Open Writing

Chapter 20
Captain Bandaranayake

In truth, Nimrod’s grand scheme was hardly original. Well before
we got mobilised there had been many other incidents of piracy off
our coast and indeed, similar acts perpetrated by Somalis much further
north – in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. From small beginnings,
piracy had escalated, particularly in the new millennium.

Unlike us, pirates based in the north of Somalia appeared to have
no social agenda. If the press was to be believed, they spent their
booty building smart new villas in remote towns like Hobyo, Haradheere
and Boosaaso; they acquired gleaming sports utility vehicles,
and marine craft normally the preserve of millionaires. They attracted
the prettiest Somali women bold enough to offer themselves
as brides. And they were part and parcel of the growing and lucrative
drugs trade. It was hardly surprising, said the press, that a generation
of youngsters were being enticed into a life of crime.

Less well reported in the international media were events of the
sort I heard about only courtesy of the BBC’s World Service. They
described the murder in Djibouti of two Italian journalists who had
uncovered what they saw as a conspiracy on the part of their government
and collaborating ‘entrepreneurs’ to scuttle off Somalia’s
coast, aging container ships filled with toxic waste. Another angle on
which they were about to pronounce before the Mafia disposed of
them, was the orchestrated sinking in July 2009 of MV Carlos
Rodrigues, a Panamanian registered bulk carrier. It had left the port
of Trieste with 100,000 cattle aboard. The animals were infected
with foot and mouth disease and the sinking was both an insurance
swindle and a non-virus spreading solution for panicking Italian
farmers. In the words of Stoppini and Brianti before their murder,
‘the perception of Somalia as a failed state without regulations or the capacity to
monitor ocean traffic, has caused illegal dumpers to flock to the area like flies to
shit.’

They had to be stopped. Of course our cause would barely register
against the tirade we expected when our actions came to the attention
of the world’s media. I imagined bimbos at the appalling Fox
News or ‘Pie in the Sky’ making sure of that. We’d be villains in the
plot rather than a tiny band fighting against overwhelming odds to
prevent further despoilment of our ocean at the hands of wealthy
nations. There would be no focus on fishing communities like our
own which were already noticing prevalence of unusual and serious
illnesses, we assumed as a result of the pollution. We imagined next,
the arrival of malformed babies, like a Bhopal side show. We would
be tarred with the same brush as other pirates. If the Americans got
their hands on us, we would be taken to their land, and locked in a
stinking cell for the rest of our days.

You might say that such realisation therefore made my behaviour
irrational. Where were my maternal instincts towards Sanya and the
safety-first policy that I should have adopted towards her? Why did
I not encourage Nimrod to take us elsewhere and to hell with the
pollution problem? Let it be someone else’s concern. I could not. I
felt as strongly as him that we had to stand up for our rights, however
sanctimonious that may sound; to protect what little natural
heritage we could claim as our own, if not for our generation then
for Sanya’s.

Aboard Uhuru the boys could listen in to ship to ship radio
transmissions. We learned that the MV Kofi Koranteng was about to
enter Somali waters from Mombasa. The ship had been chartered
out of the Ghanaian port of Tema by the World Food Programme.
She was carrying a cargo of 850 tonnes of food relief, destined for
Mogadishu. This was more a political gesture than a serious attempt
to tackle hunger in our country. Oxfam had estimated the national requirement
to be 3.5 million metric tonnes. So less than a thousand
wasn’t going to stretch very far. However the capture of a UN
charted vessel would at least guarantee some limited exposure of our
cause. It was agreed that I would act as our group’s spokesperson
when the time came.

A week before Christmas in 2009, we intercepted the ship three
miles offshore and forced it to stop engines. We informed the captain
of our intention to do so twenty minutes beforehand, emphasising
that we meant the crew no harm but warning the issuance of any
distress message would be met with serious reprisals. Khadra fired
off a few rounds from the Browning M2 to underline the point.

Those on the bridge of MV Kofi Koranteng were as good as gold. We
detected no SOS sent out by radio, though it was possible that other
forms of communication were used. It didn’t really matter.
From the time we came alongside the ship it took no more than a
few minutes to board (using the grappling hooks which Nimrod had
had fabricated for his Kismayu adventure). The crew were Sri
Lankan. Captain Sallathuraj Bandaranayake was most cooperative as
perhaps he had been instructed to be in the event of a pirate attack.

He even offered us Coca Cola and beef sandwiches.

‘To whom would you report an act of piracy?’ Nimrod asked.

‘Are you pirates?’ the captain asked in feigned surprise.

‘Not in the sense that you know them. You should consider yourselves
lucky that it is we, and not others who have come aboard.’

‘What do you want?’ Bandaranayake asked, as cool as a cucumber.

‘You are to be used as a pawn in a game we have devised,’ said
Nimrod, intriguingly. ‘First,’ he continued, taking a confident swig
from his Coke bottle, ‘I would like to introduce you to my associate,
Amina Abdullahi. She will prepare a statement which you will please
allow us to transmit to the Mombasa Port Authorities, to Reuters,
and anyone else you feel appropriate.’

‘What about Lloyds of London?’ asked the captain in what we interpreted
as a mildly sarcastic tone.

‘Lloyds if you like,’ I replied, knowing from my days at External
Affairs that they were key players in the business of shipping insurance.

Over the next thirty minutes I put my drafting skills to use,
preparing the statement. Nimrod scanned it and nodded his assent.

The captain was asked to photograph me and Nimrod together, and
to email the image, along with the statement, to those agencies we
had nominated.