Different Day, Same Nets

“I hate these nets,” Mussa exclaimed as much to himself as to me.

He had been sitting so still in the sand that I almost walked past him. He was just another part of the landscape, a scene of boats, water, and waiting. But his hands never stopped moving. He has been mending this net, or one very like it, for most of his living life. “My father taught me as a child,” he said, without looking up. “It feels like I have been repairing it ever since. I fish; I repair. That is my life.”

The water of Lake Malawi behind him barely moved. Wooden boats sat beached on the far bank like exhausted animals. Somewhere across the water, the distant shore dissolved into haze. But Mussa’s world was smaller than that. It was the length of his net, the width of the shore, and the familiar fishing spots that he said he knew better than anyone else in the world. He had witnessed many things change over these years. Malawi had modernised, but some things are still the same. Nets tear, fish run, and the hands that fix one will always need to find the other.

“I wouldn’t ever change anything,” he added, almost as an afterthought, as he turned back to his work.

I believed him.