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| Charlotte & Nicole |
All our belongings are packed in boxes, the house is empty and without a soul. This is the end of our time in Egypt. We are relieved from life in this frantic and impossible city, no more of these traffic jams, these mornings when pollution is so bad that one can hardly see 50 m, no more nervous breakdowns due to the local culture, but also no more weekends by the sea, no more dolphins, and no more family as we knew it. A new phase is coming, transition, reinvention, with quite a bit fear of the unknown. It is as frightening as it is exciting.
"You will miss the dolphins", my friends say.
But I do not see it this way. Each and every encounter was a gift. What counts is what I had, not what we will not have in the future. Thank god for it.
So here we are, the very last day, on the beach, without the beach chairs, they are already packed. It's another beautiful day, flat sea, no wind, hot and sunny. It's 3p.m. when I spot the dolphins up on the northern stretch of our beach. This time we borrow a second kayak and go out there all five of us. Charlotte shares a kayak with Nicole, whose shark phobia has kept her on land for most of the time. The other kayak seats Leonard, Valentina and me. We row towards the pod which is not moving. They stay pug infront of the public beach. When finally we arrive Charlotte and I go in, I then take Leo along.
Leo just turned six. The cask of his broken arm was just taken off a few days before and he trained hard with his mask and fins on the beach to be ready for day X. Now he is ready and the dolphins appear...
I hold Leo by the arm, close by me. Here they come, very close, looking at Leo, they whistle clearly, communicating between each other. They swim circles, reappearing again and again. Leo is thrilled (and so am I).
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| Leo, 6 years old, meeting the pod |
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| Charlotte swims with a dolphin |
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| Nice shot, dolphin coming up to breathe |
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| Again and again belly up |
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| Me |
To my surprise the dolphin with the cut jaw is here. We have had so many intense sessions with him and his mate, that the initial barrier of distrust has long been broken. He is here in a group of four very playful dolphins. There is another group close by. They are playing with the new born. That group stays also fix in the bay, but they move away as soon as we approach.
Charlotte has become integral part of the four dolphin group. She swims and dives together with them and has transformed herself. She has become a dolphin herself. This is everybody's dream come true.
The dolphins have started to move down south now. We follow them and go in ove and over again. Leo is attached to my hand in the water, while Valentina and Nicole follow with the kayak.
We move slowly down the coast.
Finally, at 5:45 p.m., nearly three hours later !!!, we return to the beach.
This was an worthy farewell.
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When I reflect upon these extraordinary experiences I feel that we have been taught a few lessons:
The first one is that we never own the other. Any encounter is based on the other one's explicit interest to come and share the moment. Dolphins are free, and so should we be. We cannot take their arrival for granted. Each time is a special occasion, every encounter is a gift.
And life is now. Sitting by the beach watching the horizon for hours is in itself a pleasure. It is part of the final moment when the pods arrive. So even the waiting, this moment of emptying the mind and cancelling out all thoughts is important. It is the ying to the yang, the emptiness to the fullness.
These encounters have been a source of immense quantity of positive energy. Cairo is a city in collapse. Traffic death, pollution, lack of organization and abusive slum growth. Without this fountain of joy I would not have lasted that long. Everybody should search for this kind of fountain of positive energy outside his work arena.
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It is very likely that as the children grow up and the coast is being developed the dolphins habitat will disappear. Overfishing, noise by jet skis and motorboats, and waste and pollution will be hard to stop. The last twenty years have brought incredible change go Egypt. The next twenty years will do the rest.
It is with distress that I follow the news and hear about abusive fishing and construction on Egypt´s Red Sea costs.
And I thank life for having been able to experience all this.
