Staring out to sea, I suddenly saw everything in a different light. It was early morning, the dhows were going out and I had just been stung by a wasp.
Standing near a rock on the beach of the small fishermen’s village, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sharp pain in my neck and a sharp stench in my nose – I was standing right next to the very unsuspecting communal toilet, more commonly known as a rock on the shore.
It is interesting to see how others go about their daily life – what they do, why they do the things they do and how they manage with what they have. It was in that moment that I suddenly became aware of where I was – I was witnessing life as I’d never seen it before.
The kids were playing at the water’s edge and the women were washing a handful of clothes. Everybody else seemed to be helping each other accomplish their tasks – be it fishing, fixing broken nets, fixing leaky dhows, cooking food over an open fire with old tins as pots, collecting eggs laid by the numerous massive chickens left to run around the village at will or simply sweeping their little shacks, chatting loudly as they did so.
There were a few little stalls that consisted of a cloth on the ground with small fish neatly laid out, a woman close by clearly wanting you to buy her wares although it was almost impossible to understand her as she spoke in the local dialect. The stray dogs that stayed at bay and ate scraps as they found them were a plenty and distinctly added to what I saw as a normal, day to day chaos – a chaos that was to the local villagers that lived there, the absolute norm.
I was beginning to realize that out here, away from the comfort of what I am used to back home, I was to see the same setting over and over again. We were the highlight of the day – a distraction from a usually hard day spent fishing and finding food. I sometimes find what I am seeing hard to grasp – this life is hard, extremely hard and yet I see a real sense of community – a sharing and a togetherness, a happiness that seems to reside in many here despite circumstance.
Taz Wilde – Sound
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