Thoughtlets on Immersion

An essay by SUWILANJI NAMUSAMBA

I’m drawn to the water. 

You would think that perhaps there is something in it that calls me whenever I’m near it. When I asked my parents what our surname means, they explained that the literal meaning, and I’m probably explaining this poorly, is “does not bathe”, because we are from the fish clan.  Fish live in the water, so just by swimming in it, they bathe all the time, I suppose?  So maybe, just maybe, deep down my body believes that the water is where I belong.  And on a more spiritual level, that it will cleanse not just my body, but my heart and spirit. That if I stay in there for long enough it will penetrate my skin, permeate even my darkest thoughts to make me pure and clean, as it seeps into my very soul. 

I am also afraid of the water. 

Scared of the vast ocean bodies with frightening unknown creatures in there that might swallow me whole.  My nightmares were made of this fear and in my dreams, when I would fall into the sea, I couldn’t feel the wetness of it, but I sensed it enveloping my body, my thoughts and my entire sense of self.  I suddenly would feel like I had no limbs and I was just one big blob, barely able to wriggle around to try and get back to the light and air above me. The water would become a part of me and I could not escape it. I was not drowning, but I would wake up gasping for air, and trying to get free of the duvet and bed sheets I was tangled in. 

This meant that I could then never tangibly explain to people what it was that propelled me into still being the first person to run into the river, lake, sea, the ocean, every chance I got.

It still excites me that I have seen so many sides to the Zambezi River in Zambia.  From the mosquito infested marsh where the source bubbles from, to the confluence with the Luangwa, to the rapids, and finally the Mosi-oa-Tunya falls.  It makes me think that maybe in that way, I am like water, because I can be many things in different places and many people get to experience different parts of me.  A suited and heeled fixer in daylight hours from Monday to Friday, a fun cartwheeling aunt to my littles, a quirky, slightly eccentric friend to my humans, and a controversial but decent enough daughter and sister where my family is concerned. Though I think that deep down I wear all those parts of me quite loudly, but people have what they need of me in the spaces that part of me can thrive. 

The day I encountered the heat of the sand bubbling up from the ground in Kapishya Hot Springs, it felt like stepping into a picture perfect painting. I stood in the middle of the giant hot-tub wondering how the thick greenery on every side of the water was able to thrive and not shrink, with all that steam rising up. I felt like at any moment that soft rumble under my feet would turn into a growl and I would be swallowed into the core of the earth.  It didn’t stop me from staying in there until I was all pruned up and ready to jump into the forbidden cooler water on the other side of the rocky enclosure.

Even the bone-gnawing cold of the plunge pool of Kundalila Falls did not deter me.  The impact of the ice cold water had the punch of being dropped into an ice bath, and the pain seeped into me until my body adjusted.  Onlookers asked me how it was, and my response was a very gleeful: “you just have to push through the initial pain of the cold.” Who says that? It was true, though, because the swim afterwards was worth braving it for.

I remember jumping into Ndola’s Sunken Lake from an overhanging cliff.  I had been told that I would be able to count the seconds in the air before I hit the water. The whispered legend was that a submarine had gone down there and the scientists couldn’t find the bottom.  There were rumours that people disappeared into its depths.  I guess that it’s just as well that I didn’t have time to dwell on it, and I was so struck by the sight of the perfect expanse of deep blue that I immediately forgot about the mystical tales of creatures that would pull me into the depths, never to be seen again. The stories didn’t stop me, even though it was almost like my heart stopped in the second before my feet hit the cold.  

I made the mistake of opening my eyes and finding I had been plunged into darkness.  I couldn’t see the hand I tried to put in front of my face and wondered, for a moment, if I had gone blind.  It’s interesting that I didn’t panic and thrash furiously but simply let myself float back to the surface and waved furiously up to my co-conspirators to let them know that I had survived the deep water monsters, for today.

I felt a similar combination of fear and calm after a tumultuous raft ride across Lake Tanganyika and finally getting settled at Luke’s Bay, a secluded lodge with palm trees providing shade on the quiet beach. I thought about how dark and endless the water had looked while we cruised above it, only turning into clear ripples as we docked. But nothing could put me off running across the white sand and back into the lake, when not an hour before I had seen the crocodiles on the other side of the body of blue, blinking curiously at this passing water taxi bearing snacks.

The December when my grandma died, I found myself floating in the pool at Lake Kariba Inns and wondering if, by closing my eyes for long enough, she would speak to me.  The water in the pool came from the lake, I imagined, so surely a part of our spirit returns to the water, right? 

I stood on the water’s edge at Siavonga’s Sandy Beach Lodge and remembered the story, from the folklore of the Tonga tribe, of the Nyami Nyami, the mythological serpent-like creature   believed to be a river god living in Lake Kariba. Spirit or serpent, fact or fiction, I took time to overthink the lore as I stared long into the water, only daring to dip my toes in. Before I left, I settled for a canoe ride, with my heart racing as I looked into the steadily darkening ripples, looking for and dreading the sight of anything that might be a glint of the sun reflecting off scales.

Years later, my friend jokingly said I was a nyami nyami after I narrated how, in spite of all this fear of mine, I had happily snorkelled in the Indian Ocean for hours while my partner and close friend had a near-death experience. My swimsuit clad bottom floating above the water like the giant turtles which the Seychelles are famous for, as I took in the blue depths, with heart palpitations, wondering if that would be the day that I would see the famous vegetarian sharks.

When I travelled to Mombasa, in Kenya I did Google first, to see if there were sharks or anything else that might want to nibble at me, before I swam into the water off one of the islands near Diani Beach. I remember holding the starfish that had been retrieved from the water for us to see, while we were still on the small boat.  The water was so clear that we could see to the sand underneath and spot the colourful fish and a few spiky sea urchins that you have to take care not to step on. In the shallows, where my fellow explorers were visible when I dipped my head under the water, I felt a sense of calm,  as I  swam around searching for that particular starfish, hoping to find it in its natural habitat.

It was definitely a contrast to the murky waters I experienced on an impromptu trip to the north of Zambia, where I fell off my unicorn floater on Lake Bangweulu, my cup of wine un-spilt.  It shocks me, in hindsight, that without a moment’s hesitation, I stood up in the water, got back onto my not-so-trusty steed and proceeded to paddle back off into the deeper waters so that I could enjoy being rocked back to the shoreline.

I felt a similar sense of unbothered when the warm waters of Muizenberg Beach in Cape Town stole the silver leaf from my necklace, I dove into the waves, searching the moving sand, not a moment’s thought as to what else my fingers might touch, or if the waves would carry me too far out where I couldn’t see the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

I have this selfie video on my phone of me leaning over the balcony rail of the MSC Musica, waves crashing behind the ship with a breathtaking sunset over the ocean.  In that moment, as we cruised off to Mozambique from Durban, I wasn’t filled with fear at the thought of falling in the water, but a sense of wonder, that we were a tiny speck in the middle of the unknown and I wasn’t afraid.  My watch didn’t beep to tell me my heart was in the “peak performance” zone, but I could feel it beating excitedly against my ribs, in awe of this new venture.

Recently, thinking back to all of these moments in water, when it has been “me v. the wild unknown”, when I heard “The Waves We Give” rendition by Beautiful Chorus, it made me want to listen to it on repeat while swimming and staring into the deep blue sea.  I heard the famous Bruce Lee quote echoed in the lyrics of the song: “Be like water, my friend| You shall find a way around, or through it | When nothing within us stays rigid | We decide the shape we’re in| Empty your mind.  | Be shapeless, formless, like water. | It can flow or it can crash | And we design the waves we give.”

There is something meditative about it, and as I listened I mused at the fact that in all these wonderful experiences I am still very afraid of the water, but my nightmares are no longer made of it.  

In some way, I guess that I’ve realised that I, too, am one of the strange, curious and dangerous creatures of the deep.