Just keep swimming

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. If you all are familiar with the movie, Finding Nemo, you will recognize this wise piece of advice given to Nemo by Dory. It is something that I hold onto and am often reminded by friends and myself to do just this. It translates into life, even outside of the sea and helps me to remember to just keep going, no matter the circumstance.

Let's talk a bit more about swimming. To my knowledge, there are no surveys on the number of people that cannot swim but I would make an educated guess that approximately half of the Bajan population does not know how to swim. I find this to be a staggering and sad figure as we live right by the sea and depend upon it for so many things.  This great fear of the sea is echoed in other parts of the Caribbean along with the expression, "the sea aint got nuh back door". It is true that the sea, like anything else can be dangerous but if careful and prepared, there is no need to harbour this fear. We at Be The Change Barbados have a Saturday feature on our facebook page called "Dream Changer". One of my dreams is that every Bajan would take the opportunity to learn how to swim. If this could be done then they could safely explore the amazing underworld and hopefully understand its importance. I believe that this may contribute to helping people to take better care of the environment; after all it is our only one and needs protecting.

A further key to protection of our environment is understanding the puzzle of how everything is connected. Picture this: When someone throws a piece of garbage on the side of the road and it is left there, it becomes part of run-off and may end up in our water supply. The next step in this pathway could be our taps or it could be the sea so one way or another, you could potentially be drinking pieces of that garbage in some form or fashion (slightly exaggerated but hopefully you get the point). If it ends up in the sea, it is not only harming you but can harm marine life. Did you know that turtles think that plastic bags are jelly fish which they often feed on? They can end up entangled in them or may even choke on them!

So moral of this story: learn how to swim if you cannot swim, get swimming and if you are already a swimmer, help someone out and just keep swimming (while picking up some garbage along the way and showing some love for the sea).

Nikola
<><