The tragic story that Modou Barrow turned over in his mind this week felt depressingly familiar to the Swansea City winger. It concerned the news that Fatim Jawara, the goalkeeper of the Gambia women’s team, had drowned in the Mediterranean after the boat she was on board was hit by a sudden storm. The 19-year-old had been trying to cross from Libya to Italy to chase her dreams in Europe and build a better life.

“I found out about it on Thursday. It’s very sad,” says Barrow, who is the only Gambian to have played in the Premier League. “The area I lived in, where I was brought up in the Gambia, some of the houses next to me have people who died on this route. A lot of people have passed away this way. But this was in the newspaper, maybe because of sport and she’s a footballer.

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“Some of the people, they see that their parents are struggling, so they want to take the opportunity to go to Europe and maybe get a job where they can help their parents and brothers and sisters back home. I know that’s what [Jawara] was trying to do. She couldn’t get a visa and nobody could help with passports, so she thought: ‘Let me take this way.’ A lot of Gambians have done it.”

Barrow knows all about the hardship that fuels such desperation. He nods when it is put to him that 60% of the population in the Gambia live in poverty and goes on to explain how he tries to do all he can to make a small difference whenever he returns to his homeland, where every trip is poignant because of the opportunity it gives him to visit the grave of his mother, who died when he was a child.

“Back home it’s not easy and that’s why always when I’m there I’m trying to do my best to help,” he says. “When I go back I buy bags of rice with onions and oil – big bottles – and I share it to each house. Last year I donated rams and this year my father did it. When people have food, it keeps their mind out of that kind of thinking [risking their lives by making a hazardous journey]. Some of the other guys in the national team who play in Europe are doing the same as me, but even if they do that it’s not going to help everybody.”

Although born in the Gambia, Barrow lived in Sweden for more than a decade. His parents separated and when his father, a plumber, took a job in Sweden, Barrow moved there with the elder two of his four brothers. It was a huge change and made all the more difficult when he was given the most devastating news. “I was nine years old, almost 10, when my mum passed away,” Barrow says. “I had just come to Sweden, I was young and so my Dad didn’t want to tell me at first, so I didn’t find out for a couple of months.

“My mum was ill for one day only. She woke up and was happy – my sisters and my [younger] brothers told me because they witnessed everything. But then all of a sudden she was complaining of a pain in the chest, which is not normal because none of our family had that before.”

Barrow, not surprisingly, struggled to cope. “When I was at school in Sweden I used to be angry, I used to fight a lot, they had to call my dad and get him to take me away – it was because of my mother passing away. I was sad and a bit lost, because she was my best friend. I was always with my mum, so I was closest with her.

“My mum suffered a lot for me. She would spend her own money in the market on buying football boots, so that I could use them to play. There’s nothing I can do now, but I wish she was here, so that with everything I get now I could buy her things that she could enjoy.”

The one thing that helped Barrow to make friends and adapt to his new life in of Vaxjo was his football skills. In the Gambia, Barrow remembers how he used to come home from school, drop his bag inside the door and dash to the makeshift pitch on the beach until the sun went down. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think about poverty or being hungry – the only thing I cared about was taking the ball,” he says.

Those hours of practice showed in the playground in Sweden, where the father of one of Barrow’s school friends was manager of a local team and “came to my dad’s house and begged him for me to join them”. Through playing football as well as taking language lessons at school, Barrow’s Swedish became better – he describes it now as “good but not excellent” – while his speed and trickery on the wing caught the eye of a club called Mjolby Sodra, who offered him a scholarship.

After spells with a couple of other Swedish teams, Barrow’s career took off at Ostersund, where he thrived under the management of Graham Potter, who made eight Premier League appearances for Southampton in the mid-1990s, and his assistant Billy Reid, who had been in charge of Hamilton Academical and Clyde. “They believed in what I had,” Barrow says.

With pace to burn, Barrow attracted serious interest from Bolton Wanderers and in August 2014 was offered a trial at Swansea. “I was going to be there for three days, but after the first session I was told that Swansea wanted to offer me a contract. I think Garry Monk [the manager at the time] saw something. He knew that maybe I’d find it difficult in the beginning, but perhaps if he kept me for a year, with my pace and technique, he could help me learn.”

In a whirlwind first few months, Barrow swapped Sweden for Wales, became a father for the first time when Alice, his daughter, was born in Swansea that September and in November, almost two years ago to the day, made his Premier League debut in a 2-1 victory over Arsenal, when he had a hand in Gylfi Sigurdsson’s equaliser.

For the people in the Gambia, it was a landmark moment. “They used to watch the Premier League and see players from different nationalities but never see a Gambian playing,” Barrow says. “So they’re happy and proud because I’m one of their own.”

By the end of that first season, Barrow had made 17 appearances, including four on loan at Nottingham Forest, and found himself at the centre of a tug of war between Sweden and the Gambia. “I was going to play for Sweden at the European Under-21 championship finals in 2015, which they won, but the Gambia was calling me as well,” Barrow says. “It feels better for me to play for the Gambia because every time I’m there I can have the opportunity to go to my mum’s grave, to visit her and pray for her, and I have family there. So I chose with my heart.”

Lean, quick and direct with the ball at his feet, Barrow has showed flashes of real promise over the past 12 months or so, not least in the 3-2 defeat at Arsenal last month, when he tormented Nacho Monreal in Bob Bradley’s first game in charge. The Swansea manager said: “Mo’s just scratching the surface. My gosh, this is a player with talent.”

Barrow, who turned 24 last month, smiles as he listens to those comments. “He saw that if I get one against one, it’s hard for the defenders. Monreal is a very good full-back, there is not a lot of people who have the opportunity to run around and pass him every time.”

The missing ingredient at the moment is consistency, as Monday’s match at Stoke highlighted, when Barrow had an off night and Swansea fell to a 3-1 defeat that leaves them second from bottom and without a win in nine league matches. “You could see how bad everyone felt after Stoke, we were so depressed and angry,” Barrow says. “But if we keep playing like we did in the two previous games, I think we can change things.”

A victory at home against an out-of-sorts Manchester United side today would be worth more than three points in terms of the psychological lift it would give everyone at the club. Barrow is looking forward to coming up against Zlatan Ibrahimovic – something he could never have imagined when he first moved to Sweden – and hoping that his father will be in the mood to chat and tuck into some food afterwards.

“My dad’s back in the Gambia now and he never misses a game,” says Barrow. “We chat every day but when I called after the matches against Liverpool and Stoke, he was not in the mood to talk so I spoke to his wife. She told me: ‘Since the game finished, your dad is not eating anything’. When we lose he doesn’t have any appetite.”

Another voice in the room suggests that his father must be starving, given the results this season. “He’ll eat a lot if we win against Manchester United,” says Barrow, smiling.