Wall Street Journalさんのインスタグラム写真 - (Wall Street JournalInstagram)「“Ever since I was a boy, I knew everything would be OK if I could just get to America.” ⁠ ⁠ Ghanaian refugee John Ekow boarded a vessel in July in the Ivory Coast with the prospect of making landfall in the U.S. There was just one problem: the ship was bound for Brazil.⁠ ⁠ Brazilian officials have been bedeviled by a new phenomenon: a small but growing number of African migrants who completed a perilous 2,000-mile journey from West Africa after sneaking onto cargo ships they believed were actually headed for Europe or the U.S.⁠ ⁠ Some African arrivals say criminal gangs and fishermen in West Africa tricked them into boarding the wrong ships, charging a small fee to hoist them aboard, including onto narrow platforms behind the ship’s rudder, according to researchers and authorities studying clandestine immigration. ⁠ ⁠ “I was gutted,” Ekow said, describing the moment the ship’s captain told him he was not in the U.S. but in Macapá, Brazil, where the Atlantic meets the Amazon River.⁠ ⁠ The 24-year-old and a friend boarded the ship in Abidjan with the help of a local fisherman. During the trip the men huddled together for warmth, rationing out tins of sardines and a bottled mush of cassava flour and water. By the third day, the food was gone. By the fifth, they ran out of water.⁠ ⁠ On the seventh day, the ship suddenly slowed down. Police officers at the port of Macapá said they could either go back to Africa or stay in Brazil and file for asylum, Ekow said. Both opted for the latter. His friend, who had brought a fistful of dollars with him, told Ekow he was going to try and trudge to the U.S.⁠ ⁠ A total of 234 migrants arrived in Brazil as stowaways between 2006 and 2017, almost exclusively from Africa, hidden in ships that docked in at least 15 different states along Brazil’s almost 5,000-mile coastline, according to the latest available data from the country’s navy. ⁠ ⁠ Read more at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📷: Samantha Pearson for @wsjphotos」10月24日 15時03分