Everything went wrong that September 26, 2002. The night, the downpour, an overloaded boat with technical problems, the shortage of lifeboats, the slowness of the rescue.
At eleven o'clock at night, the
Le Joola ferry,
which made the crossing between the Senegalese cities of Ziguinchor and Dakar, sank off the coast of Gambia with some 2,000 people on board.
64 survived, making it one of the worst maritime tragedies in history, with more deaths than the Titanic.
Twenty years later, the relatives of the victims continue to demand justice and that the remains of the ship be refloated to have a place to mourn their dead.
"They visit us in dreams and visions, they want to rest," says Eli Diatta, brother of one of the victims.
The wound is still open.
On that September morning, the home of Eli's brother, former Senegalese soccer player and coach, Michel Diatta, was abuzz with children between the ages of 10 and 15.
The 26 kids, excited, impatient, were preparing to travel with their coach to Fatick to play a tournament.
"That room was full of life," recalls his brother.
“The next day, my mother tells me that she had heard on the radio that
Le Joola
had been shipwrecked.
I went to the port to collect information and I was faced with the catastrophe: everyone was crying and screaming, many of them collapsed on the ground, ”she recalls.
The news was trickling in.
All the children and Michel Diatta himself died swallowed by the sea.
The ship, built in German shipyards and bought by the Senegalese state, had a capacity of 550 people.
About 2,000 crowded on board that day.
When a storm surprised them off the coast of Gambia, many passengers ran to shelter from the rain on the port side and the ferry listed under the weight and ended up turning over.
Hundreds were trapped inside it.
Mariama Diouf, 38 years old and four months pregnant, managed to swim, surface and climb onto the keel with a score of survivors, from where the desperate screams and cries of those below her could be heard.
The rescue services took more than 12 hours to reach the accident site.
The official list speaks of 1,863 deaths -among them, a mother and her two Spanish children who were doing tourism in Senegal-, but a later count, prepared by the associations of victims that included those who traveled without a transport ticket, raises the figure to 1953.
In the following days, 651 bodies appeared, of which only 50 could be identified.
The relatives ask that the remains of the ship, where many bodies were left, be refloated and taken to a memorial that is being built in memory of the tragedy.
“We have not been able to duel.
Until the ship is refloated, they will not rest and we will not be able to free ourselves from the load of the
Joola”,
says Eli Diatta.
The earthquake of a tragedy full of irregularities took away the entire Government, but the victims continue to demand justice.
The Prosecutor's Office attributed all responsibility to the captain of the ship, Commander Issa Diarra, also deceased, and ordered the closure of the case.
No one has apologized.
And the compensation and school scholarships for a thousand orphans have not reached all of them, nor have they managed to close the wound.
The current Senegalese president, Macky Sall, plans to preside over the commemorative activities this September 26 in Ziguinchor, with an act in the Kanténe cemetery and the launching of bouquets into the waters of the city port.
The president of the association of relatives and victims, Boubacar Ba, will also speak, and the book Shipwreck of the Joola in Africa: causes and consequences of a humanitarian disaster, by the American Karen Samantha Barton, professor of Geography at the University of Colorado in North.
Subscribe to continue reading
read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber