When the wind is too weak to push a dhow by sail, using a long pole to poke along the bottom is the alternative. Poling is also the method Mosquito opts for when passing over the shoal water that makes up the barrier reef. Mosquito, Stephen, Ali, and I were going fishing “Inside” today (by inside, Mosquito means "outside"). Passing through the breakers can pose a big challenge for a sleek dugout canoe, and although I couldn’t understand the Kiswahili, I could sense by the tone of the conversation that the location where we passed through the reef was important. The day was quite nice and I myself was looking forward to a little splash of warm water in the face.
This timing of the pass through the shoal waters reminded me of the only video game I’ve ever played: Donkey Kong. To be specific, Donkey Kong Level 4, where the world is an urgent reddish hue, and you have to learn the timing and location of the deadly bouncing spring in order to time your passage and once again touch the princess (before the barrel-rolling gorilla snatches her from your arms and jails her on the top platform in Level 5). It seemed really hard back in the day. Needless to say, we watched the wave action and poled on through, to the vast fishing grounds outside of the reef. Real-life Level 5 is big. (Real-life video gamers are probably making fun of me right now.)
I’ve heard mention in town that the offshore waters of Zanzibar are especially prized fishing waters, coveted by many other nations, especially China. (These were Zanzabarians saying this, so of course they’re proud of their waters.) Apparently there is some alliance between Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, and South Africa to protect their collective waters from foreign fleets and from Somali pirates. This is just intercepted talk, hearsay, and I haven’t been able to find out any details of this or any of the agreed-upon rules. Regardless, I doubted that pirates or fisheries enforcement would be interested in the Gambaguru. Today we’d taken a bigger sail for the boat, initially made out of sailcloth but well patched with assorted other materials. “GAMBAGURU” was painted on the sail, although it was upside down and backwards. Still, a badass boat name.
After spending the other day receiving harsh criticism on my fishing abilities from Mosquito, today was my day to celebrate a lucky revenge. Depending on a whole range of things, not the least being blind luck, two fishermen right next to eat other can and often do have very different catch rates. Of course the experienced fisherman is guaranteed to ignore and discredit all the physical variables that could justify this and will claim that the difference comes down to skill, even if he fronts with modesty. This is a global phenomenon of fishing psychology. For whatever reason (skill), totally unexplainable (skill), almost certainly because I was using a bigger sinker than the others (nope, skill), I ended up catching fish almost continuously (skill), while Mosquito and his brother struggled to catch fish, and Ali couldn’t catch a thing, gave up, and took a nap in the bow. I kept quiet but was secretly smug.
One benefit of this sort of fishing is that it was be very selective, and you can release unharmed any unwanted fish. However, here in Jambiani every fish is edible, and there are no rewards for beauty, so little was released, but none is wasted. Like the fishing inside, we eventually gathered a spread of fluorescents and pastels in the bottom of the boat. Octopus and sandworms presented in the right way (skill) yielded some tasty fish. Even with decent fishing adding up to several dozen fish, I’d guess that for every ten minutes of backbreaking digging that Ali had spent gathering sandworms at low tide with nothing but a stick and bare hands, we only returned about one-tenth of one small fish. Maybe we should all shift to eating the marine spinach.
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