MOMBASA (Kenya): The pirates pretended to be fishermen who’d run out of fuel. But when their fiberglass speedboat reached the South Korean tuna vessel, the “fishermen” pulled machine guns from under their shirts.

Young thugs shot the chief officer in the shoulder and assembled the rest of the crew on deck. Kenyan seafarer Nelson Warambo braced himself to be killed or thrown into the waters off Somalia.

”I thought about my family. My life,” said Warambo, 36. “It didn’t make any sense that I would die like this, in a foreign country.”

Often lost amid the drama over Somalia’s worsening piracy are the stories of the Kenyan seafarers who have borne the brunt of the hijackings over the last five years.

As many as one-fifth of Kenya’s working seafarers have been held hostage during that time, according to Kenyan maritime officials. Some have been hijacked three times. Yet they continue to return to their jobs, earning an average of just $4 a day for the backbreaking work.

Many say they were drawn by the lure of the sea and a chance to see the world. For others, it’s a family tradition dating back 1,000 years, when Arab traders opened outposts here.

”I love the water,” Warambo said. “Everyone has his calling, and I guess this is mine.”

Now, with the risks growing, many say they’d like to change professions but that they have few options.

”They don’t pay me enough to risk my life, but I’m a sole breadwinner with a hungry family,” said Osman, 31, a deckhand who was held hostage for three months during a trip to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. (His last name is being withheld to protect him from retaliation by boat owners who have threatened to fire workers who speak to the media.)

About 30 ships have been hijacked off Somalia this year, making the waters the most dangerous in the world. The Sept 26 hijacking of a Ukrainian vessel laden with tanks and other military equipment sparked an international outcry. But even with more than half a dozen foreign warships now roaming the area, including several from the US, pirates continue to terrorise the coast.

For Kenya’s struggling seafarers, hijackings are just the latest danger in a profession that has been marked by two decades of neglect and exploitation.

More than 80 per cent of the estimated 5,000 seafarers in Kenya are unemployed. The few who find jobs earn a quarter of what their foreign counterparts make.

That’s because Kenya’s maritime regulations are based on an 1894 British law and have never been updated. As a result, despite being the Indian Ocean gateway for trading in much of East and Central Africa, Kenya has failed to meet International Maritime Organization standards and has no internationally accredited seafarer schools.

That means Kenyans can’t get jobs on international vessels unless they first travel to Tanzania or South Africa for training and certification. It’s estimated that fewer than four per cent of Kenyan seafarers have.

”We are wasting away,” said Joseph Kayamba Ferunzi, deputy secretary of the Seafarers Union of Kenya. Foreigners now take about 80 per cent of the jobs in Kenya’s fast-growing port of Mombasa, while Kenyan seafarers are relegated to the worst, lowest-paying jobs, often hired for maintenance and cleaning while ships are docked, Ferunzi said.

Even Kenyans who manage to get accredited, such as Osman, are paid only $120 a month, on average, compared with the $500 to $700 foreigners receive for doing the same job. Foreigners benefit from stronger unions, more experience and support from their home governments, experts say.

Desperation forces many Kenyans to accept jobs with shady shipping companies that don’t care about international certification, or with illegal fishing boats that plunder Somalia’s coastline, taking advantage of that country’s lack of a functioning government

Such illegal expeditions helped spark the current piracy wave when Somalia’s native fisherman and local warlords began retaliating against foreigners by attacking their boats.

Tighter regulations and legitimate alternatives for Kenyan seafarers might have slowed piracy’s rise, experts said. “If Kenya had strong laws and booming industry five years ago, we might not have seen this piracy turn into such a big business.”

Kenyan officials acknowledged the need to update the laws, open training facilities and modernise the nation’s maritime industry.

“We’re doing our best,” said Nancy Karigithu, director general of the Kenya Maritime Authority. “A lot of things have been neglected for a long time.”

She said a new maritime act was pending before parliament. Kenyan leaders have historically overlooked Mombasa’s port potential, she said, perhaps because the capital, Nairobi, is far from the coast.

Others blame a history of corruption that helped make Mombasa a conduit for trading in drugs, arms and other illicit goods.

Amid “slave-like” conditions on some boats, racial discrimination and nonpayment of salaries, Kenya’s seafarers often find they have no place to turn for help, said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Seafarers Assistance Program. “They can’t go to Panama to complain,” he said. “In Kenya, they turn a blind eye.”

Kenya’s government, he added, has rarely taken the seafarers’ side. In fact, it sometimes has been hostile. Last month, police arrested Mwangura, accusing him of making “alarming” statements by asserting that military supplies on the hijacked Ukrainian ship were destined for southern Sudan, not Kenya as the Kenyan government claimed.

After he was released, Warambo said, the boat owner gave him no compensation or medical treatment. He couldn’t even collect his salary for the two months of captivity.

Osman was luckier. He received about $140 in compensation, though he also was not paid for his time as a hostage.

At first he vowed to never return to Somalia. But after several months of searching for work, he went back to his old boat and now makes two or three trips a month to Mogadishu. He fears it’s only a matter of time before he’s taken hostage again.

”What’s my choice?” he said. “If I tell the owner I won’t go, he’ll just go hire someone else who will.”—Dawn/LA Times-Washington Post News Service