2023-08-13 02:03:10
image copyrightArchyde.com
Caption,
Roman Friday receives a bottle of water from a Brazilian agent, following nearly dying of hunger and thirst.
Article informationAuthor, Joel GunterRole, BBC News
2 hours
Four Nigerian stowaways set off with the intention of reaching Europe riding the rudder blade of an oil tanker. They had no idea they were going to Brazil or the two-week ocean voyage that nearly cost them their lives. This is his story.
A little following midnight on June 27, Roman Ebimere Friday gathered all the food he had been collecting for months and in the dark set out for the great commercial port city of Lagos, Nigeria. That same day Friday had seen a 190-meter tanker docked in the port and decided that this would be the ship that would take him to Europe.
Friday’s goal was to reach the rudder blade, the only place on the huge hull that might be accessible to a person who wasn’t supposed to be on board. He had no other way to reach the helm from the pier than to convince a fisherman to take him there in his boat. “That fisherman was a saint,” recalled Friday. “He didn’t ask me for money. He might see that he wanted me to leave ”.
The fisherman sidled up to the helm and Friday, 35, climbed up, dragging the bag of food he had hanging from a rope. When he was able to steady himself, he was surprised to see three faces in the dark. He was the last of four men with the same idea. “I was scared at first,” Friday said. “But they were black Africans, my brothers.”
Fearful of discovery, the four men crouched silently in the rudder blade for the next 15 hours. At 5 pm on June 28, they felt the gigantic motors of the boat start up. They were all going to Europe. They expected to be partners for a week.
The oil tanker, named the Ken Wave, left the port and headed out to sea, beginning a perilous two-week ocean voyage that brought the stowaways to the brink of death.
image copyrightVictor Moriyama/BBC
Caption,
Roman Friday, one of the four stowaways, safe in Sao Paulo. “He wanted a better future,” he said.
Day 1
As they left Lagos behind, the men tried but might not find comfortable positions at the helm, which was constantly shifting guiding the ship. There was very little room to stand, and the only place to lie down was one of two small nets that hung precariously over the water, left behind by previous stowaways, Friday guessed.
From the outside it can be difficult to understand what motivates a person to risk their life riding on a rudder blade or a flimsy raft across the Mediterranean. But the decision is easier to make when you have lost all hope.
“In Nigeria there is no job, no money and no way to feed my younger brothers and my mother,” he said. “I am the firstborn and my father died 20 years ago, so he should take care of my family, but I can’t.”
He had spent three years living interspersed on the streets of Lagos, trying to get a job. Every day in Nigeria is a struggle between “crime and sin”, she explained. “People fighting, killing each other, terrorists attacking, kidnappers. I want a better future than that.”
image copyrightVictor Moriyama/BBC
Caption,
Roman Friday (left) and Thankgod Yeye: “We became brothers along the way.”
Perched next to Friday in the ship’s rudder blade was Thankgod Opemipo Matthew Yeye, a Pentecostal pastor, businessman and father of two whose peanut and palm oil farm was devastated by the devastating floods that hit Nigeria last year. . They had no other resources or insurance to cover the loss.
“My business was destroyed and my family was left homeless. And that was the origin of my decision to leave ”, she indicated.
Yeye’s decision came true with the recent presidential election, which was marred by anomalies and allegations of vote rigging. “The elections were our hope,” he said. “But we know Nigeria well, we know the system is corrupt.” So, without telling his family, he left his sister’s house at night and went to the port, where he knew the Ken Wave was regarding to sail.
Nigeria has seen an exodus of the likes of Yeye and Friday in recent years, through regular and irregular routes, fueled by a recession and record levels of unemployment. Many cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean, where at least 1,200 Nigerians have already died this year, according to the UN.
image copyrightArchyde.com
Caption,
Friday sitting at the helm of the ship with which he crossed the Atlantic.
Some choose to go as stowaways. Last year, three men climbed onto a rudder blade similar to what Friday and Yeye did, and the journey took them 4,000 km to the Canary Islands, an entry point to Spain. Friday and Yeye thought they were following a similar route.
With their two other companions, William and Zete spent the first few days on board in a mixture of boredom, discomfort, and fear, conversing only a little, praying frequently, and trying to stay awake as the Ken Wave moved across the vast expanse of the ocean. Atlantic on a 5,600 km journey that did not take him to Europe, but to Brazil.
Day 5
In some ways, stowaways on a ship are safer than those crossing the Sahara on foot or the Mediterranean on flimsy rafts. But by the fifth day, Friday and Yeye began to consider the specific dangers of their situation.
They were already weak from food rationing and tired from lack of sleep. They tied a rope around their waist when they needed to urinate on the edge of the rudder. When the tide came in, the waves would hit them. “We all feared the big waves,” Yeye recounted.
“I had never seen the ocean before, but I used to watch storm documentaries and had seen ships being tossed back and forth by the waves.”
Sleep was virtually impossible. “You try not to close your eyes,” Friday explained. “The rudder moves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you must be constantly alert.”
The nets loosened and they had to tie them up without really knowing how. They lay back on them once more but Friday thought only that he was going to wake up with the sudden sensation of falling into the cold water below. “If the net broke, you went right into the water and disappeared,” he said. And yes, she would have disappeared. There is no possibility of rescue at sea when no one knows that you are lost.
The days turned into nights and then days once more. The men grew weaker and stopped talking altogether. Friday kept time with his watch. He tried to remember the day.
The nets became loose once more and had to be tied up. Food was rationed in smaller portions, water in smaller sips. Their mouths began to dry out. Their stomachs hurt. They tried to stay alert and not fall into the water.
10th day
On the 10th the moment arrived that the four of them had been silently fearing. Sometime in the morning, they ate their last bite and drank what was left of their water. All four were in severe hunger pains following stretching out the meager rations they had.
“That was the hardest moment of all,” Yeye said. “She had a completely dry, cracked mouth. For the first time in my life I really understood the meaning of water.”
There were some light moments. Yeye told his brothers that he was praying for rain and they laughed at him. What are you going to do with the rain?, they answered. How are you going to pick it up? The rain only represented danger to them, they chided him. The laughter died down. Hour by hour, it made them thirstier. Time seemed to pass more slowly.
The next day, Friday managed to tie a piece of cellophane from a cookie wrapper to a noose and lower it into the ocean to collect little sips of salt water to drink. They ate toothpaste.
On the 12th, sick from the salt water, one of the men began to vomit over the side of the rudder. “I was looking straight down at the water and throwing up,” Friday recalled. “He had no strength to support himself. He was regarding to fall. I was the only one who had strength left and I had to grab him.”
image copyrightVictor Moriyama/BBC
Caption,
Roman Friday in his new home in Sao Paulo.
Men were entering the phase of hunger and thirst that brings you to the brink of death. In an effort to distract himself, Friday began to sit alone on the edge of the rudder blade, legs dangling to either side, peering out at the ocean in a vain attempt to find anything to break the continuous line on the horizon.
What the ocean gave him on the thirteenth day of the trip was a whale.
“The first time in my life that I saw such a thing!” he said, laughing at the memory. “If I tell someone in my country that I saw a whale, they will tell me that I am lying. But I sat at the helm and saw a whale. And I forgot regarding hunger and thirst. I watched the whale and it was like watching creation. A sacred moment.”
Day 14
When first light peeked over the horizon on the 14th day of the voyage, Friday was once more at the helm’s edge, looking into the distance, when he felt the ship’s powerful engines slow down. Then, in the dim light, in the distance, he saw what looked like land. Then buildings. Then a boat.
The Ken Wave was stopping off the coast to receive a new crew and the resupply boat spotted the men. “Do you know where they are?” they yelled at them.
Friday tried to respond with a scream she didn’t know, but her throat was too dry. The boat moved away, then two hours later, with more light, a police launch appeared. An officer handed Friday a bottle of water. “They are in Brazil,” he said.
Safe on dry land, the migrants used borrowed phones to call their families. William and Zeze, the two escorts for Friday and Yeye, decided to take up the offer of a direct return trip to Nigeria. Friday and Yeye chose to make Brazil their home. “We are happy here,” Yeye said. “It’s a new start”.
You will most likely face challenges. Migrants have automatic rights to health care and other benefits in Brazil, but African migrants often face racism and difficulties finding a well-paying job.
Friday and Yeye were taken in by a shelter in Sao Paulo and are receiving assistance from a Catholic mission, Missao Paz, as well as Portuguese classes. Yeye wants to start another business and bring his wife and children.
Friday is more focused on the immediate future. “I’m in a new place, I’m trying to adjust, I’m trying to learn the language,” he said.
The first trip he ever made outside of Nigeria nearly killed him, but as the days passed following his rescue he felt the hopelessness that had plagued him in his country begin to fade.
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