“And the sea took him away forever”

They went missing ten years ago. Men of all ages leaving Senegal hoping for a better life, never to be heard from again. Their families still search for answers.

What does an absence that big look like? We sent photographer Jose Cendon to Gandiol, in Senegal, to document the spaces — and the lives — these people left behind.

Ousseynou (right), 20 years old when he went missing.

“He was very good at fixing electronics,” says his father, Insa Wade. “Even the neighbors used to bring him all kinds of electronic devices for him to fix.

Maybe he could have earned his life in Spain doing that if he hadn´t gone missing.”

Ndiawar, 20 years old when he went missing.

When he was a child, his mother, Ndeye Diaw, found him on this baobab by their house wearing a t-shirt as a mask, trying to get the honey from a beehive full of bees. For his mother, the baobab contains a lot of history. They once tried to cut it down because it was growing into the house.

But it continues to grow.

Ablaye was 17 years old when he went missing.

Her mother, Fatou, recalls how ten years ago there was no electricity in the village, so Ablaye used to go to a neighbour’s house who had a generator to watch action movies. “He especially loved the ones of Rambo”, Fatou says.

“If he was alive today, he could watch them here with me on this TV.”

Mamadou, 55 years old when he went missing.

His wife still keeps his carpentry tools, which she shows laid out on a mat.

She keeps them in case he comes back, so “he could work and we could have the same life as before.”

Mamadou, 20 years old when he went missing.

These are footprints left by a fisherman at a beach near his home village of Ndiebelene. “He grew up fishing and loved the sea more than anything else in the world,” says his mother, Faousseuk Fall.

“And the sea took him away forever.”

Mafoss, 21 years old when he went missing.

This is the view from the room where he used to sleep with his mother, Ndeye Coumba Fall, when he was a child.

A few years ago the sea reached the house and destroyed the room, forcing them to abandon it.

Yancoba (right) with a friend, 25 years old when he went missing.

This building is all he has left behind. He built it with his own hands and lived there with his wife and son.

Today his wife has remarried and left the small house. It is now occupied by Yancoba´s sister — and his son.

Migration takes an immense toll on the families and friends left behind. We are working alongside the Senegalese Red Cross in the villages of Pilote-Barre and Ndiebène in the Saint-Louis region of northern Senegal providing support groups, literacy classes, and training and support for setting up a small business. Children whose close relatives have disappeared also receive extra tuition to help them excel at school and work towards a brighter future. See more on our work on migration.