The brother of a man who died after a boat carrying dozens of migrants was found off Cape Verde has told the BBC they were trying to reach Spain.
According to Mamour Ba, he too would still attempt the trip himself as it was impossible to make a living in Senegal.
More than 60 people are feared to have died on the boat, which was at sea for over a month. Most were from Senegal.
“Everyone is shocked. He was one of the pillars of our family,” Mamour Ba said about his brother Cheikhouna.
Ba, 27, is a student from the small fishing town of Fass Boye, halfway along the coast between the capital, Dakar, and the historical town of St Louis.
Three of his brothers and one of his cousins were on the wooden pirogue style boat that set off for Europe on July 10 from Fass Boye with 101 people on board.
“They wanted to get to Spain. They said they wanted to leave and I couldn’t tell them not to because they’d already made their minds up.”
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He thought they had all died, until he got a call from Cape Verde on Wednesday after their rescue.
They were among 38 people, including children, who were saved, with footage showing them being helped ashore, some on stretchers, on the island of Sal. More than 60 other people are feared to be lost at sea.
The archipelago sits around 600km (372 miles) off the coast of West Africa and on the migration route to the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory seen by many as a route to the EU.
Ba said he still does not know the details of his relatives’ five-week journey as they were too disorientated: “They didn’t have the strength to explain what happened, they just said: ‘We’re alive’. They sounded very weak.”
But as the conversation continued, he found out that not all of them had survived.
“One of my brothers, Ibrahima, used one of the doctor’s phones to call me from Cape Verde.
“He told us our other brother Cheikhouna was lost at sea. I was shocked. We were very close, he was a real fighter. He was married with two kids.
“The day he left he held my hands and said, ‘Brother I have to go.’
“He was my brother, he was my friend.”
After news of the tragedy spread in Fass Boye, where most of those on board the boat hailed from, anger erupted on Wednesday.
Some set fire to the house of the mayor, angered with the authorities about the lack of opportunities for young people.