Gone Fishing
Entrance from compound to the beach
The red metal door leading out of our compound to the beach is a portal of sorts. Beyond it is a world largely unknown to me, filled with interesting people and powerful events, which you can sense, hear, even smell but not see, unless you choose to walk through. I have not used the door in over a year. The last time I was on the beach was with Seongeun and friends when we were chased away by two men who insisted we pay a fee for beach cleanup lest they call the police. As we were in front of our own house, we at first ignored the men but the men followed us where we went, continuing to insist that having cleaned the beach, they were entitled to $100 Liberian per person who walked it.
It was a typical Monrovia summer day: Bright, hot. The waves of the ocean thundered onto the white sand beach scattering seaweed, shells and baby crabs recklessly. Upturned boats of fisherman cut from massive tree trunks sat immobile like a sparse petrified forest. Their wood was bleached gray having finally dried out from the morning’s fishing trip. Longitudinal scars and cracks cut down their splotchy painted hulls not unlike old person’s skin. The smell of the catch wafted like aroma of day old sashimi.
One did not think naturally of paying for such a scene. In fact, one more naturally thought melodramatically I would rather die than pay for such a scene. Our group was comprised of three East Asians, a Pakistani, a French woman and the Liberian compound guard who donned a fluorescent elementary school road-crossing vest. I mention the group’s ethnic make-up because it was obvious that the crowd that slowly began to form around us noticed our ethnic make-up and we in turn reacted to that: the French woman who was white began snapping at those peppering her with questions. The Pakistani looked further away from home than ever and that he might cry. The Liberian Guard like a schoolboy gestured for us to return back to the compound as if his arms had suddenly become flags. And we East Asians felt simultaneously cheated by the other ethnicities, who had exposed our anonymity, yet responsible for them. As if accustomed to taking long walks in a figure eight pattern, the group circled back towards the house with the crowd in tow at a forced pace. Our first experience on our private beach! The red door is flaky green on its outside and not as apparent, but we found it and moved quickly through its frame. The door shut with a creak and a clank.
On this day, the door is ajar and I notice this because one of the gardeners is perched at the wall leaning into it. The wall of course blocks view of the crashing, fishy, blue, raw hinterland. Pirouettes of barbed wire make its climbing impossible and succulent bushes with pink flowers block out pretty ornate insets in the masonry, where with sweeping effort one can peak through. And that is what the gardener is doing. Peaking through. Walking to him, I ask the guard what he is looking at and he tells me at fish. The fishermen have just returned.
“You can go,” he says, glancing to his right, “the door is open. You can go. The fishermen have come back.”
In Liberia, one uses the word can to express the past tense. I can do it means I did it. I can eat mangos means I regularly eat mangos. I thus hear the gardener’s words as an imperative to the inevitable. I listen to him. “Okay,” I say. Without much thought at all, I cross over the short stretch of grass to the red door, grab its warm angular handle and pull. With a duck and a single step, I am through.
It’s another bright day fluoresced by the contrast of colors between white clouds and blue sky, black seaweed and white sand, patterned dresses and dark leathery fisherman in tattered shorts, green buckets and bleached hulls. The waves roar gently onto the shore, scraping back the pebbles, shells and the occasional tumbling baby crab. In the distance is Monrovia beneath sooty dust—I think Cairo.
In front of me is a spontaneous bustling fish market. Matriarchs and shop ladies have already begun bargaining. One woman is handed a bag of fish as soon as a boat is dragged to us, leaving the rest of us to fight for what remains. She walks away with the fish on her head proud, erect and remarkable much like a beautiful model. I complain, “Why does she get that?”
A womon next to me says matter-of-factly, “She is a regular. She owns a store.” Clicking a space between her teeth to emphasize the disparity she continues, “what she wants she will pay. What she doesn’t want she will return. But she knows.”
Meanwhile, certain individuals are both tossing fish I assume to be rotten from buckets back into the boats while others in turn examine and collect the refuse. The first cohort squishes the cassava fish stomachs as if they are baby cheeks. Firm means good. Too soft means bad. The second cohort leans over to further examine the flesh landing: plop, plop, plop, gathering the fish rejects and placing them one by one into large swirly plastic buckets as if they are both delicate and breaded
Ma-moin
I man standing next to me sees my consternation. “They will make ma-moin,” he says, “that means rotten fish.”
“Rotten fish?” I ask, “the fish are already rotten.”
“They will salt it and dry it and later sell it or eat it with rice and it will taste good,” the man says in a crescendo, as if I have awakened his hunger, “yes, it will taste very good. Ma-moin tastes so good!”
“I like the opposite of ma-moin,” I declare, “I like fresh fish.”
To this the people around me laugh and repeat what I said. “The white man likes fresh fish, not ma-moin.”
“I am not white,” I say, “I am Asian.” And at this, the people laugh some more.
Our talk is interrupted by drama in the water. One of the four fishing boats which was awaiting its turn to come to shore has sunk down to its gunnels. The fisherman are in the water. Their catch lashed to the boat’s benches float aside them like buoys. I think smart. The vessel oars are floating away like giant chop sticks. Fishermen from the shore interrupt the commerce to help out by running to the water’s edge and diving in.
“Can they swim,” I ask to no one in particular, “the water is rough. I hope they can swim.”
“They can swim good,” a lady says next to me, “they can swim.”
The lady explains that the fishermen are all part of a large family. This explains why I saw some fish go from one boat to another, or bargaining proceeding from one fisherman to another, or the two men now diving into the water in their tight muscle stretched shirts and baseball caps. They are going after family and money after all.
It’s an amazing thing to watch. The day’s kaleidoscope shifts from one scene to another; from one shape to another. The crowd peering into the horizon from the shore. The rescue of a boat. The cheer cadenced with the waves. The dragging of the boat which was a match box in the water but now a hulking uncooperative mass on land. The motions, gestures, work, expressions, and interactions are natural and easy, unbounded by time. They are inevitable, reproduced day after day, generation after generation; shared generously with anyone choosing to step through.
