Blowing in the Wind

Fishermen Challenge the Waves
        Birds drift on strong winds, women and girls wash ragged old family clothes, and the wind makes it difficult to hold the camera steady in the face of the blustery weather. Fishermen challenge the waves in order to eat for another day, as the sleeves of my sweater drag the wind as I try to concentrate on the panorama that overwhelms my consciousness. It is difficult to take it all in, and literally impossible to record it through the lens of a camera. It is the struggle of life in the sub-Sahara. It never grows old to my inquiring eye, and continues to amaze my every time I watch the fishermen challenge the morning surf in order to provide for their families.

What is Life Like Here?
        Some from lands far away ask what life is like in this place? The answer is seen in mornings on the shores of Lake Malawi, deep in the soul of Africa. It is the never changing cycle for survival. It is the struggle to get a carved out log out through the surf without capsizing. It is the struggle to get the long boats out without losing their precious cargo of fishing nets, not to speak of the human cargo of men who go down to the sea in logs! It is the struggle of bobbing all day in high surfs so far out that land is not visible in any direction. It is surviving the hot African sun beating down on sun and wind-hardened faces day after day after day. It is days of returning with few fish in the nets and fewer meals on the family’s broken table. It is doing without. It is pain. It is struggle, and it is bare survival in its starkest form.

Possibility of Defeat
        But it is not only here where survival meets the possibility of defeat. It is not only on the shores of the big lake. It is seen in the aged grandmother walking down a dirt path carrying a long, large log on her head with which to build a fire for the orphan children of her deceased daughter. It is the tiny child unattended that wanders near the tarmac highway where the giant tobacco lorries lumber by at a high rate of speed. It is seen in the man who has been critically injured in an accident with a mini-bus where a dozen others lay dead strewn across the landscape awaiting transportation to some distant grave. It is seen in the wasting away of the AIDS victim who still has no one who will admit this disease even exists or to move close to care for him.

        For so many in other places this day begins with such hope, such promise. Success. Gain. Positive. Fulfilled dreams and opportunities. Smiles. Meals.

        But here near the big lake, on a continent that few understand, the wind continues to blow, the waves leap high, and the fishermen fight to hold on and continue to exist just one more day.