The Ecology of Caring or The Day We Became Part of Ushongo

The coral is dying or it is dead, bleached whale bones reaching thin fingers up through the water column, but the fish are very much alive. The checkerboard wrasse looks like an alien here, its patterned pink face and bright green stripes silhouetted against yellow and blue. Nothing stationary looks like that here, in this elephant graveyard where algae smothers the dead coral and the live stuff is being chipped away at by the fish still living here, the ones who need to eat and move along. 

I keep finding myself abandoning our data collection to follow them, sucking in a big breath before diving down, my face inches from the coral and the round eyes of my study subjects. I am out of breath from the sight of them, exquisite creatures with no fear of the goggle-eyed human staring back at them. I’m giddy with the feeling of it, floating up to take another breath and returning to this unhuman world, not unwelcoming but deeply alien. 

As I continue my routine, floating up and diving down, I think to myself ‘if you’re not diving deep, into the cool blue underbelly of the ocean to follow the big blue fish, to stare into its eyes and swim alongside it, seeing the world as if you are that fish, are you living? If you’re not taken aback by this place, instantly in love with it, if you’re not trying to protect it at all costs, then what even is love? What is it to be alive? 

I don’t ever want to be a person who doesn’t do something because of the state changes, because it seems cumbersome to swim and shower, who fears the pain of a failed backflip or the burning feeling of air trying to claw its way out of my lungs. I never want to be someone who chooses not to go, not to see what the world has to offer, because I fear that its wild and vast beauty will break my heart open and take my breath away. I have never been one to believe that it is better to have never loved at all–we should always choose to love and lose, whether it be the world, a lover, ourselves. It is the same lesson I have learned over and over, written down in every essay I’ve written in college and spoken out loud in every conversation about the big and frightening issues of our time. We have to choose love. We have to choose loss. Just ask the elm tree. Just ask the dead coral. Just ask the checkerboard wrasse.

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I told myself I wouldn’t do this, standing ankle-deep in garbage, covered in sweat, hauling half-full water bottles and pieces of buoys around the lot, dodging kids and centipedes and projectiles from other people with their bright orange gloves. 

I told myself I wouldn’t make this more than it is the minute I saw this empty lot piled high with discarded energy drinks, huge water bottles wrapped in fishing line, shoes without their pair, and people gathering to fix it. I told myself I’d be normal about this as I entered the fray, pulling on a pair of gloves and digging in.

How did we get here? Ryan, obviously, befriending a donkey named Period on the side of the main road into the village, who, as it turns out, is owned by a gregarious Italian woman from Florence who, upon hearing where Txuxa went to college, shouted, and I quote, “I love Boston!!!!”. She moved here after selling her business in Florence, spending fifteen years in Somalia somewhere along the way, and started a non-profit to fix the plastic pollution on the beaches in Ushongo. At the start, she recruited some kids to help, paying them in cold soda and frozen popsicles, eventually creating a real non-profit with a designated lot for trash sorting and lots of support from the village, who she hopes will someday take over the enterprise. And, of course, she relies on her donkey named Period, who hauls the trash up from the beach to the lot. 

Fridays at 4pm are trash pickup time, and Ryan had told her he’d come help out. Txuxa, Griffin, and I tagged along, and when we arrived, following our wide-ranging conversation with her, it became clear that we were most needed at this mysterious lot, not combing the beach for trash. Apparently, the organization is in danger of losing the lot if they don’t sort the various piles sitting there in the next two weeks. We told her we’d help sort the piles (“I love Americans!!!!”, said the Italian woman in response) and headed over.

It was undoubtedly a mess, the overwhelming kind that feels impossible to physically comprehend, let alone fix. Feeling vaguely uneasy and useless amidst the crowd of twelve or fifteen of us chucking bottles, I tried one and another method to be useful, but felt myself falling short. Instead, I made myself a goal: excavate The Tree. 

In the middle of the chaos sat one lone shrub, covered in trash and crawling with insects. I could see the blue and clear bottles practically covering all but the upper branches, and I told myself that if I could free this living thing from its blanket of human refuse in the limited time we had, I could leave happy. 

Often in this country I have been met with existential despair about the biggest issues of our time, mainly climate change. It sounds dumb, but being here has made me realize that the world truly is so vast. When I am here, I feel so exceptionally far away from the centers of decision-making in the United States, from the movements and ideologies I know. It makes me feel that all of the people of the world could never possibly collaborate on something so complex, so monumental. I see the bundles of discarded clothes from America in the markets, the litter crowding the sidewalks, the many technological advancements the people in this country and in so many other places deserve and will get, which will only complicate matters of our global carbon impact, and on and on. I’ve had to not think about it, really, and instead focus on the cultural elements I’m so enjoying, the conservation issues I’m learning about, the minutiae of building a short-term life in a new place. And in the same way, I know this is not the right tack, that what feels right and true to me is seeing through the despair and the fear of loss to what lies on the other side, the better world we are trying to create. I know that my way through loss is love, but love can be hard to muster this far from what I know, trapped in the fog of overwhelm. 

But then, in the middle of my low-grade despair, was The Tree. And The People. And the feeling of working hard, and stepping back, and dusting off my grimy gloved hands, and watching others do the same. I told myself I wouldn’t make too much of it, but I found myself with a profound sense of communion in that trash-filled lot, with people I’d only just met but whose place–the one they love and know the way I love and know home– I would do anything to protect. The one I’ve admired from sea and land every day, the place made up of people I admire and fish I loved to chase. I felt like a cog in a machine; I felt like I was helping. 

We left the lot dripping in sweat, leaving others to continue the hard sorting work, admiring our progress with a high five, petting Period on our way out. I immediately jumped in the ocean in all of my clothes, pushing thoughts of ringworm from my mind. After a shower and a change we trekked up to John’s house to make tacos for him and his partner, Happy, with whom we were exchanging cooking lessons. A series of hilarities followed– the gang bought me corn flour to make corn tortillas, with only made oobleck and a huge mess. We didn’t have any garlic, or enough oil to make flour tortillas, we only had one burner, and we had no Mexican seasonings. While others shopped and delivered beers, I set to work on marinating chicken, prepping veggies for pickling and guacamole. I felt that familiar feeling of chopping veggies in a kitchen not my own, and the easy camaraderie with Happy and Dee the cat, a new mama to two adorable kittens who are constantly fiending for scraps. I chopped and mixed and kneaded; friends came and went, rolling out tortillas (which turned out just like chapati) and shredding chicken. Ryan played music, and in between tasks, watching chicken sizzle on the propane stove on the floor, we danced. 

We sat down to dinner tired and once again sweaty after an almost-three hour effort. We dug in, contemplating how we had possibly made chapati here but never at home, debating the merits of different cuisines and their specific wrap-style meals. John and Happy traded off minding the bar outside, and while John ate I made Happy a plate of tacos full of chicken, guac, crumbled mozzarella cheese, rice, charred peppers, pickled onions. When it was her turn to eat, we watched with bated breath as she inspected the bundle and ate her first bite. After a weighty moment, she smiled and we all chattered happily, so pleased to have introduced something delicious to her home, so grateful to be in a home, sharing a meal. I felt full. 

After dinner, we played games and drank mojitos (mo-JEE-toes, specifically). Have I mentioned how much we love to play? And drink bad cocktails?  The night was devoid of any moonlight, the water the stillest I’ve ever seen at night. With little warning or discussion beyond a shared mischievous look, we sprinted into the sea, flinging off clothes and diving into the cool, calm water. I looked down at a cloud of stars glittering around me and squealed, telling everyone else to swim out, away from the lights on the shore, and for god’s sake look down. Gasping, splashing, spinning, all of us in our own glittering bubbles, many of my friends seeing fat flakes of light in the ocean for the first time. We swam out to Seawolf, not thinking for a second about the sting rays or the jellyfish, and, chests heaving, flung ourselves off the top rail, watching as we dove the spray of light behind us. Magic, no other word for it. 

Later that night, sitting on the sea wall outside the restaurant with Neil and Ryan, Neil read a poem. If there’s one thing I love about Neil, it’s his poems and questions, his ability to crystalize a moment into its purest form. As he read the poem, the moon slid out from behind its cloud cover, where it had been hiding all night. The second Neil finished reading, a long poem about people and place, islands and boats, families and love, the moon tucked itself away again, leaving us once again in the speckled darkness of an Ushongo night, anchovy boats flickering on the horizon. Life is full. 

One of the lines that stuck with me most was about “the ecology of caring”. Perhaps, like a land ethic, we all have our own ecology of caring. When I think about the climate crisis, the lands and waters I love and the many words I’ve written on this topic, I see a clear throughline of my own ecology of caring. It includes fighting hard and loving harder, wrapping loss in your arms rather than shutting it out. It involves taking things one step at a time, doing what you can, alongside other people doing their best. It involves digging deep, swimming down, not being intimidated by the small inconveniences of being alive. It also involves celebration, sharing in communal labor to make delicious foods inflected with ingredients from the place where you are and recipes from the people you’re with. It includes finding the thing that makes you feel the most alive and shaping your life around it. It includes skinny dipping and reveling in wherever you are, feeling sharp gratitude mixed with soft sadness in the most beautiful of moments. It means finding your Tree and sticking with it. It means knowing your purpose, your calling.

If I’ve done one thing this semester, it is ‘stalking my calling’, trying to “locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse”, à la Annie Dillard yet again. Often in this phase of my life, so full of ideas and inputs and new experiences and and time to mull and be shaped by them and just the right amount of self-absorbedness, I have felt like I am on the edge of something big, some fundamental truth about myself or what it is I am meant to do. Being in Ushongo, plugging into this community on the sea and its deep-felt ecology of caring, feels like stalking my calling. And it feels like I’m close. 

Core to my ecology of caring is a deep respect and love for people and place, something I’ve previously thought I could only feel about my pine tree-blanketed, granite-slated corner of the universe, but Ushongo has taught me otherwise. I care deeply about this place, and while I know that my silly research project, the hour of labor I put in at the trash lot, the food I’ve cooked for our gracious hosts, and the shillings I’ve pumped into the local economy don’t amount to much, I hope I have impressed my love and care upon this place. I hope I have held the hard things close and seen through to the other side. I hope I have done enough to see through the eyes of the big blue fish. 

If nothing else, I know now that this corner of the world is full of kindred spirits, people who are fighting hard for the things they love and fear losing, using that fear to create gratitude and hard work rather than anxiety and inaction. It feels like hope, being here. It feels like being a bright fish surrounded by bleached chaos, forever moving forward.