MAMOUD WANE
Looking Past Danger With Determination
|
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
Saturday, April 1, 2006; 12:00 AM
Mamoud Wane mostly remembers the cold and the vomit.
One day in February, at 4 a.m., the 27-year-old immigrant from Senegal walked to Charka, a busy fishing port area of this seaside town. There, he paid $350 -- far less than the usual fare -- and boarded a small fishing boat that took him out to sea, where several other boats were waiting in the pre-dawn darkness.
Converging at sea to avoid attracting the attention of police patrolling the port, Wane and 57 other immigrants scrambled aboard one narrow, 42-foot fishing boat. Almost immediately, people started throwing up in the rolling sea. The smell and the cold ocean wind meant no one slept.
He kept focusing on the Canary Islands, 600 miles in the distance, where he'd heard laborers could earn $2,000 a month. At home, he couldn't find work. In Nouadhibou, while he waited for boat passage, he had earned $40 a month buying and selling a few fish at the beach.
After a day and a half at sea, Wane said, the boat started leaking and the captain decided to turn around. He wouldn't return any of the passengers' money, so now Wane was back at work selling shark and octopus.
Wane said that he had about $500 left in savings, and that he was almost ready to try again.
Sitting in front of a pile of two-foot-long sharks lying in the piercing sunshine -- no ice, no shade, flies as thick as a blanket -- Wane said that six weeks earlier, a boat had left Nouadhibou carrying 37 people, including his three roommates. There had been no word since. No one had called from Spain, and there were no official reports of a boat sinking or bodies found. Just silence.
Wane assumed they all died, but he could not bring himself to say that to his roommate Matar's father, who calls every day looking for news. "The Europeans need to make a lot of investment in Africa so we can find work at home," Wane said. "Otherwise, this will never stop. Never."
As he spoke, Wane thumbed a purple Motorola cellphone. It was Matar's, he said.
Matar had said he would call as soon as he reached the Canaries.
