It was a Sunday noon and after procrastinating for 2 days, I sent the weekend reports and I was getting bored when I decided to meet one of my suppliers.
This is from where the story took turn. We met and we started discussing on unnecessary topics as we decided not to discuss business.
While telling me about his life, He turned to a chapter which was quite fascinating and had the capacity to turn into an adventurous Hollywood film.
Let’s take his name as Augustin.
Augustin was quite fascinated to Rock music from his childhood and always copied the singers of American region. This fervour to be a name in the world of rock music gave him an objective in life and that was to reach United States of America.
He applied for Visa several times and it was declined all the times, but he didn’t leave his dream of America which led to an illegal but quite fascinating path.
He decided to go by boat, the Boats which were carrying wood logs to Mexico. He waited for several days, after which he got sight of one vessel on the Libreville Port. After the vessel sailed, it has to anchor for the night. And, this is the time which was apt for Augustin to embark his journey to his dreamland.
He dared to take a small canoe and peddled towards the BOAT which was romantically named as Marine Beauty, and in the darkness of night, He was able to climb on the Marine beauty and hide himself in between the gap of Logs. Now he had to play the patient game of being hidden and fight against Hunger and thirst for few days.
He kept him hidden till the Boat crossed the Port of South Africa and once the Marine Beauty was out of African waters; he came out and showed himself to the Captain of the Ship.
Now, a Vessel like marine beauty could not turn back to Africa to depose one person at the cost of thousands of litres of fuel, so they continued towards Mexico.
That’s how he reached Mexico and created this first and one of the unique routes of illegal immigration from Africa to USA.
Later on, he reached through illegal channels of Mexico and this continued for several years.
This became his usual route between his homeland and his dreamland. The last journey which he had to take again was in 2007 when he was being accompanied by some other dreamers and everybody had his or her own sets of dreams.
He used the same tactics but this time, Luck was not in his favour.
Once he crossed the South African Waters and presented himself to the Captain, the most adventurous part of the story turned over.
The captain was not ready to give them company and decided to depose them off right in the middle of the sea, which meant certain death.
The captain took empty drums and he joint two drums by welding them together and filled it with water. They were 14 persons in total and The captain created 7 floating devices by use of those empty petrol drums and forced them to sit on those drum boats,2 persons each boat to create equilibrium.
And, they were left in the deep blue sea under the open sky with no land in sight.
They floated randomly for 2 days but the one thing that they never lost was HOPE.
After 2 days of floating in the guardianship of God Almighty they saw the land, which was MADAGASCAR.
They flashed some mirrors and some French surfers noticed them. It took more than 8 Hours to reach the bay and they were almost dead by now. Lack of sleep, hunger and cold weather has taken its toll.
11 of them were saved and returned back with help of United Nations.
This was end of his dream journey and He decided to live a real life. Now he is a timber supplier but he still enquires me about the name of vessels so that he can one day find out the captain who tried to kill them and fight a legal battle with him.
NAVNEET
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