Sixth-generation fisher child from Kalk Bay Traci Kwaai’s Fisher Child Projekt is an NGO that connects local kids to the ocean via snorkelling, freediving and the lost art of traditional fishing.
I wanted to know how long my family had lived in Kalk Bay. I found church records of my great-great-great-grandparents’ marriage and baptism on 16 June 1846, which also stated their residence: Kalk Bay, and occupation: fisherman. I cried because I realised how firmly rooted I am to this land.
Kalk Bay’s fishing community is a creolisation of precolonial inhabitants, the Khoisan people, and enslaved bodies from Indonesia, the Philippines, Portugal, India, the Netherlands and Britain, who established traditional practices like handline fishing and harvesting.
Small-scale fishers depend on fish as a source of nourishment as much as income. They have a reciprocal, spiritual relationship with the ocean, taking just enough, giving stocks and species a chance to grow so they can eat the following year, and are in tune with weather patterns and life cycles.
When fish were scarce, or the weather was bad, they’d harvest shellfish: gup (periwinkles), perlemoen (abalone) and klipkous (Venus ear) to make frikkadels and klipkous mince curry with peas, potatoes and pickles. They’d replace meat with fish, which they’d pickle so it’d last.
During apartheid, the land closest to the ocean was reserved for white people, resulting in the segregation of natural spaces and restricted access for everyone else.
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Kalk Bay Beach (Fishery Beach) was one of the only beaches people of colour visited because it was sheltered by the harbour and railway line, making it accessible to people travelling from the Cape Flats. When I was little, I collected tumbled glass that beachgoers had left behind and pretended they were gems.
Sadly, we’ve lost our connection with the ocean and our cultural practices over time due to forced removals and now, those with influence can buy a fishing quota. Of course, they use a trawler because that allows them to catch more fish than a small boat, so local fishermen don’t get as much. Catching abalone is illegal, and fishermen don’t have access to many areas they used to harvest. Commercial greed is taking more fish from the sea than can be replenished, and seismic blasting and drilling for gas and oil is killing fish and cetaceans.
There aren’t many fishermen left in Kalk Bay because the younger generation doesn’t see it as the best way to earn a living. If they don’t practice traditional fishing, that knowledge dies with them.
I started The Walk of Remembrance in Kalk Bay to remember the history of the marginalisation of the area’s fishing community, but it meant revisiting our painful past, which was emotionally taxing. So, a year later, I took a month off.
Image: Getaway Gallery / October 2024
I bought myself a freediving course for my 45th birthday. My lodgers had given me a wetsuit, and a friend had encouraged me to go snorkelling among the kelp at Surfer’s Corner with gully sharks. My father was a fisherman who taught me to revere the ocean, and I’d never experienced depths where my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I’d been snorkelling for a while and was curious about what was deeper. I felt free when freediving because I didn’t have to think about my worries. I concentrated on my breath hold, it was quiet, and I saw schools of fish I’d harvested on the rocks, eaten my entire childhood and seen dead at the harbour without knowing what they were. I bought books and started researching what I’d seen.
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I wanted kids from my community to see those animals and grow to love the ocean as I had. I knew they had access to the tidal pools but not the sea because their parents didn’t freedive or snorkel. So, I started the Fisher Child Projekt, an NGO that has taught around 20 children from my community snorkelling and freediving. Six youths between 18 and 23 are certified freedivers through Argonaut Science and have first aid certificates. Two of them are studying marine science. I have a licence to introduce children to the lost art of harvesting at Cape Point Reserve.
What happens when you love the sea is that you become a custodian. I’m helping my community remember who they are: their cultural practices, painful but beautiful pasts and their connection to each other, the land and the sea. That’s justice work.
This article was written by Lisa Abdellah for Getaway’s October 2024 print edition. Find us on shelves for more!
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