The big ones that didn't get away

I've often enjoyed watching the activities of fisherman - from the one's standing on the beach at Henties in Namibia, the fishing boats coming in on the West coast of South Africa, the daws of Mozambique and the ice fishermen with there skidoo's in Saskatchewan. But of all there, the most time consuming and tiring method seems to the fisherman on the beaches of Aberdeen, SL (and probably the rest of the West Africa coast for all I know).

Although watching them many times, I'm sure there's still some finer details of the process I'm missing. But basically as follows - a few men (4-8) push the boat over the sand into the sea, they swim and get in, paddle a bit deeper in (seems simple enough), but now the don't just catch off the boat with a net. A net ( a funnel shaped one) is put in the water, ropes tied to the ends is brought to the shore and tied to palm trees or poles. Haven't measured yet, but easily more than 200m apart. Few hour later, they start pulling on one end of the rope (net) to bring it to shore. This can take hours. When the net starts getting closer to shore, the other end is also loosened and another group of about 5-10 start pulling from that end while walking closer to the first group. Metres and metres a net comes in (empty), has to be rolled up while pulling in and eventually at the end - fish.

This whole process and hard work amazes me and it's a bit hard to imagine doing all this 1 or 2 times every day for only a few fish. And now I know, It's for that one day, that BIG catch!!! The catches started coming in Thursday at about 16:30. By 20:30 we decided to investigate (and hopefully buy some fish, since I've been craving a Fish Braai (BBQ) for weeks. There on the beach absolute darkness was hundreds of people around two huge piles with literally thousand of fish(cowrah is the local name, but who knows what the real name is). Bought 6 huge ones for Le 50,000 ($16), but if we hung around there I'm sure we would have got some for free.

And... today I eventually got the long awaited fish braai (with apricot jam and garlic butter, mmm), rounded off with some sweet potatoes, salad, garlic bread and ice cream with chocolate sauce - I am content!