The occupants of the boats that are adrift, at the mercy of the waves and thirst, usually share prayers while maintaining their sanity, no matter if they commend themselves to God or Allah, as they implore the same miracle. Fofana V. never stopped praying while watching his companions die, one by one, always with the feeling that he would be next.
This 27-year-old Ivorian mechanic is the only survivor of the 34 people who set sail for the Canary Islands on Friday, September 23 in a patched-up inflatable boat in a place on the Sahara coast, halfway between Bojador and El Aaiún, without knowing that they were heading into the area of influence of a tropical storm that unleashed a deluge on the Canary Islands in the following three days, almost as much water as falls on some islands in an entire year.
Four boats with about 200 immigrants were surprised by Cyclone Hermine that weekend in the maritime strip that separates Lanzarote and Fuerteventura from the African coast, in the least risky crossing (in theory) for those who venture on the Canary Route, because it usually does not involve more than 150 kilometers of navigation, but always in rigorous open ocean conditions.
Three were rescued by Maritime Rescue ships in very bad seas. The fourth was not heard from for nine days, until 3:45 p.m. on October 1, when the Bulk Japan, a Liberian-flagged bulk carrier, issued an emergency call far away from there, 272 kilometers south of Gran Canaria: they had spotted a black, semi-submerged inflatable boat at coordinates 25° 19.3N 16° 26.9W with only one person alive on board, Fofana.
The sea was so bad that its sailors felt unable to lower a boat. The captain had come to the conclusion that the least risky thing he could do with a 228-meter-long behemoth like his freighter for that castaway clinging to the zodiac was to protect him from the wind, offering him shelter with the hull until the rescue helicopter arrived. That, and lower some water.
What happened to the occupants of that boat?
Only Fofana V. knows, but he doesn't feel strong enough to share it. Not even the Police got any details from him the day they summoned him to the police station to hear his testimony: he had only been out of the hospital for a few hours and constantly took refuge in expressions such as "I don't remember", "I felt very bad", "I didn't know anyone".
EFE has been able to reconstruct that story in the last seven months through the people who shared conversations with Fofana in the 21 days he spent at the Hospital Insular de Gran Canaria and in the weeks he continued in the Canary Islands until he left for France, as well as with data from the autopsies of the bodies that were recovered in the inflatable boat and from the Maritime Rescue report on the rescue.
A number on the crossword puzzle
Everyone who spoke with him agrees on the same thing: he was very affected, not only by the effects of dehydration, which passed quickly, or by the complications caused by a serious infection in one leg (a "boat foot"), which took several weeks to heal, but by an obvious trauma. He only told a few brushstrokes.
Remembering those nights in the Atlantic weighed on him. Only the patient with whom he shared a room and the wife of this patient brought a smile to his face. Although neither of them spoke French nor did he understand Spanish, the camaraderie of the hospital worked among the three of them.
It is not known what went through his bed neighbor's wife's head when she bought him a crossword puzzle book. Perhaps she wanted to offer him an innocent distraction - as innocent as it was useless for someone who does not know the language - but the fact is that Fofana took a pen and wrote a number on top of it.
That day he spoke for the first time with his family in Ivory Coast. A full week had passed since he was rescued. With a borrowed cell phone, Fofana told his brother that he almost died trying to reach the Canary Islands, that they were adrift after the engine broke down and that what followed was a nightmare.
An unprecedented cyclone
More than 2,260 tropical cyclones had been recorded in the Atlantic basin up to that date since 1851, according to records from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But there had never been one with a trajectory like Hermine's, which formed off the coasts of Senegal and Mauritania on September 23 and soon headed for the Canary Islands.
For the first time in history, all emergency plans in the Canary Islands were activated that Saturday 24 and Sunday 25, in a state of maximum alert. In some islands more than 300 liters of water fell per square meter in just two days, without having to regret special damage due to wind. That, on land.
The weather reports of Maritime Rescue of those dates record for the maritime zone of Tarfaya winds of force 6, even 7 (from 50 to 61 km/h), with strong swell or rough sea (waves of up to four meters); very dangerous conditions for any small boat, impossible for an inflatable boat.
Nine days adrift
Thirty-two men and two women, including Fofana, shared that week a black inflatable boat eight meters long, with a little less space than that offered by two Volkswagen Golfs placed one behind the other.
In this report, EFE publishes for the first time the photos taken by the sailors of the Salvamento Miguel de Cervantes ship when they recovered it in the high seas.
Thus, numerous glue lines can be seen along its floats, even raised edges that reveal multiple patches. The starboard float and the bow are partially deflated, a symptom that the boat was falling apart.
"Nine days", was all Fofana managed to say on October 1 to the paramedics who attended him when he disembarked from the Helimer 206, the helicopter that had evacuated him to a hospital in Gran Canaria, conscious but weak, dehydrated and with hypothermia.
When the Bulk Japan found him, sunk under the water that covered the bottom of his boat, there were four corpses, all of them men. One, Senegalese, the only one identified, carried in his pocket a letter of application for asylum and 7,000 dirhams (638 euros). Another had tied himself to the boat with a rope in an attempt not to fall into the sea and drown. He remained afloat, but could not resist the thirst.
Four lifeless bodies
Why didn't he throw the bodies into the sea? Were they perhaps friends or relatives? "I simply didn't have the strength," he explained to the head of the Red Cross missing persons program who interviewed him in the hospital, whom he helped to identify some victims by photos, a few, because he didn't really know anyone on board. He had boarded alone, without friends.
That day he said that the engine of his inflatable boat stopped in the middle of the crossing to Fuerteventura, on the edge of his second day at sea, and that the boat began to fill with water. In a boat that barely protrudes a meter above the sea, it is not difficult to imagine with what anguish all those people were trying to stay afloat bailing water, between waves of two to four meters and a constant downpour.
To the Red Cross, Fofana only spoke of 31 men and two adult women, mostly from Senegal, but also from Guinea and Ivory Coast.
He did not mention any minors, but the sailors of the ship Miguel de Cervantes who recovered the inflatable boat to transport it to Las Palmas do not forget that, among the corpses, the warm clothes, several floats and a lot of garbage they saw two children's shoes.
Shaken by the waves
"Inflatable boat with 34 people on board has been reported sailing in unknown situation, from Lamsid and bound for the Spanish coast." On Saturday, September 24, the stations of the National Maritime Safety Network began to transmit by radio in English and Spanish to all ships in the vicinity of the Canary Islands-Tarfaya maritime corridor this notice to ask for their help.
At five knots (9 km/h), if there were no unforeseen events, that inflatable boat should have sighted the coast of Fuerteventura in less than 24 hours, but its engine broke down and it was left to the whim of the wind and the Canary Current, which in that area of the Atlantic push everything that floats to the southwest. In the following eight days, the boat would drift more than 300 kilometers.
At one point that Fofana was able to specify, a good part of his companions fell into the sea. They struggled to get back on the inflatable boat, at the risk of capsizing it, but they couldn't. The tires they carried on board as makeshift life jackets were of no use, they drowned.
The damage shown in the Salvamento photos suggests that perhaps they were the ones sitting on the starboard float.
Those who survived that accident were consumed by thirst. They had all spent a few days hiding in the desert before boarding with few provisions near Lamsid. And the water was already missing. Most drank from the sea. Fofana, no: "I knew I couldn't taste it."
Little by little, he saw several of his companions die, whose bodies were thrown into the sea by the others while they had the strength. Others jumped overboard in a state of hallucination or delirium.
This is very common in pateras, a pediatrician who has treated hundreds of immigrants on the docks of Gran Canaria corroborates to EFE: salt accelerates dehydration, sodium in the blood skyrockets, and the body steals water from the cells to try to compensate. When this occurs in the brain, neurons die, and the person delirious, convulsing, even suffers internal bleeding.
"Many times they believe they see land nearby and throw themselves into the water to try to reach it swimming," says this doctor. On the Canary Route there are even documented cases of victims who claimed they were going to buy tobacco a second before jumping out of the cayuco.
Three days without anyone else alive on board
Everything must have happened very quickly. Autopsies of the bodies recovered indicate that these men died between the fourth and sixth day of the voyage. It is believed that they were the last to die because those who remained were too weak to push them into the sea. "I'll be next," Fofana thought all the time.
For three days, he was the only remnant of life on board and abandoned himself to his prayers, little more could he do. When he saw the hull of the Bulk Japan sailing towards him appear on the horizon, he gave thanks to Allah. He repeated it to all his interlocutors: "God saved me."
When he was waiting for the appointment to testify before the Police, a lawyer who assisted him those weeks informed him that he would be given a return order, so he suggested that he ask Spain to grant him international protection for humanitarian reasons.
"I don't care. If they return me to my country, I accept it. I won't go back. I wouldn't have boarded if I had known what could happen," he replied. The order was given to him, but it was not executed. Fofana V. remained in some Red Cross apartments in Las Palmas until he managed to travel to France to meet another brother.
There he is now an irregular, someone exposed to being deported to Ivory Coast if the Gendarmerie stops him, without the protection that could have been provided by the status that Spain usually grants, at the request of UNHCR, to vulnerable victims of tragedies like his.
Those who spoke with him believe that he does not fit the profile of an economic emigrant. "With what I earned as a mechanic in Ivory Coast, I was doing well," he told them. He wanted something else, he wanted to study in France, but there are no visas to Europe for people like him.
Agencia EFE has contacted Fofana V. twice in recent months through people he trusts to invite him to tell his story directly. He has always refused. He doesn't feel strong enough to go back to that inflatable boat. He can't.
