Swimming in Africa

During the months I spent in Mozambique, I came to love the sensation of navigating my body through soft, warm slightly-salty water in the pool at the American International School, not far from the dazzling Indian Ocean whose shoreline forms the eastern edge of Mozambique. During the months I spent there, I established a routine, swimming for half an hour every morning except Sundays when I swam longer.

That small body of water, a gated luxury surrounded by desperate poverty, became my haven from the heat and humidity. Would the men who cleaned the pool, pushing their long-handled brushes along the pool’s bottom day by day, ever have a chance to get into the reviving liquid? Can they even imagine what it feels like? Have their ebony bodies ever been totally submerged, I wonder.

I feel guilt at the same time that I feel grateful for this water. I know the pool cleaners earn $500 a year, not nearly enough to feed themselves and their families. And as I swim, the pungent smell of marinara sauce, cooking for the school’s lunch, collides with the acrid stink of burning plastic from a nearby garbage dump. The pool cleaners must smell the same smells. I wonder if they are hungry right now.

I’m into my swim, moving rhythmically, watching the lines on the bottom to keep myself heading straight. There’s a dead frog in the corner, but soon the pool cleaners will take care of it. They wave as I head for the locker room and I thank them for their work as best I can in my pigeon Portuguese.

They will go home to dirt-floored stick shacks draped with blue tarp roofs, limp in the sub-Saharan sun. I go home to cool granite floors and the gentle whir of an air conditioner.

Next morning, I’ll be back. And so will they.

If you have a thing about Africa, I suggest you see the new movie,  A United Kingdom, that was released this week. It tells the story of Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama, an interracial couple who married in the forties. He led the independence movement in Botswana, eventually becoming president of the country. They endured enormous prejudice from both blacks and whites and spent six years in exile before they were able to settle in Botswana. The story has many parallels with my historical novel, White Shadow.