Scuba Diving

Hitch-hiking to Malawi was rather uneventful this time around. For half the trip I took proper buses to meet up with my 3 pals and we were off to conquer the great depths.
The day before we started the scuba course we had to do a bunch of paperwork. Which always stresses me out. Especially these days when I don’t know which name to use and who in which country is my emergency contact (I still put you Mom). My favorite part was the huge checklist of medical issues to prohibit one from swimming with the fishes. The kind of list you finish reading and automatically flex like a bodybuilder because you figure if all these things haven’t killed my incredible self than this somewhat dangerous activity has no chance.
Then we briefly met the man who was to be our instructor for the next 4 days. And that’s when my confidence of kickin scuba divin’s ass depleted –he was British. As in English. The people who speak gibberish. I can understand Scottish folk thanks to my Dad’s obsession with Braveheart but Im completely lost with Londoners. Luckily there is a lot of hand signals in scuba diving which Im great at thanks to softball. In fact, we invented many of our over the next few days. Most were along the theme of what one would expect coming from a group of health volunteers that routinely teach sex education. Extra points for signing behind the instructor’s back while a person was performing skills such as removing the mask and putting it on again. Which I was a victim of as I started laughing and choking violently and thought ‘well this it it, Im going to drown because of an obscene hand gesture.’
But before we could dive we had to do classroom work. Which meant I had to decipher a British description of another foreign language – physics. As if I have to understand density and thermocline in order to swim. Fuckever. As soon as he diagrammed a balloon, substitute your lungs, as bursting during ascent I was with the program. Keep breathing to equalize – no problem Im a breathing machine.
And then came the construction of the gear. So that we all felt like superheroes. Eventually. The first day I ended up drenched in sweat and bleeding. Apparently wet suits aren’t supposed to feel as tight as they look. And once I figured out all of the snaps, dials and buttons – I was no longer intimidated by the tank but feeling confident to discover the world underwater. Of course there was always the getting back into the boat after a dive. Going into the water from the boat was fine. Flipping backwards is just like falling, which my clumsy self is great at. But pull this 200 pounds back into the boat was a cruel joke by our British gnome friend. I even tried waving them off, ‘its cool, Im just gonna swim it in.’ But they insisted on a group effort to pull me in so that I ended every dive face-down on the deck, fins in the air, hyperventilating and flippin off my “supportive” laughing friends.
I will say that even though they had their shit together on land, I was most comfortable down under. Sinking is no problem and I was often found, sitting on a rock or chillin upside down while my friends took their precious time over-equalizing and finding ‘neutral buoyancy.’ Another stupid theory to describe going with the flow of maintaining a swimming level.
We went on 5 dives and saw some cool fish and rock formations. At the end of the course nobody could really hear and it took nearly a week for our ears to fully equalize. A week that I spent kayaking, snorkeling and cliff jumping.
During my travels back I sat by a woman with a disproportionate baby. Bottle head baby rocked and jiggled with every bump and the curiosity drove me to poke him. Which made him giggle and jiggle. When we arrived at the station the mom handed me the baby then disappeared for a nerve-wracking 15 minutes that I spent singing my hopes of mommy’s return for the top-heavy iwe.
Now safely back in Choma, Im starting off for the village today to have an important meeting where I beg for another family to let me live with them. I don’t have a specific family in mind, Im just going to sell my skills. Which now include scuba diving! That’s bound to impress these landlocked peoples.