Sister Jabou,

Many thanks for this forward. I have myself often thought of the students who were travelling to Dakar for the fall semester and how such huge loss would affect the concerned families. Unfortunately there was little reference material in the papers to associate such thoughts with hard life stories of the victims and their families.
The Joola's unseaworthiness was quickly established after the disaster. Yet it is still unfathomable how, such gross negligence could occur in a Senegal whose bureaucracy, comparatively, is impressive by all African standards? Like families of victims of the M/V Estonia, that sunk in the Baltic sea off the coast of Stockholm in September 1994, healing over the loss of people unrecovered at sea can take many many years. Many of the families around here have still not come to terms with that huge accident - (they say it was the biggest sea disaster in the Western hemisphere since the Titanic sunk in 1912). There were huge televised debates here on what to do with the dead (should the ship be salvaged or should it be treated as an ultimate burial site treated with commensurate dignity, etc)the questions of compensation, the responsibility of the shipping company and their insurers, the crew, the seaworthiness of the ship and whether it should have embarked at all.
 
Also, different institutions involved in the investigation of the causes of the accident are still not agreed on the many  technical details. 

It is very sad though that Senegal has had little international support in coping with the effects of the disaster especially giving the outpouring of sympathy and the offers of assistance that were extended to the Russians when the nuclear submarine Kursk sank.

My heart goes to the Senegalese people, and aslo the government, that under difficult circumstances and very limited resourses, at least accepted responsibility for the disaster. I hope other African governments will learn from that and assume responsibility for their sinking economies, and the ravages of Aids.

Momodou S Sidibeh

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