“Senegalese Migrants Face Death and Deprivation on Treacherous Journey to Spain’s Canary Islands”

Accident – Death – Obituary News : FASS BOYE, Senegal — A month had passed when the first four men decided to jump. Countless cargo ships had navigated past them, yet no one had come to their rescue. Their fuel was finished. The hunger and thirst were overwhelming. Dozens had already died, including the captain.

The voyage from the struggling Senegalese fishing town of Fass Boye to Spain’s Canary Islands, a gateway to the European Union where they hoped to find work, was supposed to take a week. But more than a month later, the wooden boat carrying 101 men and boys was getting blown further and further away from its intended destination.

No land was in sight. Yet the four men believed — or hallucinated — that they could swim to shore. To stay on the “cursed” boat, they thought, was a death sentence. They picked up empty water containers and wooden planks — anything to help them float.

And then, one by one, they leapt.

In the days that followed, dozens more would do the same before disappearing into the ocean. There were those who chose to stay in the boat and those who had no choice, no strength left to move. They withered under a deafening wind and a relentless sun.

The migrants still in the boat watched as their brothers faded. Those who died onboard were tossed into the ocean until the survivors had no energy left and bodies began accumulating.

At last, on day 36, a Spanish fishing vessel spotted them. It was Aug. 14 and they were 290 kilometers (180 miles) northeast of Cape Verde, the last cluster of islands in the eastern central Atlantic Ocean before the vast nothingness that separates West Africa from the Caribbean.

For 38 men and boys, it was salvation. For the other 63, it was too late.

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Too often migrants disappear without a trace, without witnesses, without memory.

As the number of people leaving Senegal for Spain this year surged to record levels, The Associated Press spoke to dozens of survivors, rescuers, aid workers and officials to understand what the men endured at sea, and why, despite their traumatic experience, many are willing to risk their lives again.

Their story offers a rare chronicle of what happens to those lost on this treacherous migration route from West Africa to Europe.

Papa Dieye had finished his 5 p.m. prayers when he boarded a brightly painted pirogue in the coastal Senegalese town of Fass Boye. The 19-year-old fisherman made his way to the front of the large, canoe-shaped wooden boat and sat at the bow.

But Dieye wasn’t going to work that evening of July 10. This time, alongside dozens of relatives and friends, he was leaving for good.

Like other local fishermen, Dieye was struggling to survive on earnings of roughly 20,000 CFA francs ($33) a month.

“There are no fish left in the ocean,” Dieye laments.

Years of overfishing by larger industrial vessels from Europe, China and Russia had wiped out Senegalese fishermen’s livelihoods, reducing their previously abundant catch to a few small crates of fish — if they were lucky — and pushing them to take desperate measures.

As experienced seafarers, they knew well how unruly the Atlantic could be. Still, they didn’t fear the ocean. Their destiny, many say, was “in God’s hands.”

Every young man like Dieye knows someone who made it to Spain and sent back remittances to support loved ones. “We want to work to build houses for our mothers, little brothers and sisters,” he explains.

Bad omens shadowed the journey from the start. Under the collective weight of 150 people and many liters of fuel, food and water, the boat struggled to depart.

“We weren’t even sure we would take off, it was so heavy,” Dieye remembers. Dozens of latecomers were ordered to leave the boat. Then a final headcount was done: One hundred and one men and boys were on their way to Spain.

For the first few days, they sailed slowly but smoothly. They drank instant coffee and ate biscuits in the morning, couscous and water in the afternoon. They spoke of the reasons they were leaving and shared their expectations of life in Europe.

Around day five, the winds rebelled, pushing them back.

“We thought the pirogue would break,” Dieye recalls.

“In the middle of the sea, the wind made two oceans,” he says, gesturing to illustrate currents swirling in opposite directions. Unable to move forward, the captain stopped the engine several times and waited for the winds to settle. “We lost six days like this.”

Tensions on board rose. “That’s when the problems started,” explains Ngouda Boye, 30, another fisherman from Fass Boye.

Some argued they should return to Senegal. Others, including the captain, wanted to keep going.

“When we could almost see Spain, the fuel ran out,” Dieye says. It was day 10.

“There was disappointment on all of our faces,” Boye recalls.

They improvised oars out of wooden planks and took turns rowing on and off for days. But it was pointless. The northeasterly winds controlled their fate, pushing them away from their destination.

Back in Fass Boye, relatives were beginning to grow anxious. The 1,500-kilometer voyage from Senegal to the Canaries normally takes a week. Ten days later, they had no news.

Families and migration activists began asking authorities in both Spain and Senegal to launch search-and-rescue missions. The brother of one migrant who lived in Spain filed a missing-person notice with police.

Their boat, like so many that left Senegal this year, had taken a longer and more dangerous route in an attempt to evade authorities patrolling the West African coast. That risky strategy has proved successful for many: Migrant arrivals to the Canaries hit a record 36,000 people this year, more than double the previous year.

For others, the migration journey has ended in tragedy. While accurate figures on the number of deaths do not exist, entire boats have gone missing in the Atlantic, becoming what are known as “invisible shipwrecks.” When bodies do wash ashore, they are often buried in unmarked graves.

Spanish authorities routinely fly over a massive area of the Atlantic between West Africa and the Canary Islands looking for lost migrants. But the vast distances, volatile weather conditions and relatively small boats mean they are easily missed.

“Imagine looking for a car in an area that’s 1.5 times the size of mainland Spain,” says Manuel Barroso, who heads the national coordination center of Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service. “We may even fly right over one, but because of the clouds, we cannot see it.”

The men on the pirogue were lost. But they were not alone.

Massive cargo ships passed them by almost every day, destabilizing the shaky wooden boat in their wakes. Yet no one came to their rescue.

“When we saw them, we yelled until we had no more strength,” Dieye recalls.

Every time they spotted a ship, they would gather their belongings, expecting to be saved, only to realize moments later that the ships weren’t coming for them. Boye remembers the Spanish, Russian and Brazilian flags that some commercial vessels flew.

Fernando Ncula, another survivor, remembers a Chinese boat that almost crushed them. He saw people on deck watching them.

“I couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself, why didn’t they help us?” Ncula still wonders.

Under international law, captains are required “to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost.” But the law is hard to enforce.

For years, European leaders have fought over who should take responsibility for migrants rescued at sea. The result: numerous standoffs, with merchant ships sometimes caught in the middle. Unlike in the Mediterranean, no humanitarian boats or planes monitor this vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Migrants are left to their own luck.

It didn’t take long after they ran out of fuel for passengers to start pointing fingers at the captain. Unlike most of the others, he was not a native of Fass Boye; he came from another Senegalese fishing town called Joal.

The migrants grew increasingly angry at the captain’s failure to get them to their destination. To make matters worse, he started behaving strangely, in ways that scared them.

The captain threatened to “abandon us,” Dieye says. When they suggested turning back, “he insisted, ‘No, only Spain!’”

“He did things like a sorcerer. He spoke gibberish,” Dieye recounts. Belief in witchcraft and the power of curses is strong across West Africa. It’s possible the captain was hallucinating, but some on board believed he was possessed by evil spirits.

“Finally, they tied him up,” Dieye says.

“He was the first….