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KovalamNov 26, 2006
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run away, she's taking our photo!
fishermen beaucoup
Mosque and boats
| We spent three wonderful days and nights in Kovalam, a small touristy fishing village on the edge of the Arabian Sea. The first morning we walked the beach to watch the local fishermen pulling in their nets. Twenty men pulled on ropes on both ends of the net, singing and laughing, for nearly an hour until the net was ashore. Unfortunately, the laughing was replaced by shouting, blaming, and finger-pointing when the net came up nearly empty of the tuna they sought. The next day we hired a rickshaw to take us to the fish market and town just south of Kovalam. This was a much more difficult experience than we could have predicted. The trip began with a stop at the local mosque where our driver explained how ten years earlier almost a dozen fishermen had been killed in conflicts between the Christian and Muslim fishermen. "They used to fish together," he said. "But after the explosions the two communities were segregated. The Muslims fish north of the bay and the Christians to the south." We carried on into the market at the edge of the bay. The stench of fish was almost unbearable but we pressed into the crowd of men and women squabbling over the catches which were still coming ashore in the late afternoon. There were fish piled in the back of a rickshaw, another pile on the sand next to the shore, and another pile lying on the pavement. Women were standing next to buckets full of squid and cuttlefish, asking us how many we wanted to buy. Our hearts sank as we turned around to see a massive sea turtle lying upside down on the black pavement, still alive, struggling in vain to right itself. "Can we buy that turtle?" we asked our driver. "How much would it cost?" "That turtle's already been bought by a restaurant in Cochin," he replied. And so, like we so often find ourselves having to do in India, we walked away, helpless, sad, angry, and torn. We next day we hired the same rickshaw to take us further south to Somatheeram beach - a ten kilometer long beach with nothing but sand and small, wooden fishing boats as far as the eye can see. We were quickly befriended by two young boys who walked with us down the beach to watch another twenty men pull another net onto the beach - this net was completely empty. The men didn't yell at each other the way the other men had. They seemed too tired and discouraged to say anything. The boys told us how their fathers were fishermen, and that they wanted to fish like them when they grew up. Knowing these boys were Christians, as only Christians live in the town hidden in the coconut trees just steps from the beach, I asked one of them if he had any Muslim friends. He said, "No. The Muslims are taking all the fish from the sea. That's why we don't catch many fish now." Here we were, walking on a sunny day along a gorgeous beach beside two wonderful ten year-old boys, who were steadily being groomed to hate their Muslim neighbours just up the beach. We told them about our Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist friends whom we love very much. Their tone changed drastically. We suggested they find some boys their age from other faiths to play cricket with. "We play football," they said. "That'd be fine too," we replied That evening the clouds rolled in and a thunder storm soaked everything under the sky. The next day we were chatting with a local shopkeeper as we listened to some of the music he had for sale. We asked him if it was legal to catch sea turtles. He said yes. We told him about the turtle we had seen in the market the day before. Suddenly his eyes lit up. He told us about a tourist who had bought the turtle and let it go in the bay last night. I guess it was for sale after all. |
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