Magic! That is the word I could use to describe where I came from, my island. It was not owned by any individual but a collective of small dwellers surrounded by bodies of water, a small place where I knew our neighbors’ names, where I woke up to the serenity of the waves greeting me. I almost took this view for granted and lost my wonder of her.
I once lived close to the ocean, knew the smell of the ocean, I took care of the ocean in the ways of my people, and in turn she gave me life. Some days she would come bearing fruits of thanksgiving to my doorstep, foreign items I didn’t know I needed until she brought them to me. The children of Tarkwa Island benefited the most from these gifts. When I was a new baby, my mother got from her a dream catcher she placed over my crib. My hands would stretch out to touch it, and as an adult I could remember the dream catcher hanging over my head, slipping into my dreams and drawing me into the water.
As a child, items from the ocean were used as toys, or sometimes our parents graced our bodies with them, like that one time I got a rainbow shell.
I still wear it on my neck.
But there were other days too, days she kissed the toes of the threshold of my house that barely stood together. She threatened to swallow us, but she did not. On days like this she gifted the community with even stranger things. Like the one time she vomited in front of our neighbor’s house a lifeless human body. They said the body was round and swollen. I only heard about it; I was forbidden as a child to see those kinds of giftings from the ocean. But I grew up too and saw many gifts. I even saw the ocean give us the body of my childhood friend who had been missing for three days. I knew this loss, and it laced my tongue to remember that even when we were one with the water, the proverb remained: “Being a swimmer and spending time in the water does not make you a fish”. We were surrounded by the ocean, and to survive the ocean we had to become like rocks.
You would think that I should be afraid of water. That it would come one day and swallow me into its mouth and just like that I would stop existing. But a land that inhabits you shouldn’t be the one to kill you. I told this to outsiders who queried my bravery and rolled it on their tongue. Who came here to enjoy the water my island offered but ran back to the comfort of their homes when they grew tired of her beauty. Who would blame them? They had no idea how to pacify the water.
Children of the water returned back into the water. We were not like the outside world whose spirits roamed after death. When one of our own died, we would ship them into the middle of the sea and let them go back home. This was where they belonged, for the ocean held on to us, and if we didn’t do that, that person’s spirit would cry from beneath the grave, calling us to join them. We couldn’t afford to let our community die, we knew the city world frowned on us when we did such things, but they had no say over our domain.
This was home. Home was ours.
The ocean was on an island, separated from the outside world. I watched the city people come and go. They came to our island to have a swell time, but for us this place was home, and home was threatened. Home was threatened by the city people, people who parked their cars at the edge of the city and took boats to our island to have some fun. They would come dressed in their fancy city clothes, wearing bourgeois sunglasses, for the sun our bodies adored. They came with food items, too tired to clean up after they left, making the environment uninhabitable for us. But we were gracious enough to pick up after them. There was already a system in place that allowed the men of our island to tax them so we could clean up the place. It was giving back what belongs to us, and they did.
During summer the children of the island, now men and ladies, showed off their talents. I, for one, blended into the ocean to show off my skills with my skateboard, synched with the wind, and in turn I got the admiration of the city people. I got job offers to teach these people, and I made respectable money for it. I didn’t desire much—I was a wanderer, I needed only bread and fish for the soul.
Other times I saved people from our ocean. She was sometimes eager to eat those who didn’t know how to flow into her rhythm, but she knew me well enough to be merciful.
I defended my island until I could no longer defend it. It was the year before covid-19 that the government came for us. The year 2018, when I woke up to ships and guns surrounding our small houses, with a loudspeaker waking me up from my dream saying: “The government will be taking over this island, this island will now be used for military purposes”.
I imagined my ears to be filled with the sand from our island, that the seashells had covered them and that I was in a dream. The one where the sirens and the mermaids played tricks with my mind. Disbelief filled me til I thought I would drown in it.
Where would I go? Where was home if not here? I watched as the elders held countless meetings with government officials, days leading to months, til I began to shrug off the evacuation as nothing.
The island youths were angry. I was angry! Who would dare take our island from us? But I was powerless, and my tongue did the talking. Some of us, the youths who had access to social media, tweeted and trended for a week. I prayed that the city people would intervene. That they would save us. They did not.
It was decided that we would evacuate the premises, but we would be compensated. But how much could compensate for home, for her? For the smell of water? To wake up to the ocean and dive into her. To have your body know the waves. To become one with her. To have access to her. Our evacuation was due next year, but I was already swollen with sadness.
My eyes filled, and the tears dropped into the ocean.
In those days, the ocean was quiet. It was peaceful, it followed us in mourning, it could sense our loss, collective loss.
The island was slowly being cleared by the government with the installation of small camps. I watched as the elders of our island sold off our homes for five shillings, like Judas selling off Jesus to his cross. The betrayal burnt the bones of the youth in Tarkwa Bay. Where would we go and call home? Some heard this news with great joy, receiving a call to swap their consciences for a desire to leave.
Eventually, people started leaving, but my foot was rooted here. The bodies of my mother and siblings were buried deep in the ocean. How would I carry their presence into the busy city? Into a land where vehicles smothered the skin of humans in exhaust. Where their water rushed through pipes into their homes, while all I had to do was drink from the ocean.
I wasn’t ready. A few of us stayed back to defend our home, until the men with machine guns came at night and bullets dropped like rain onto our houses and we fled. Four years later, the world has moved forward and the city people have more access to our island, but this time the government is in control.
The city isn’t for people like me. I have watched my body shed skin to adapt to this new environment. It still doesn’t fit my webbed feet which are used to carrying the weight of sand. Not this concrete ground and cemented rooftops that threaten to take the air out of my lungs. This city where the clouds swallow the stars and hide them. It’s been years, and my body still can’t adapt to this environment. They say that man evolves, but all I wanted to evolve into was the sea.
As a child, I played mermaid with my island friends. Now my people are scattered all over this city, trying to blend in and become a part of it. But an ocean child is forever an ocean child, and when this city finally sleeps, I will return to her.