One man runs from the shoreline with his spear. The first three gather and then one strikes into the water. And strikes again. And again. There is splashing. One man crouches down into the water. Some children who were playing near me, run the long way around the shoreline watching the space, where now there is no splashing. The two men with their net move a little further away and throw it again. The canoe is used for the large fish caught. I can not see. The canoe sits lower in the water.
The tide continues to go out. There was a huge high tide earlier, followed by one of the lowest lowest low tides. The reef along the beach forms a natural fish trap. More men join the group with their spears. Spread out they form a circle over the shallowest part, the circle having diameter of about 300metres. Children join the circle, with no spear but imitating the men, with their legs lifted high as they step quietly and eyes peering. All peering into the water looking for fish caught in the shallow water.
In parts the mud flats show clearly, in an area usually filled with mild surf. The canoe balances nearby.
The men circle slowly. Sometimes they throw a spear. And throw again. I do not see any big activity. No big fish caught. No little fish. Men circling as the sky turns yellow then pink. More men join with their spears. Some running along the shoreline around to the point, where it is now completely dry and they walk the mud to the circle. Still no fish found.
All that effort. And the community coming together to stand in a rarely dry beach area as this tidal phenomenon takes them back to the days of no clocks, no one going off to work in an office and no tourists on their beach. A time of a community working together, following the patterns of the earth.
Except they catch no fish. Well other than the larger fish caught by the first three men who had been out there since the tide had begun to turn.
It was spellbinding for me. The water, the reef in a horizontal line behind the loosely formed open circle, spears drawing lines into the pink sky. A child scrabbling after a crab nearby as his brother watched as I did, the spears. A toddler in the circle cries and a man picks him up, with his spear in the other hand and indicates to the grandmother nearby not to come out into the mud as he will return the toddler. The toddler stops crying. The sky turns pinker. The man hands the children to the woman but stays near her, watching too.
Still no fish. The spears are black lines held high. The sun sets.
Romanticizing the ‘simple life’ of living off the land and how ‘local people seem so peaceful’ is all too common and awful a conversation to listen to from tourists and some expats. To view dirt floor kitchens, daily husking of rice and the fetching of water as completely different to an urban lifestyle in a western style city makes sense. To draw conclusions about how the people in the bamboo hut must be peaceful and ‘better off in many ways’ seems over simplified to me.
There was no fish feast that night.
