One month ago, Samba Djamanka was in the last semester of high school at Tanaf, a town in Senegal’s Casamance Region, when his father told him that he would not be able to finish his studies. Instead he had to take a canoe heading for the Spanish Canary Islands. After 20 gruelling days at sea, IRIN found him in a detention centre in Mauritania, in the port city of Nouadhibou, and he is lucky to be alive. Here is his story

“My father is a farmer of millet and sorghum but in recent years he has not been able to cultivate enough for the family to live off. One day he called me over and said that he is getting old and that as I am his oldest son, the burden of supporting the family must now fall to me.

He said I was to immediately leave for Spain to find work and send money back to the family. I could not wait until I finished my last semester of high school, he said, because the family was in crisis.

He had already paid for my passage on a canoe that would take me to Spain. There I would be able to make more money than if I finished high school.

The voyage started with a bush taxi from Tanaf north to Dakar and then another taxi to St Louis. There I waited many days until all the places in the canoe filled up.

When the canoe finally pushed off it was very crowded. It had 130 passengers.

None of the people in the canoe were really crew. Everyone just took turns piloting and then we soon realized we were lost.

We were on the high seas for 20 days, without food or water. After a while I started feeling pain all over my body and I was sure I was going to die.

Then, last Sunday, a Spanish coastal patrol boat found us. They didn’t give us anything they just tied a rope to our canoe and towed us.

Eventually we got to the shore and found we were in Mauritania. When we docked Mauritanian police came and took us to the detention centre here.

It is not nice here but it is a lot better than being lost in a canoe in the middle of the ocean without any food or water. It was a very bad experience and not what I was wishing for. I am sure it was not what my father wished for either.”