Beaches

"A beach," so Wikipedia informs me, "is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles. The particles can also be biological in origin, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae."

Yet there is much, much more to beaches. Beaches aren't just landforms. There's something extraordinarily special about them. I should know: the hospital where I was born in Dar-es-Salaam, then the European Hospital, now the Ocean Road Cancer Institute (*), is right on a beach and....

....because my mother loved beaches and swimming, my brother and I were as good as brought up on them. Having since visited hundreds, if not a thousand or more, in Africa, Europe, the West Indies and North America, I feel I am a connoisseur.

It's difficult to put one's finger on what is so special about beaches. Three of the four astrological elements - earth, air and water - mingle along a beach, with the heat of the sun on tropical beaches adding the fourth element, fire. A beach is a three-dimensional boundary, an area of mixing, which changes with the moon, winds and waves. Yes, but there's something more, something I struggle to define, something about a beach's open-ness, and a sense that a beach is a place where one can throw off one's cares, can commune with the inner self, can breathe, can be free.

Then a good beach also harbours life, often a plethora of species in its water, air, and in its sediments. It's as if these creatures, too, find their beach special. One species behaves in a quite abnormal manner on beaches, gathering....

....in large numbers and exposing itself in ways it would never do anywhere else. On some beaches the normally covered Naked Ape even walks proudly naked.

Yet.... there is nothing better than a lonely beach, where the only footprints across the sands are one's own.

I think frequently about the beaches I have seen. I remember them, not only visually but also their sensations and sounds: the bump of a breaking wave, the kiss of a sea breeze upon my skin. I remember the empty beaches I have walked, the ones where I have lazed with friends, and those whose memories I treasure because people I loved were there.

So.... forgive me if I seem a little fixated about beaches.

(*) Aerial photo of Dar-es-Salaam courtesy Abbas Alimohamed on Flickr - here.
Photos, from top: Beach east of Mingary Castle; Dar-es-Salaam; my mother, Richard and I on a Dar-es-Salaam beach; Echo beach, Zanzibar; The Tides, Tanzania; Miami Beach; Lazy Lagoon, Tanzania; with Elizabeth at Boston Bay, Jamaica.