A Trip to the Atlantic Ocean

Yesterday I left work a little earlier to go down to Tybee Island. The Island is about eight miles from my apartment and 30 miles from my work (temporary Work assignment). This was my first time I visited a beach. I have never been that close to an Ocean. I have seen a lion roaming in a village, but not a wave that could sweep a boat off the shores. The breeze from the Ocean kept beating on my face. The sand on the beech reminded me of my hometown. All the fond memories of walking bare footed flushed back on my mind.

There was all kind of people sand bathing along the shores of the beach. Each and every one of them had a beech outfit on them except few people like me who were fully covered with clothes. I covered my self not because I didn’t want to be semi-naked, it’s only because I didn’t wanted to go home and change. A co-worker warned me to beat the ant traffic of people coming for a holiday breaks. I decided to wear flip flops that were on the trunk of my car. At least the flip flops will make me look like a serious beech boy!.I thought. I decided to act like I knew what I was doing after all everyone was there to have fun. I tried to imitate the happy evening drug advertisement on television that shows people walking on the beech happy.The mood of the beech takes control of my thoughts. As I was walking on the beech I noticed a locus where kids were building a snowman on the sand. Older folks chatting with softer laughter’s in between every sentence.

I decided to imitate the young kids by drawing on the sand. At the time I didn’t know what to write on the sand. I took a long stick and started writing the word “Somalia” on the ground. I took a picture of the drawing. An elderly man with a southern accent noticed my drawing and out of curiosity approached me. The celerity of my feet failed me before I could rub the sand with my feet. He was an old guy with a big dewlap hanging from his face. He asked me with a big southern drawls “is that the name of she who must be obeyed”? I responded to him “NO SIR, it isn’t”. He looked at me and said “Then who the hell is it then?” He might have thought I was uxorious person. What If I said to him it was an ineffable word; would he still demand to know the meaning? You know how this inutile old folks are; they will keep demanding an answer. I was not here to have a trenchant argument. I politely responded to him, “You don’t know her” He responded to me “then at least can I get to know this special person?” By now I was becoming impatient with this stranger. I looked up at him and said to him “can I at least have some privacy”. He laughed with a smile that stretched the back of his cheeks, “It is a public property, what privacy is there”. I was exhausted from the wave of the heat. I asked him, “How good is your geography sir?” He responded to me, “I know where the border of South Carolina and Georgia meets, if that will be considered Geography”. I told him “Look pal the word is just a country in Africa”. He looked at the drawing one more time, and he said” then why did you said “her” then?” I laughed at him and asked him what I should have referred to a country or say a camel. He politely whispered on my ears, “The hell do I know son, nowadays we have to be careful with the feminist out there questioning everything we say”


He started to vacillate from the discussion by recounting his memories of Africa being a poverty ridden country. Here I was thinking I came to an Island to have an evening away from the chaotic world of work and misery, only to meet another soul to remind me of the bitter African sanguinary war.