NOUADHIBOU, Mauritania — Facime Diarra journeyed hundreds of miles from his native Guinea to this West African port and boarded a wooden fishing boat bound for Spain, dreaming of making enough money to buy a tractor for his family back home.
He lost everything except his life when the boat sank and about 30 of its 45 passengers drowned. Yet now he's looking for another boat, and is odd-jobbing around town to earn the fare.
"I'll go again," said Diarra, 18, though this time in a convoy of boats for safety.
Nouadhibou, on the Mauritanian edge of the Sahara Desert, has become the latest departure point for Africa's boat people. The fishing port is full of men like Diarra telling stories of thwarted voyages to Europe, terror on the ocean and plans to try again.
With routes through Morocco being gradually sealed, the rising wave of African migration to Europe has been pushed hundreds of miles south, forcing many to make a perilous 600-mile voyage in open boats to Spain's Canary Islands, their gateway to the prosperous European Union.
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Migrant voyages increasing
Spanish authorities say the Canary Islands have intercepted more than 6,100 migrants since January, including nearly 1,000 last weekend, the highest two-day haul this year. That's compared with 4,751 for all of 2005.
Spain plans to start joint sea patrols with the Mauritanians on Monday, its deputy prime minister, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, said last week.
From Nouadhibou alone, 1,040 people have been captured attempting voyages this year, up from 575 caught on land or sea in all of 2005, according to Mauritanian police. They estimate at least 400 have died so far this year.
But Diarra is undaunted.
"You enter Europe or you end up back here, or you die. It's chance," he said.
"Here" is a dusty, bustling place where a Guinean like Diarra mixes easily among Senegalese fishermen, Malian market vendors and desert nomads. The borders of this vast region, drawn by 19th-century European colonials, are hard to police and family ties spill across them. Even when the Mauritanians capture an illegal migrant, there's little they can do but let him go or ship him to his country's border and leave him there, knowing he'll soon be back.
Police Chief Yahfdhou Ould Amar said around 14,000 people from other West African countries live in Nouadhibou, and he believes most are waiting to go to Spain.
Mohamed Ould Mahfoud, head of Nouadhibou's military police, said some are caught before they set off, including men on their second try. "But you can be sure that 100 to 200 people are going in boats each night."
Inexpensive and dangerous
The migrants travel on large, canoe-shaped boats called pirogues, equipped with two outboard engines and loaded with food, water and gasoline. Built to carry six to eight people on a fishing trip, they are crammed with at least 40 people for the voyage north.
The entire trip takes about three days if nothing goes wrong. But survivors often tell of getting lost, breaking down and spending up to 10 days on open ocean.
"We were only 250 kilometers (150 miles) from Spain when our engine broke," Diarra said. "We spent four days there in the water without moving. We didn't have food. We were drinking sea water."
The Moroccan navy found them adrift and towed their boat back to Mauritanian waters, but didn't take them ashore, he said.
"They left us there in the pirogue, so we started to use our hands as oars to move the boat. But the waves were large, and everyone tumbled into the water.
"There were so many dead. Everyone was crying."
Authorities say that until last year, before Morocco cracked down, these same migrants might have transited through that country — a long trek across the Sahara but a much shorter trip across the Mediterranean.
They say the Mauritanian option is cheaper — about $600 for a spot in a boat, compared with more than $1,800 for overland passage. Also, the Sahara route means carrying a passport, while most West Africans can enter Mauritania with only an identity card.
Many migrants organize themselves rather than turn to professional smugglers.
Aruna Dia recruited 22 paying passengers from his native Senegal in exchange for a free ticket. They joined another 43 people on the boat, but two days out of Nouadhibou they got lost. A passing fishing boat picked up Dia and a few others, but the rest refused the offer.
"These people had paid a lot of money, and they didn't want to lose their money," Dia said. "They wanted to go to Europe."
Shortly after moving on, Dia said, they heard people shouting. They rushed back to find the migrant boat sunk and its passengers flailing in the water. They were able to save only two people.
He blames himself for what happened, and says he won't try it again.
Travelers undaunted by risks
Elsewhere in the town, 12 young Senegalese have banded together for a do-it-yourself trip, saying they have been cheated too often by smugglers. Babacar M'Baye, their 25-year-old leader, says they'll fund the voyage by recruiting 23 more passengers from Senegal, and gives a detailed shopping list: $8,000 for a boat; one new engine, one old one; food and gas. They have a global satellite positioning system, a compass and two captains.
The boat people are buoyed by the examples of others. Of the newly caught migrants interviewed in Nouadhibou's police stations before release or deportation, nearly all said they know people who have made it to Spain — friends, relatives, fellow villagers — who will help them get settled when they arrive.
"The guys who are in Spain now, they send money back to Mali all the time," said Youssouf Konate, 24. "Those with people in Spain have cement houses with metal roofs. The rest of us just have houses of mud."
Dignity matters, too.
"We are ashamed to do certain work at home. There I wouldn't work as a 'boy' — you know, wash people's clothes and do things like that — but if I leave here and get to Spain, I'll do anything," said Adama Coulibaly. Coulibaly has a wife and two sons in Mali whom he has not seen for nearly a year. He said doesn't know what he'll do now; he's ashamed to go back to Mali empty-handed.
Even if Mauritania finds a way to stop the outflow, some warn that migrants may simply be pushed yet farther south, adding hundreds of miles to the voyage.
"People are starting to go even from St. Louis, in Senegal," said Amar, the police chief. "Maybe now people are waiting for the new route, the new way to go."
"You enter Europe or you end up back here, or you die. It's chance."
Facime Diarra, African migrant
