Swimming with Tyres

 

This is a picture of a very happy small boy, particularly happy because, as well as being about to swim off a warm, tropical beach, I have an inflated inner tube from a truck in which I will sit, upper body out of one end and lower legs and feet sticking out of the other, so I can....

....use my arms to paddle around in the waves.

The top picture was taken at the Mombasa Swimming Club where, because it was within the Old Town harbour, the waves were slight. However, the lower picture was taken a few years later with my brother Richard, right, and I swimming off Nyali beach where, at high tide, the waves could be quite fierce - fierce enough to bowl us over and wash us ignominiously, and sometimes rather painfully, up onto the beach.

This picture brings back very happy memories. Because our house had a frontage onto the beach we swam every day, the only controls being the tides, for at low tide the sea retreated to expose up to a mile of rock pools.  Judging by the waves it was a windy day, and the clouds along the horizon suggest that a squall is coming in. That my mother was there to take the picture also suggests that she felt she needed to be around - usually we spent hours every day unsupervised on the beach.

I recall a similar occasion when she suddenly shouted at us to come in. She had, she said, seen a shark's fin. Sharks never came inside the fringing reef which separated the lagoon from the open ocean - the waves breaking across it can be seen in the distance. A few minutes later a large turtle surfaced close offshore.