We’ve Reached The End

What happened when we went to meet Yafet, the man who sparked our quest to find the Ghost Boat.

Last year we started out on a journey—and we didn’t know where it would end up. Since then we’ve covered countless miles, benefited from the help of tens of thousands of readers, and uncovered almost every aspect of the tragic, inhumane trade that takes desperate refugees and sends them across the Mediterranean.

You’ve been riding along every step of the way as we dealt with some huge, horrific questions: What really happens on these journeys? Where do those who die at sea end up? How can we find out what happened? Who can we trust? Why do some cases get more attention than others?

But there’s one question we haven’t been able to fully answer—the one at the center of it all.

What happened to the Ghost Boat?

As we reach the end of our investigation, Eric Reidy travels to Sudan to meet Yafet, the Eritrean refugee whose wife and daughter went missing on the boat. He’s the man whose story started this all in motion.

As Eric writes, “the conversation I had with Yafet was one of the most difficult of my life”:

Looking at Yafet sitting next to me, I know what I have come to Sudan to tell him. We haven’t solved the mystery of Segen and Abi’s disappearance — and I don’t think we ever will.

After endless work and the support of thousands of readers, I have exhausted everything I could think of and come up short. I have rehearsed this conversation countless times in my head, but face to face the words just don’t want to come out.

And maybe this is the hardest thing we’ll ever have to write to you.

But it’s the most important.

Read about our meeting with Yafet, and what happens next, in the final episode of Ghost Boat.

And thank you, every single one of you, for your help, time and ideas along the way. This project has been an exercise in total human compassion, energy and cooperation. We may not have found the answer we were looking for, but we did make a difference.

Onward.