OFW families today enjoy the best that technology could offer. With messaging and video calling right at our fingertips, we can communicate with each other with ease 24/7.
This is also the case in my family where good mornings and pictures of what we are having for breakfast are routinely exchanged day after day.
September 6 was different though. There was a change from the usual when my daughter, Abby, and I did not get the customary morning greeting from her dad.
He works as a seafarer, commanding a German-owned cargo ship called the BBC Pearl. At that time, his ship was in the Mediterranean Sea, and was underway to Port Said in Egypt.
It wasn’t until two hours later that he messaged us, simply saying, “We are doing rescue operations.” Our questions about what was happening were met by silence.
We received two other short messages hours later, “refugees”, “probably stranded for days”, and then total silence. Again.
I think it was at this point that my thoughts started entertaining grim scenarios like modern-day pirates disguised as refugees, so they could board vulnerable cargo vessels like the BBC Pearl.
But no, I told myself, piracy is not rampant in the Mediterranean Sea. It would have been a different matter if they were in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, or around Africa, specifically Somalia in the Indian Ocean, and the Strait of Malacca in Asia. These areas used to crawl with pirates. Increased naval patrols have lessened the number of pirate-related incidents there, but shipping companies still hire armed escorts when their ships have to navigate in these waters.
There is no cause for worry, or so I told myself to allay my fears.
For Abby though, it was a different matter. Her anxiety started growing with each hour that passed without word from her Papa. She had pirates in her mind as well, and with no specific idea regarding the geographic locations where there’s active piracy, her imagination started to run wild. Missed calls and frantic messages repeatedly asking her father where he was flooded his inbox.
It was hours later when we thankfully learned that he and his crew were okay, and that they had rescued 63 starving refugees from a leaking fishing boat that had been drifting in the Mediterranean Sea for 10 days or so, after its engine had lost power.
My husband told us how he had to fight against 30-40 knot winds as he maneuvered his ship towards the crippled boat, taking care not to cause further damage to the much smaller vessel.
He said he still remembers the frightened screams of the children whenever the tiny boat was slammed against the hull of the BBC Pearl by the three to four-meter high waves.
Getting the severely-weakened women and children up into the ship was a challenge for the crew. The people they rescued had not eaten nor drank water for 10-11 days, three children had died before help arrived, and many became desperate enough to drink seawater, and had fallen ill.
The crew members got busy settling in the men, women, and children they had rescued, while others distributed water and bread, and gave first aid. More were in the kitchen preparing food for them.
At the ship’s bridge, my husband’s immediate concern were five people who needed urgent medical care, more particularly a four-year old girl who was unconscious with a body temperature of 34°C when she was brought on board. Her parents said she also drank seawater because of thirst.
We knew then why my husband, Abby’s Papa, was unable to message us. He had been making urgent calls to Greek medical authorities and Telemedical Maritime Assistance Service Germany for advice on how to give emergency aid to the child.
At the same time, he was in contact with Malta, Greece, and Egypt requesting for the little girl’s immediate medical evacuation.
He was able to relax only when Greece agreed to send a helicopter. By the time it arrived, we had resumed communications, and were on video call, while the girl was being airlifted into a Greek Navy helicopter which hovered over the BBC Pearl for about half an hour.
Sadly, help came too late for the little one.
Despite the fright that this incident gave us, we are thankful that the officers and crew of BBC Pearl have had the privilege of saving precious lives.
To be at the right place at the right time, to have employers who would support your decision to rush to their rescue, to have snatched people from the jaws of death, to be God’s chosen answer to their desperate cries for help, that’s an honor granted to not so many.
I end this article with my own prayer for the 62 people who survived the ordeal. For this chance to make a better life in another country, the price they paid was the loss of four young lives. May their loved ones find peace and comfort in their hearts, and may their new life be lived each day in honor of those who are no longer in their arms.
__________________________________
Author’s email: olgaluciauy@yahoo.com
