Grim Fisher women

Dumisani khumalo

Creeps come out at night.Goose bumps in the morning. Drifters in the morning silvery sunlight on Lake Kariba,came up as Peggy spread the net out on the water and Elaine pried out the canoe into it's waters .

Peggy and Elaine tossed their feet in the early morning frost,a greyish slumbering spirit making them move back and forth to the water gurgles.

Hyacinth green ,sallowing grey algae webs ,clung and caught to them jealously ,making their endeavour by the shore a torrid one as the sun rose in russet red evolving to an orange tinge ,and losing it like a  softening  angry face turning metaphysically to the blistering sunlight in the east .

Their single shadows were like their stark naked torsos silhouetted on a silvery lake .

The days catch would be good after the wet spell , bringing in a fresh spill of rich water into the lake.emernating as far up the Ruwenzoris mountains of Rwanda.

The red and orange to silver rays flew past and came into their conditioned and sturdy blinking eyes as those animal curious pauses worked on their egos ,patently those of crocodiles ,and the odd yawning hippos that scared them in their proximity ,wary eyes cast out from their simple daily tasks,and crocky grins,bobbing pop eyes sticking out and beaming out at the women, as they went into the boat 

The shed leaped with squirts,cringes of a surreptitious splash of water as an escaping lizard went across like an omen and washing away gurgles in the water from underwater creatures, raging reality as serpents lack of a call, on their way to the bottoms to spy on them, and making them head strong,willed and daring .

Their faces looked deep and ready to have a big catch ,and in the mud, friggets and toads ,salient barbel fish ,,prawlers and worms, slithered out of their board like  squalls of sin ,to make a meal and zygotes,in mucky waters.

The spirit of survival came alive with hopes to dive into a meeting swish with that tiger fish on the steel glowing lake .

The life of survival of the fittest ,that prolonged waiting, buoyed up ,and a long held global warming sensor on their spirits was trying out the water like a divinity, and the fresh food coming in from the streaming in water,held up with strange prey, strange appearance of absconders termites,quiliar , to predetermined erosion of cliff side faces , to the surviving indignity of new diseases ,as crocodiles slept adulating upon the waters like magestic lizards.

That grin however reminded them of mud toys they played with when they were young ,she made it crack by the sheer baring of her teeth, a grinning completion practiced for putting on bad luck on another person , the way the devil was called Lucifer.

They saw it on the climate that was changed and the weather patterns different. It broke some families apart and did as wished and there was a mess of a spirit with that in the family holding grudges,hate,or people's livelihoods.

The heat was processing fast a timid hue of the environment,with cyclones winds heavy laden and falling trees, rapids of the Zambezi coming sooner than expected and now with a wind covering faces for the corona virus. The United Nations finances were coming in late.,death coming in quick as a salamander.

Today it was a grin aganist poverty,climate change,and the vagaries of life.The lake had lost its waters to generate electricity ,was it not that grinning crocodile responsible for all this? 

Mosi o tunya ,the water that thunders and river God nyami nyami were angry ,she told herself and then insinuated about it to her friend.

Bouyed up the waters, glinting eyes were in full view and participating in their sport ,and the water shivered when they took chances or mistaken judgement ,a sentence by the Crocs will,coming in and domineering like a death.The hippo just did bother much unless bother as he gave warning once so often out splashing and not party to them and off too long underwater to grunt in distaste. 

School children they knew, were taken victims as they had taken up the river and a major responsibility to fend for .They pushed the stick dip and out into the water to fish ,and watched the bold eagle make his first catch.

Up in the sky the dare devil vultures made their pronounced cycling cries in a choatic circle before diving down as the net went into the water a grabbing hand with loose fingers to catch kapenta fish that escaped like silver bullets ,only to pick up grubs, whose prey it was.

Crickets like the Kapenta fish and squealling insects sang in  unison as they did in the canoe , throwing the net ,in such a wonderful habitat. 

The lake was alive as more boats came cascading in and out of the horizon ,and before their eyes before small crill like kapenta fish dissappeared into deep waters..There was barbel ,bottle nose ,red ,yellow and white bream,and the canine toothed tiger fish in their sight.

Their prospects had been good the previous day,and in the middle of the lake , that is where they had come  to satisfy themselves by the going ons .

The sunlight was wicked now loose cloth covering their heads so as to work in a grinding mill of an economy with dead currency, and to start their gossip.about it.

Peggy fished out the paper and plastic left out by some fishermen ,tourists,and drained it out  of wate and out of the lake.

Water came in from the Zambian and Zimbabwean borders,meeting midway to a parody of bar tones.,

 David Livingston who discovered the falls in the north gave name to the town and to be as Victoria falls in the South were called,and came after them those whispered name changes on both sides ,making it a lot difficult to understand the confusion.

 Along the shore it was affordable to live in these wonder camps,with tourists and Hunters ,and a good idea of how wealth is made ,and then those poachers ,like them were creating a divide from 200 licences given in both sides of the border ,a thousand now existed and they would not call themselves Fisher women but grim fishing women.

A mosquito net hung out and the women knew the curious men who whistled at them were a naughty wilful bunch with pledges made and never fulfilled,and quick and tacky to faint and  bold prospects that ended in disappointment,the ladies kept their heads high.

," He is crying again ,I don't know if it's worms or choler," Peggy said, thinking of the men she had who were  not putting food on their tables .

There was lacklustre past of HIV and STDs,and there and everywhere,Aids,and it raised those crispy worries that ground on their egos, and a raised crocs eye even wider as was better to point to where the fish could be. 

"Fish eyes, hey you fish eyes" Peggy taunted a man forever looking at her,and so much attentive to them "we will eat you with your eyes open" it did not move him, and he imagined them eating fish like him , their eyes open at him as they are him.

"Where your licence?" he asked opening his front jacket to show his parks work uniform,. The ladies looked at him astounded, tremors running through their stomachs..In their jail cell ,the moon brought in three shades of grey .