FREDDIE'S CORNER
22-05-2021 by Freddie del Curatolo
It's a hard job, but i know how to do it.
My grandfather taught me, my father did it until the day before he died.
It's what most of us have always done on the island.
Here you have only sand, wind and sea.
On the sand, because it's African sand, a few vegetables and grasses grow for cooking, the wind brings you the rain that makes them grow and we have to take care of the rest.
The fish is our change.
We sell the valuable fish and buy rice, sugar and tea.
The less noble ones we eat.
The wind doesn't just bring rain, but also treacherous currents, sudden storms, and when it joins forces with the ocean it's a pain.
But the open sea makes you feel free like nothing else.
We have always lived like this here, and we are happy.
They call us ancient, retrograde.
Some even call us savages.
We don't have cars, that's true.
It's also hard to make phone calls and, how do you say, connect?
And when the tourists arrive, it is they who have to get used to our way of life and not vice versa.
But they told me: "Hassan, now the sea won't be free anymore! Your boat won't be able to go out knowing that it only has to fear the wind and the waves!"
My son finished school two years ago.
I started taking him with me to teach him the trade.
But he took out a loan and bought himself a motorbike.
He earned good money before the last election, he was going around the island campaigning. And he's just finishing paying off the debt and the interest.
Then he already said he will buy another one and employ a boda-boda driver.
No one had ever been allowed to drive around the island before, but there had been a special campaign law.
They never removed that law again.
Now there are dozens of motorbikes.
Today they inaugurated the new port, he was there with his motorbike.
He assured me that it will bring a lot of work, that the future has arrived in Lamu!
It's the size of a quarter of the island, but they say it will become a city.
The first oil tanker has also arrived, as big as three hundred of our boats.
To get it to dock, they had to dig up the seabed around the island.
The lobsters will never again be able to go down there and reproduce.
The other fish will migrate elsewhere.
Oil will arrive from Lake Turkana and be loaded onto ships that will disappear, leaving a black trail across the sea.
Our children will work even harder, they will not be able to choose their hours, wages and rest. They will not have the freedom of the sea, but the same danger of dying in a shipyard.
They will only have a little money to exchange for rice and fruit.
And they will have no fish left to eat.
And we will be the savages.
by Freddie del Curatolo
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