Black People Don’t Swim

For two weeks I was in Kiribi, Cameroon which where the new deep sea port was built. Kiribi is also known for having gorgeous beaches but guess what? There are not a lot of Cameroonians that swim in the ocean’s warm waters.

But why is the question that I desperately wanted the answers to. At the beach, early in the morning until about 11 am, you’ll see boats made of tree trunks floating in the water. These boats are holding the fishermen that catch fish and either cook it for the day’s meals or sells it at the fish market not too far away. The men only jump in the water in order to pull the boats to shore.

I am an avid collector of rocks and sea shells whenever I go to the beach. I think they are some of the most gorgeous things in the world. When walking to pick up my shells, one of my colleagues enlightened me about why taking the sea shells from the beach was dangerous. She said that she heard from someone that Kiribi has a lot of magic associated with it and there are witches that curse sea shells and those who take the shells from the beach will be cursed for an indefinite amount of time. I kept picking the sea shells.

Then as we were at dinner, our academic advisor enlightened our group on why Cameroonians do not go in the ocean. There are multiple stories that were told that night but I thought this one was particularly interesting. The story goes: There are seamen and women that live in the ocean. If a man, or woman of the land goes into the ocean then a seaman or sea woman will entrance the person and take them to the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes, the sea people will let the person go back to living on land but they will always be married to the sea person and can never get married to or have children with a land dweller.

I heard this story the first night we were in Kiribi and also again when we went to another beach after a long day of school. This time, it was around 4pm and the current was kind of strong but we swam anyway and we were the only ones in the water even though there were groups of people at the beach. After most of our group got out of the water, an old man flagged me down to get out of the water. I walked over to him and he began to explain that there is magic in the water and the sea people were going to take me. He said that this particular beach had a lot of deaths in the past couple of months because sea people were pulling men, women, and children down to its depths.

I said “thank you” to the older man and he walks away. I begin thinking about all the Cameroonians sitting on the side of the beach but not entering the water. This image was very familiar, it is the same image I have witnessed at every pool party and beach outing, black people don’t swim.

I know I was a child that was told by my mother not to swim because I would get my hair wet and let’s face it, water is not a coily girl’s bestfriend. But either way, I still took swimming classes and have always loved the water even as a small child. I never thought in a million years that Cameroonians would not swim because of such legends but it makes sense. Even that there are not a large amount of African Americans that actually swim.

When I think about it, maybe this was something that was passed down from slavery. Let’s think of this historically, many of the Africans that were dispersed during slavery were mainly from the Western Coast of Africa. Most of those people used the water for their livelihood but they possibly did not swim because of the same legends. When they were taken from their homes, not only did they probably take their legends with them and pass them along through the generations but they added to them because of slavery.

Because slavery occurred for so long and displaced so many persons, the stories, at least in the African American perspective may be lost but the effects are still the same. Your great-grandmother, time 15, told her child not to go in the water but as the years went on, the legends faded.

This is just my own perspective on why black people don’t swim.

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