The dream that drowned: 39 die in yet another tragedy off Africa’s coast
THE boat was already dying before it ever left the shore. Weathered planks groaned against rusted nails. Salt-eaten wood sagged under the weight of impossible hope. On New Year's Eve, as the world prepared to toast new beginnings, over two hundred people - mothers clutching infants, young men with calloused hands, dreamers with phone numbers scrawled on scraps of paper - crammed themselves into a vessel that could barely hold half that many. They were from Gambia, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone. Different flags, same desperation. They called it taking "the back way" -…
