Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Four years af­ter a boat car­ry­ing 14 de­com­posed bod­ies drift­ed ashore in Belle Gar­den, To­ba­go, the fam­i­ly of the on­ly man for­mal­ly iden­ti­fied says they’ve made peace with the tragedy.

“We have all ac­cept­ed it. We are peo­ple of faith,” said the aunt of 30-year-old Alas­sane Sow, who was buried in Trinidad in March 2023.

In a mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp, Sow’s aunt, Mau Sow—com­mu­ni­cat­ing in French us­ing a trans­la­tor—said his moth­er, who lives in Mali, has nev­er vis­it­ed his grave be­cause au­thor­i­ties de­nied her a visa.

“She can­not get a visa,” she ex­plained. She al­so shared that Sow’s wife has since re­mar­ried, and his moth­er has slow­ly found joy in life again. “She has found joy in life again,” she said. “I don’t want to re­mind her of that bad mem­o­ry.”

The fam­i­ly says they have not fol­lowed news of sim­i­lar boats ar­riv­ing in the re­gion. “We are not aware,” the aunt said when asked whether re­cent dis­cov­er­ies had trig­gered any emo­tion­al flash­backs.

Sow was laid to rest on March 3, 2023, at the Ch­agua­nas Pub­lic Ceme­tery fol­low­ing an Is­lam­ic fu­ner­al. Au­thor­i­ties re­cov­ered his re­mains from a drift­ing ves­sel found off To­ba­go on May 28, 2021. They be­lieve the boat de­part­ed Mau­ri­ta­nia months ear­li­er with about 43 mi­grants on board, at­tempt­ing to reach Spain’s Ca­nary Is­lands.

In­stead, the ves­sel crossed the At­lantic and end­ed up in Caribbean wa­ters. In­ves­ti­ga­tors con­firmed Sow’s iden­ti­ty in Oc­to­ber 2022 us­ing a DNA sam­ple from his moth­er, SIM card da­ta, and a black striped shirt he was known to wear.

Since that in­ci­dent, at least three oth­er boats car­ry­ing hu­man re­mains have washed up across the Caribbean—part of what ex­perts de­scribe as a dis­turb­ing trend of “ghost boats” linked to dan­ger­ous transat­lantic mi­gra­tion routes.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed­ly be­lieve some mi­grants try­ing to reach Eu­rope via the Ca­nary Is­lands end up drift­ing thou­sands of miles off course when ves­sels get in­to trou­ble or be­come lost at sea.

To date, Alas­sane Sow re­mains the on­ly per­son iden­ti­fied from the May 2021 ghost boat that ar­rived in To­ba­go.