“I don’t know how I escaped – I can’t swim,” says Muaziza Ambaraje.
She was on board when Mozambique’s worst maritime disaster in recent memory occurred on Monday.
The 47-year-old is a regular on the makeshift ferry between Lungá, where she was born, and the island of Mozambique, where she lives.
“No wave surprised us, we didn’t hit any rocks and the wood didn’t come loose,” she remembers.
“Water entered the boat because it was overcrowded – many people panicked and started jumping into the sea.”
Next, Ms. Ambaraje describes a nightmarish jumble of living and dead bodies as she struggled to stay afloat. More than 100 people died in Monday’s chaos, including 17 members of their family.
Her mother, father, grandmother, nieces and nephews all died, Ms. Ambaraje says. She can’t think of any reason why she was spared other than God’s grace.
They were on their way to the Mozambican island’s popular weekly market before Eid, Ms. Ambaraje says, at what should be a time of celebration in this Muslim-majority part of the country.
“I felt completely broken inside,” recalls Momade Issufo, who rushed to rescue people on Monday when he heard the news of the shipwreck.
“I saw bodies piled up on the shore – some of them were children as young as three. People panicked.”
“I had no choice – as a human being I had to help. There were still people in the lifeboats, so we transported their bodies in my truck to their relatives’ houses.”
The 44-year-old says his heavily pregnant cousin was among the dead. The ordeal left him feeling depressed and unable to work.
Mr Issufo wants the Mozambican government to build a new bridge from the mainland to the UNESCO-listed island so that people do not have to rely on the dangerous boats.
According to the government’s own information, thousands of fishing boats operate illegally as ferries along the country’s 2,750 kilometers of coastline.
Passengers tell the BBC that unregulated operators often overload boats to increase their profits.
Why did Mozambique allow this? What compensation will the victims of Monday receive? And how can authorities prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again?
The government initially declined to respond to the BBC’s request for comment. An official from the country’s maritime authority also told the BBC that they had been instructed not to comment.
However, a local Nampula provincial official, Foreign Minister Jaime Neto, later told the BBC that transport, food and psychological support were being offered and coffins were being provided for the dead.
There is still no talk of compensation or financial aid.
Three days of national mourning will end on Friday and an investigation will be launched to determine the cause of the accident and make recommendations.
The government’s initial explanation for Monday’s tragedy was that panicked people fled the mainland in large numbers after false information was maliciously spread telling them they had to go to the island of Mozambique to avoid ongoing cholera -Escape the outbreak.
During his visit to the bereaved on Wednesday, President Filipe Nyusi condemned the “bad faith” spreaders of disinformation who “sow fear and terror among the population.”
Boat accidents are not uncommon in Mozambique, but rarely do so many people die.
The total number of deaths is still controversial.
A local official who spoke to the BBC said 115 people had died, significantly higher than the 98 reported by the central government.
Jembesse community leader Ibrahim Momade Munheti also said there were 150 people on the boat when it sank. But the government said it was closer to 130.
The Muslim faith requires rapid burial, and many of the wreck’s victims have already been buried on the island of Mozambique – some of them two to a grave.
Those left behind now feel the pain of losing their loved one, coupled with gratitude for their own survival.
“My time hadn’t come yet – it was Allah’s command,” says Muaziza Ambaraje.
Additional reporting by Natasha Booty and César Gatoma
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