Went to South Beach with Sylvan and Ananais, with the plan of teaching them to swim. Of course, I don’t really know how to teach someone to swim, and it is over twenty years since I was awarded that little piece of red ribbon and a nice certificate for my wall after succeeding to splutter ten metres in the Stantonbury toddlers pool.

Sylvan didn’t think he had been completely submerged since he was a baby. Ananais on the other hand claimed to be able to swim as he used to jump into a well or water tank somewhere in Uru.

So we got to the beach and I very seriously began the lesson. They were both a little nervous, but determined to get in the water. I showed them how it didn’t get deep suddenly, but the waves coming in weren’t so tiny, and for the first ten minutes they squatted at the edge up to their knees. Eventually Sylvan fell over head first into the water and saw that it wasn’t that bad. After that they were pretty keen to get in, but my swimming lessons weren’t going too well. I decided it was probably a massive breakthrough that they got in at all, judging from the number of Tanzanian’s sitting in suits on the beach just looking at the water with no intention of entering it.

There were no jelly fish around. By the end of the day Sylvan and Ananais where happy to bob around in water up to their necks. Sylvan thanked me for giving him a new life experience. I told him he should forget about it amidst many repeat submergences in the future.