(NOUADHIBOU) - The streets of Nouadhibou in Mauritania are filled with failed African immigrants, who tried to reach Europe by boat, and remain haunted by the horrors of their journey.

They tell stories of friends who died, like so many Africans each year trying to reach Europe in pirogues (small fishing boats), and their suffering.

"I am a little lost here in Nouadhibou, I don't know what to do anymore," Djibril, a 25-year-old from Ivory Coast, told AFP.

When he arrived in the port city two years ago he wanted to try to reach the nearby Spanish Canary islands, but he fled when he saw the police on the beach before he even got into the boat.

"After my trip failed I took a lot of odd jobs," Djibril, who graduated from high school in 2004, said.

"I worked as a servant boy for the Mauritanians which really broke my spirit, then washing dishes, guard on a boat."

He recounts the frightening stories he's heard from others who tried to cross to Europe by sea.

"This year I lost a lot of my friends at sea (...) There are pirogues that get lost, they spend two weeks drifting at sea and when there is no more food you have to watch out for your hands, because people will bite them because they are hungry. There are even some who eat the wood" of the boat, he said, his eyes wide with fear.

"Then there are the supernatural beings that appear in the pirogues," he shudderd.

"Genies who take female form, if you tell them your real name the sea appears to become land and you want to jump from the boat."

Djibril and his friend Seyllou from Guinea insist that the ghosts are real.

"What he's telling you is not delirium. People from three or four different pirogues have told the same story," 19-year-old Seyllou told AFP calmly.

The Guinean works as a guard in a hostel, where tourists now come only rarely, and is paid 20,000 ouguiyas (65 euros, 90 dollars) a month.

He tried to cross over to Europe once, in 2006, but the boat got lost and washed up on the Moroccan coast.

Now Seyllou dreams of going back to Guinea to see the graves of his mother and his sister who both died after he left.

But the other dream, of living in Europe, also keeps its pull. Seyllou goes back and forth between the memory of "the little Guinean boy of 16 who died of exhaustion" after a crossing and the tale of another immigrant "who lives in Barcelona (Spain) now".

In Seyllou's tiny room other would-be immigrants like 26-year-old Karamoko from Mali come to talk. He recalls the people praying in the boat which took him to the Canary Islands successfully.

"Only one person of the 76 died: a man from Ghana who had bad habits. They threw him into the sea," he recalled.

After being sent back a discouraged Karamoko returned to Nouadhibou and works as an octopus fisher.

As they talk the failed immigrants weigh the dangers that could lie ahead if they tried to reach Europe again.

"When the Moroccans arrest immigrants they throw them out at the border in the desert. Then you have to walk a lot and I don't really like walking," Seyllou said.

Human rights organisations have complained that Morocco dumps failed immigrants in a heavily mined strip of no man's land between the Moroccan Western Sahara and Mauritania.

"The thing that really discouraged me is when I heard that five young Cameroonians whom I knew well, died late 2007," Seyllou explained.

"They told us their boat was drifting for two weeks, there were only seven people who survived of the 130 in the boat."

One day in March Seyllou tried again, he sold his television and gave 700 euros in cash to a smuggler. But the trip was cancelled.

"I came back, bought back my television, I had not even told my boss I was leaving," he said.

Stranded without a passport, which he sold, Seyllou said he is now waiting for the smuggler to refund him.

"He wants me to find somebody else to take my place in the boat or that I try to cross again. But for that to succeed, you have to be very lucky."

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