I don’t think I will survive. I need the person who finds me to send this money to my family. Please call my friend Ibrahima Drame on this number…” signed Diaw Sounkar Diemi. He left 1300 euros.
The boat was found 76 miles off Ragged Point in the St Phillips parish in SE Barbados with 11 bodies more or less mummified of the 47 who had left Cabo Verde 4 months earlier. The authorities used the telephone messages to reconstruct the story. The 11 bodies are in Bridgetown mortuary
Annimation on journey from Mauritania to Canaries, Cadiz or Almeria
African Presidents, Governors, and so called rulers, here is a result of your mismanagement. Your best is pretty much ordinary, when will you all get off your high horse and get to work? Your ignorance and stupidity cost lives.
The Senegalese passengers were left for dead not once but twice. In the first instance the Spanish pirate abandoned them as they left Cabo Verde. They were then abondoned in the Atlantic in what appears to me to be a premediated act by the murderers. It is hard to comment on this as it is so awful.
I guess there was no way to contact someone in authority to help them? Forgive me for my naivete, but… I feel I am missing a part of this somewhere. Will check the links.
Thanks for the translation, Sokari.
They recently aired a TV news report here in Germany about the slavers (human traffickers) operating out of Mauritania and Mali. Huge Mercedes trucks brimming with a human cargo of migrants from Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Guinea, Niger, and countries all across West and Central Africa who were being driven across the Sahara Desert for days on end.
Passengers had to pay the Tuareg drivers about US$200/head for the journey that starts either in Mali or in Maritania; a journey without water and food or protection from the gruelling sun and freezing desert nights. The (merciful) drivers would make a pit stop every 12 hours or so. Of course lots of people never make it and the severely sick are many times left in the desert to die.
Once the migrants arrive at the Atlantic coastal towns and villages in Mauritania or at the border to Lybia, penniless, then the nightmare really begins for these desperate people. Lybian soldiers and border guards send many of them back into the desert for example and only the “lucky ones” are fortunate enough to make these boat journeys after spending months and years stranded in these North African towns and villages at the mercy of the locals who despise them and the “pirates” and other criminals who ply this ugly trade in human flesh.
Ironically, with all of these hardships and risks to life and limb, many of the migrant Africans told the news reporters following this story that they would rather die trying to make it to Europe than to die of hunger and violence in their own home countries.
The true “Heart of Darkness” may be in the government and financial capitals of Europe and North Africa it would seem, and perhaps in the failed leadership of some of the African nations where these desperate people originate. Non?
Ooops! I mispelled “Libya” again. Sorry Colonel Gadaffi…:-)
BRE – you are right about the true “heart of darkness” is in Europe – a perfect description and I hope you dont mind if I borrow the phrase from time to time.