Four Nigerian stowaways hopped on a cargo ship not knowing where it was going, but hoping to find a place where they could claw out of poverty.
The four stowaways aboard a cargo ship had no idea where they were when they were met by federal police officers last month at a Brazilian port. Told they had landed in Brazil, they were stunned.
They had hopped on the ship while it was docked 3,500 miles away — in Lagos, the most populous city in the West African nation of Nigeria.
They didn’t know where it was going but didn’t care. They were jobless and desperate, they said, and wanted to go anywhere that might offer better prospects.
After rowing out to the vessel, the Ken Wave, they said they climbed into an unlikely space: the 6-foot by 6-foot opening containing the rudder.
Recounting their harrowing journey to The New York Times, they said they spent 14 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean, leaning on cold metal, terrified of falling into the churning waters just below their feet. Sometimes, they spotted sharks.
“We were so scared, we just kept on praying,” said one of the men, Roman Ebimene Friday.
On day nine, they said they ran out of food and water. “We licked toothpaste and drank seawater just to have strength,” Mr. Friday said in a telephone interview from a shelter in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was staying.
“When we informed them we were the federal police of Brazil, they made this face like, ‘Huh, we’re in Brazil?’” said Rogerio Lages, chief of the federal police’s maritime division in the state of Espírito Santo, where the cargo vessel docked…