In July 2014 what had been a routine voyage for the 11 seafarers aboard MT Maro, turned into an ordeal that still isn’t over. The ship, carrying crude oil, had been travelling from Ghana to Cameroon when its engine failed and drifted into a stretch of Nigerian water renowned for sea robberies near the port of Brass. But it wasn’t pirates who intercepted the vessel, it was the Nigerian navy.
The Indian crew, with a Nigerian captain at the helm, had allegedly strayed into Nigerian waters without permission and were handed over to the country’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC). The crew members – including cadets, cooks and engineers – have been in prison awaiting trial ever since.
“Their lives weren’t threatened, but their freedom was,” explains Reverend Boet van Schalkwyk, a chaplain who heads up the Sailors’ Society’s Crisis Response centre in Durban, South Africa. “They were worried they’d never see their families again, and the whole incident of being captured and put into prison was traumatic – these are people who have never experienced that before.”
It was well over a year until word of the situation reached the Sailors’ Society, an international charity which offers practical help and emotional support to the world’s 1.5 million seafarers and their families, from ports throughout the world.
The families of the MT Maro crew back home had no idea whether their loved ones had been abandoned, attacked or involved in a serious accident, until communication was finally established in August 2015 and the Indian government began to get involved with legal and financial assistance.
A month later (10 September 2015) Boet and another chaplain were given the go-ahead to visit the prisoners by the Nigerian authorities, to render humanitarian and welfare counselling. Visas were issued and the pair boarded a flight to Nigeria’s capital, Lagos, the next morning. The prison was a seven-mile drive away, in Yenagoa. Boet recalls the journey into the town, and the anticipation he felt. “Yenagoa is in a delta area – I remember there being lots of swampland and mosquitoes. It was raining a lot.”
Once the chaplains were inside the prison chief’s office, the seafarers began to file in. “We were expecting to meet 11, but there were 38,” Boet says. Chaos. Ranging from late teens to their 50s, most were awaiting trial, two had been given 14-year sentences (and were appealing these) and there was another who had served half of his eight-year sentence. Some were not merchant seafarers at all. One told Boet he was a stowaway who had been arrested along with the crew, while others were facing prosecution for illegal activities in the Niger delta region.
As for the MT Maro crew, the Sailors’ Society visit was the first interaction they’d had with the outside world since arriving at the prison 14 months earlier. “I had a photograph of the chief engineer, but when he came up to me I had to ask who he was, he had lost a lot of weight,” says Boet. “It was very sad to see, and I had trouble sleeping when I got back home to South Africa.” He wasn’t given a chance to see the messes, but says experience and intuition told him the prisoners were not being mistreated. “You soon pick up on whether things are a show – but this situation seemed to say they were probably not being badly treated.” There was good interaction between the prisoners and captors the whole time – and no shouting – which is quite unusual, according to Boet.
“But the horror and trauma was still there – that doesn’t go away,” he adds. Having been in the prison for more than year, they no longer seemed to suffer too much from nightmares or flashbacks but irritability was high. “There was a lot of frustration.”
With only a 30-minute visit allocated to the chaplains – and more than three times as many people than expected to help – they began recording their names, vessels and statuses to pass on. “We spoke slowly in English and checked to see if they understood or not; most of them nodded and some of the youngsters translated,” Boet explains.
They returned the next day to hold a stress- and trauma-reduction session.
“The idea is for them to do the talking rather than you do the questioning,” he says. “We provide friendship and a listening ear; we want them to know they’re safe, and all the trauma in their mind that causes fear and tension can start to be dealt with by sharing together. We want to give them hope.” A lot of the prisoners talked about their children. “All seafarers love talking about their children, waiting for their return back home,” says Boet.
The Sailors’ Society is a Christian charity but Boet says they operate as an interfaith organisation and will care for all seafarers. With time against them, they asked if any of the seafarers would like to pray or take part in a communion. “The prison chapel was filled with as many as 70 people and when I spoke it was like a drone that came back at us, it was wonderful,” he says. “They all stood up and applauded at the end – I have never been applauded for giving communion before,” Boet laughs.
Tears were shed. It had been a long time since they’d been brought together like that, and not everyone who took part was Christian. “Perhaps some just wanted to have a spiritual connection, and if they achieved that and felt something, then that was great.” One of the seafarers approached Boet and said: “We feel so much lighter and relieved.”
The chaplains left behind magazines, books and money for toiletries and basics. The copies of National Geographic proved particularly popular.
“We call ourselves soul mechanics – we seek the well being of seafarers, who as a people, often suffer from loneliness and low morale because of long periods of time spent away from home,” he explains. According to the charity, seafarers are away from home and family for an average stretch of nine to 12 months at a time, and 81% of them can’t access email to check on loved ones while at sea.
The Crisis Response centre was set up in 2015 to help traumatised seafarers after piracy attacks and other crisis situations. “We [the Crisis Response team] come across some seafarers who have been attacked more than once, some have been attacked and hijacked and some kidnapped twice,” Boet explains. Not long ago he counselled someone held by pirates for 11 months. He says there is often a tendency to send seafarers home without any kind of counselling.
After multiple court appearances over the course of almost two years, the crew of the MT Maro remains in prison. But it is understood by the Sailors’ Society and its communication with their Indian lawyers and Nigerian authorities that they are moving closer to being released.
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