Apologies if my English is not so well. It is not my mother tongue. I write to you in an extreme moment of distress. I do not know how much longer I will be alive or if my story will be read, but even if it is too late for me, I hope to warn others who may follow in my footprints.
By my count this is my 17th day inside the shipping container. 17 days at sea, 408 hours in the dark.
When we entered the container, more than two weeks ago, we were smiling. Happy to have paid our passage to a land of hope and fortune. The smiling faces of my fellow passengers, faces I have not seen since, are burned into my memory. On that day, when the big steel container doors screeched closed, blacking out the hot sun, none of us would have known the horrors that would plague our journey.
I may be the sole passenger with a phone, at sea there is not signal and I leave it switched off to keep the battery alive. Once per day I turn it on, in the hopes we’ve neared land. Today is that day and I cling to one bar as if clinging to a lifeboat.
The container is so dark one cannot see a hand in front of their face. In the corner, where I sit, my back against the corrugated steel, there’s a small patch of rust. The rust has rotted the steel near the floor, to allow a single rice sized beam of sunlight to enter. That’s how I’ve been able to count the recent days. And how I’ve been able to maintain some sanity.
But at night is when my eyes are glued open in the pitch darkness. At night is when insanity and sleep deprivation mix to distort reality. It’s at night when I will myself with all my might not to sleep. I will NOT SLEEP until IT sleeps.
I was lucky, back home to have had an education, I even went to college. I were not the best student, I struggled through the studies and the exams. When I finally graduated I became the only college educated person from my village. On my return from college there was a village wide party to celebrate.
My parents worked to the bone to have me educated, and when illness took my father, my mother did all she could to keep the roof on our heads and keep us from starving. We were still very poor but far less so than most of those who now surround me.
I left alone on this journey because my family deserves more. More than a hand to mouth existence and a seven day work week. I knew if I could reach a prosperous nation, then I could earn for my family in days what my mother earns in a year.
My mother did not know the details of my journey, nor where I gathered the money to pay for it. But her watered eyes told me she were afraid to lose me. Even if it meant breaking the cycle of poverty we were trapped in, she was losing another man of the house.
When I boarded the minibus to the coast, and kissed my sisters and mother goodbye, my mother removed from her neck her amulet. It was two small leather pouches, on a braided leather rope, which she pressed into my palm and told me would “heal and protect me when in need”.
I wish I had this amulet now.
The dark is so tiresome. One trick to stay awake: I imagine my surroundings and every detail I can remember. I see them in my mind as if it’s bright as day. The steel shipping container was almost bare when we were loaded onto it. The paint faded and peeling, the sheetwood floor rotting.
In one corner was a large wooden rectangular crate, the size and height of a small couch. There were a number of large buckets as well, they were empty and had lids. They were to be our lavatories.
At the top of the far wall was a small machine to provide air exchange. Without it, or if the power was lost, we would suffocate within a day or so.
Before we could enter, they took all our possessions away from us. I managed to conceal my phone in my undergarments, but all else I owned was removed, on the promise of return at the other end. They even forced me to remove from my neck the charms my mother had given me. I do not believe in their magic, but they were all I had to remember my mother, and I were terrified of losing it.
Other’s fared worse than me, losing food, bill folds, suitcases… One man had a rolled rug taken from him. When the doors closed and we heard the sound of the padlock from outside, locking us in, many muttered prayers under their breath.
Our fates were handed that day to the traffickers. And we soon felt the container swing and shift as it was lifted by crane and stacked amongst hundreds of other containers.
I travelled alone, but there were families and children among us. In the darkness I imagine their faces. One middle aged woman was in charge of the food and water. She would sleep on top the large wooden crate. And each new day at sea, signalled by a knock on the outside roof of the container, she would open the crate and remove a large bottle of water and a box of rations to distribute amongst us in the dark.
There were always arguments at this time. There was never enough food and people always wanted more. I gave up most of my daily rations in the first two weeks, to help the mothers quell their childrens hungers. When you sit all day in the dark you don’t use much energy. And of course, you can imagine, the toilet situation in here is unthinkable. The smell unbearable. Only the dark protects our modesty.
When one of your senses is taken, they say the others become more powerful. Mine are definitely heightened. I breathe only through my mouth to avoid the stench.
My hearing tells another story. Amongst the numerous daily conversations, I can pick up the sounds of the open ocean as the ship cuts through the swells. The occasional blast of the fog horn in the dark. The faint buzz of the exhaust fans, whirling gently above my head. And in recent days, scraping. Which seems to be coming from the container below.
Others have heard the scraping too, and we wildly speculated on its source. An animal or the crew doing repairs, or perhaps other passengers like us. All that was soon forgotten when horror struck.
It has been three days since I’ve stayed awake now. I will not sleep, until IT sleeps. If I do sleep, I may not wake up.
It started with some mild confusion amongst the passengers. The knock on the outside of the container did not come as scheduled. Although we were never sure of the time, it was clear by the afternoon that the morning knock was not coming.
The daily knock was generally a comfort to me. It meant that we were not forgotten or abandoned. It also meant our container was on the top of the stack of hundreds. The claustrophobia of being locked in a container would be far worse if ours was buried, container’s above and on every side. The grain of light near where I sat was further proof that one edge was open to the air.
Nina, the woman guarding the food crate, refused to dish out rations until she heard the knock. A man accused her of “being drunk with power”. Another said “there’s nothing stopping us pulling you from that box and gorging ourselves.”
But she held out saying “We need to trust in the knocking, for the knocker knows the schedule and how long the food must last. If we lose trust, we may later starve.” No one challenged her further, because all were familiar, at some point in their lives, of what starvation is like.
It was that night that it all changed. We were awoken by an animal like scream. A scream like no other. Half gurgling. It was like the cry of pain from the slaughter of some poor farm animal. As if its throat was cut with a knife in need of sharpening. It was coming from the far corner of the container.
At first I thought I were having a nightmare. my hands reached out in the dark to check my surroundings. My palms wet with sweat, I felt the steel walls, I felt the limbs of those around me, and I heard the terrified panic of my country people.
Women and children cried and screamed in fear, others yelled out “what’s happening!?”
And I was frozen in fear myself, imagining the terrors unfolding just feet from me in the pitch black. It was not long, maybe seconds until the horrible noises ceased.
We were left crouching in silent fear, until someone said in the dark “Moussa?, Moussa!” and someone else near them said “Moussa is wet with blood.”
Someone else cried out, their voice trembling “what has happened? is he dead?” and after a long pause, in which I assume his pulse was checked, a man’s voice confirmed, “he is no longer with us.”
The screams from my fellows began again. The fear of being trapped inside this ever shrinking coffin with a corpse were too much to burden. What or who had caused his violent end?
We all pounded as loud as we could on the sides of the container.
We had never seen any of the ship’s crew but we had heard them chatting sometimes in some foreign dialogue, perhaps sharing a cigarette on the deck nearby. And of course the daily knock on the roof was someone, someone who knew of our existence… So we banged away at the walls for hours and still no one came.
Moussa was an interesting man. Being weeks at sea with nothing to do but talk, I was able to hear his story. Like me he had come on this journey alone, but he was much older, in his sixties. I had asked him, in the dark, why at his age would he take such a journey.
Back home he had been in and out of prison, for “crimes against the state”. His daughter who emigrated to the West as a child, was soon to be married.
Moussa, unable to obtain a passport or visa, was forced to travel like us, like cattle. He told his friends back home of the trip that “he would not be returning from”. He wished to grow elderly in the West, dining on Pepsi and McNuggets. Moussa was right about one thing, he would not return.
The morning after Moussa’s death, again we waited for the knock on the roof, again it was absent. Nina had no choice but to dish out food. She doubled the ration, allowing us to have some bit of happiness in the torment.
Energised, we all chatted, speculating the cause of Moussa’s death. Some believed the old legends and some prayed to their gods for salvation. No plausible answer could be found though, and there was growing suspicion that one of us was guilty.
Then night came again. The space was much more cramped as everyone pressed and huddled together, as far away as they could from Moussa’s body. Putting as much distance between him and the puddles of blood that were no doubt congealing around him. You could smell it, and soon the flies would find it too.
And so I began my sleepless test of endurance. Petrified of what the dark concealed.
For those that snored soundly, just as many of us stayed awake in fear. As the hours passed one by one I sensed the people around me drift off. And then as I were close to sleep myself, eyelids the weight of bricks, it began A clicking, a clicking like that of a tongue, but sharper, more rhythmic, like a cricket.
There were others still awake, and they heard it too. Someone started to mutter. Someone else cried out “did you hear?”
People started to wake and jostle behind others for protection. A child burst into tears and we could no longer hear the clicking.
A frightened voice called out “Shut your baby’s mouth.”
And the baby was soon silenced by mother’s hand or breast.
The clicking was followed by the scrapping on wood. Like the scraping we had heard before, but louder. I turned my head, desperate to sense where the scraping was coming from, it seemed to be near Moussa’s corpse. I tried to calm the people pushing all around me but I was terrified myself and drenched in sweat.
And then the sounds of a thrashing body broke out from the centre of the room, waking everyone. Screams echoed off the walls while bodies stampeded away from the centre of the container. There was a sudden splash of liquid hitting the ground and at that moment the thrashing disappeared.
We stayed huddled in fear for a few minutes. Minutes that felt like hours. Each of us took it in turn to say our names out loud, to find out if anyone was missing.
A young girl said, “mother? where’s mum?”
People began to interrogate her, to find out her mother’s name. We soon realised her mother was missing and a sudden bout of silence gripped the group.
And in that silence I thought about how much I missed my own family and how it was to lose my own father. I had to do something. No longer able to cower helplessly.
“I’ll check,” I said.
I stood and shakily approached the part of the container we were all avoiding.
People parted and their hands reached out to guide me forward until my foot struck someone laying on the floor.
I crouched and felt their warm shoulder, then felt my way towards their open lips. No breath could be felt here.
Then my hands continued up to where their eyes should have been. I sprang back.
“What is it?” someone shouted, sensing me flinch.
“Nothing.”
I did not want to cause more panic, but I seemed to have felt holes where the eyes should have been. I felt the head again and felt the long thick head of hair, wet with blood.
“It is a lady,” I said, and the motherless child began to sob.
“How was she killed?” Nina cried out, “We need to know. What are the injuries?”
I felt my way over to Moussa’s body and confirmed my fear. His eyes were also gone, his face sticky with dried blood. I pulled my hand away and immediately wiping the blood on my trousers
I wretched, and did all I could to hold back the vomit but it came all the same.
After a few moments of recovery I did what I had previously promised myself not to do. Since the start of this journey, my phone was my secret. I only checked it under my jacket, when all were asleep. I knew that if my phone was revealed I would not hear the end of it. Everyone would be wanting to check it or use the light, the battery would not have lasted a week.
“The injuries?” I said, “….I will show you.”
With a trembling hand I withdrew my phone from my pocket.
I turned on the flash light.
The light was almost blinding.
It was both delightful and horrible to see the fear struck faces of those around me. It was a joy to see any face again, but they had weathered and become gaunt over these weeks. They had lost the lustre I had previously remembered and their frail bodies trembled, pressed up against the walls, evading the carnage that lay at my feet.
And then I registered the shock on their faces as they saw the eyeless corpses. And the blood, the blood that pooled not just on the floor but splattered the wall, ceiling and some of their own clothing.
“Hold out your hands,” a bearded man yelled out. “The killer will be bloodied.”
“No human did this,” Nina said. “This is monstrous.”
And yet everyone held out their hands in the light. Wishing not to be accused of the hideous crime. And all the hands appeared clean of blood.
The girl who lost her mother was in tears. Someone tried to shield her view. “Turn off the light,” they yelled to me.
“Wait.” Nina said.
“These bodies, they will rot. Let us move them into the crate, we will take out all the food and water.”
There were murmurs of agreement and all got to work emptying the food crate.
Two men grabbed hold of Moussa’s stiff limbs and began to drag him towards the crate. At that point his head rolled over and his mouth agape revealed a new shock. The man had no tongue.
One of the men dropped the body and shuffled away from it, his finger pointing at the floor.
We all looked where he pointed, to see that under where Moussa’s body had lay, was a hole in the wooden sheeting.
At this point I really had no more words. How I wished that I were back home with my sisters and my mother. How could I be so selfish to think that leaving them was the right thing to do. We were poor, but we were together, we were alive and we were happy like millionaires. And I made the decision then, that if I made it out of this alive, I would return home at the first opportunity.
But the first task was to stay alive.
“We need to cover this hole” I said. “What ever did this, came from there.”
“We’ll use the container” Nina said “But what is in the hole?”
I didn’t want to know what was down there. But I had the light, and was to be the one to check.
The hole was not large enough to fit inside, so I got down on my knees to shine the light inside.
The edges of the hole were jagged, as if chewed by teeth .
There was not much to see, I was looking down into the container below. It seemed to be stacked full of burlap sacks. On the nearest sack, some debris has fallen from the rotting wood above.
“I need something sharp” I said.
A boy stepped forward and presented me with a basic knife. Like me, he must have concealed it at the start of our journey.
I thrust my arm into the hole, I could reach just far enough to cut one of the sacks. it split open, spilling coffee beans out of the gash. No use to us.
After a few minutes the hole was covered with the crate and the bodies were then placed inside. Finally my light was switched off again and we returned to the dark. I took my place in the corner, my back against the wall, ready for another sleepless night.
It was quiet again, and something was not right. And that’s when I realised the fans that used to hum softly above my head had stopped.
I have not told the other passengers yet, a few hours have passed and most sleep again. I’d rather die in peace than surrounded by panic.
I sit now, with my jacket over my head, typing what may be my last words. It’s hard to say how much air we have left, it could be hours or as long as a couple days.
I miss my mum.