DAKAR: Ten years after one of the worst maritime disasters in history, a handful of survivors gathered in Senegal yesterday to pay homage to the victims of the Joola, a Senegalese ferry that sank off the coast of Gambia, killing 1,863 people.
That’s 361 more than were killed when the Titanic went down 100 years earlier, claiming 1,502 lives.
The MV Le Joola took off on Sept. 26, 2002 from Ziguinchor, the capital of Senegal’s southernmost province. The government-owned ferry was carrying several times the maximum recommended number of passengers, and survivors say it was already listing from the excess weight when it ran into a storm.
Survivors wept at the graves yesterday, most of which are unmarked in the Dakar cemetery that was created for the disaster. The bodies were so decomposed that most could not be identified and one relative of the dead went from headstone to headstone, placing his hand on the white marker, as if to find his loved one.
Among the 64 who made it out alive was Victor Djiba, a soldier who was assigned to work on the boat. He got out only because he knew the layout of the ferry. But his friend, with whom he was sharing a cabin, perished.
“Since 2002, I have to use sleeping pills to be able to fall asleep. And even with the pills, I still don’t manage to fall asleep until 2 a.m.,” said Djiba, who attended an interfaith ceremony held at the cemetery yesterday. “When the boat started to sink, I was in a cabin with my colleague. I feel responsible for his death,” he said.