SLIPSTREAM

I went swimming in the creek today. It was the clearest most translucent, turquoise water, and I took off across the creek to the mangroves. My favourite place is sitting on an old mangrove branch that reaches horizontally out into the creek, half in the deep shade and half in the sunshine. Today the tide was a high one, so I could sit on the branch with the warm water up to my neck – just delicious.
From there I gazed out at the slipstream gathering pace as the tide surged into the creek and my thoughts quickly got carried along by it, mesmerized by the beautiful, moving water. I could feel the energy of the slipstream moving constantly past me as I soaked, just beyond it, in a quiet, cool eddy. In the distance beyond was the village side of the creek and I could see barefoot men pushing heavy, mkokoteni handcarts of building materials around, moving slowly in the heat of the afternoon, a few fishermen mending nets, and some of the old Mzee’s sitting on their favourite baraza waiting for the hadana to call for four o’clock prayers. With that scene in the distance, beyond the slipstream, I couldn’t help but become aware of the metaphor of life, constantly moving forward, and how our  uman struggle - at least the modern one - is to get into it, join the centre where things are moving and be swept along on an exciting journey. I thought about how so many of us, for whatever reason, never really make it to that energetic centre of the life path, but are just left out in the quiet eddies beyond.  

For the people of Takaungu that is surely the case. The globalised 21st century, high tech world of movers and shakers churns on, while here the lack of education, opportunity, money, knowledge, awareness, technology, land, water – even voice - leaves them behind, floundering in circular, swirling eddies where the water always flows back to where it began. . . .

 

Mkokoteni – large handcart made of mangrove wood and pulled by two or three 

Mzee – literally ‘old man’, but a term of respect used for the elders of the village
Baraza – a long stone bench, often used for meetings, hence the same Kiswahili word for bench and meeting

 Hadana – the muezzin’s call to prayer