Hallucinations, thirst and desperation: How migrants endured 36 days at sea
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 the wooden boat carrying 101 men and boys was getting blown further and further away from its destination.
No land was in sight. Yet four men believed — or hallucinated — they could swim to shore. They picked up empty water containers and wooden planks — anything to help them float. And one by one, they leapt.
Dozens more would do the same before disappearing into the ocean. 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.
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.
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 many are willing to risk their lives again. Theirs is a rare chronicle of the treacherous migration route from West Africa to Europe.
Senegalese fisherman Papa Dieye was struggling to survive on earnings of 20,000 CFA francs ($33) a month. «There are no fish left in the ocean,» he laments.
Years of overfishing by industrial
