Walking on Water

So we arrive at the beach after dark on Wednesday night, after a rousing day of accreditation meetings back in Nairobi and a couple hours on a very small plane. Dinner has been made for us when we arrive, wonderful white snapper, garlic green beans, and chips (french fries to the American-minded). Delicious- I may learn to like fish yet. And after dinner has settled and we've explored the house a bit, Paul notes that it's low tide and asks if anyone wants to go walk on the reef. All 8 of us are in- we want to get closer to the water, and we figure a nighttime stroll along the beach would be fun. Paul reminds us to put on shoes, which makes sense to me, and I strap on my hiking sandals.

I learned long ago that I don't need to walk with a flashlight. Usually if I'm in a group, there is enough random light from everyone else's torches to get by, and I'm pretty good at the trick of time-delay walking: watching where the person with the flashlight put his feet, then putting my feet there too without needing to actually see where they're landing. It's a skill I developed during late night hikes in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and it has served me well. So obviously, I didn't bring my flashlight along- there were 4 already, so why should I?

We stumble down the dune towards the beach onto firm sand. I notice that Paul's wearing tennis shoes, and all the other girls have on flip flops with toe rings, perfectly stylish in their khaki capris. Paul points out a shallow pool with a snail in it, and then explains that the snail's highly poisonous. I start to consider what might happen if I step on a poisonous snail, what with not having a flashlight, and I struggle to catch up with Paul. As we start to cut across the bay, the sand gets softer, which is a little harder to walk in, but not impossible. Five feet later, it gets even softer. Maybe muddy's a better description. Another five feet, and the mud starts to smell like sulfur. Soon after, the sticky concoction turns to calf-deep quicksand! Paul's tightly laced high-tops now make sense. My chacos are barely staying on my feet, but girls behind me are losing their flip flops. We try to keep walking, the mud gets deeper, and I hear squeals of discomfort as toe rings are getting sucked clean off and flip flops disappear into the muddy depths... I tell Paul, "This is not fun," but he tells me it's just a little farther. Right when I arrive at more solid ground, one of the guys behind me loses his balance and falls into the mud, taking a white shirt and khaki pants girl down with him. There's screaming. And it's the last straw- 6 bodies and 3 flashlights turn around and head back for the house, throwing muddy flip-flops at each other.

But now that I've made it through the mud, I'm not turning back- I want to see the reef! I'm from New Mexico, for crying out loud, so anything involving water seems glamorous. And I'd never been to the Indian Ocean, so even Indian Ocean mud was kind of exotic. But I ran into an unexpected problem: in my don't-bring-the-flashlight calculations, I was figuring on level ground, multiple flashlights around me, and a full moon. The moon went behind a cloud, all but one of the flashlights had turned back, and the coral was pitted, rutted, and covered in slippery algae. On top of that, Paul was hopping around on the uneven reef like a mountain goat (a coral goat?), pointing his flashlight into random holes and saying things like, "Look- it's a sea urchin. Don't want to step on that!"

Eventually he took pity on my lack of illumination and total cluelessness regarding animal life. He slowed down enough to point things out to me, and we saw some amazing creatures- stonefish, moray eels, sergeant majors, hermit crabs, sea cucumbers, sally lightfeet, 6 kinds of sea urchins, and some pretty purple algae. =) He was on a mission to find an octopus, which we didn't accomplish though we trekked all the way around the point and towards some pretty steep holes. But it was cool to see it all at night- the animals weren't as skittish, they weren't terribly startled by his flashlight, and stars on the ocean are beautiful.

Eventually we turned back towards the house when his flashlight started to die (was he counting on me having one?), and I asked very timidly if we could keep to the side rather than going through the mud again... So we stayed to the edge of the beach, actually under the overhanging coral. Here we met some of the strangest creatures yet- bright red crabs with extra spindles on their legs, nearly-translucent whitish crabs that seem to not have shells, and of course tons of regular grey and black crabs. When we moved quietly, we could hear them skittering along the reef below our feet, to our side, and even over our heads. I've seen way too many Alien movies; that sound kind of freaked me out. But if I moved away from the overhang, I was back in the sulfur mud, so I stayed in the protection of the coral and tried not to think about what might crawl into my intestinal system and burst out onto the dinner table 3 nights hence... It also crossed my mind that I hadn't expected this as part of my missionary experience but that it was improving my prayer life.

We finally made it back around the cove, up the dune, and into the house, and I was glad for the experience overall. But next time, I'm bringing my own flashlight.