Lifeguards & rugby for girls?
Xmas Morning – 9.45 a.m. Hawaii Shack
The tide is up and it is very calm. A few early swimmers are enjoying a cool swim while on the horizon a couple of small pleasure boats with eager tourists are heading south towards the Sal River in search of Dolphins.
The new and now ubiquitous lifeguards bring out their
Lifeguard - busy doing nothing
paraphernalia: a seat perched on a ladder, a large surf board and a red flag on a long pole. The ministry of tourism with much hype, have introduced over 180 new lifeguards to the beaches of Goa along with walkie-talkies and numerous Maruti red jeeps. I am not sure where the new recruits have been trained or if they have been trained at all. Most of them (and they are all men) are just five feet tall and probably weigh 60Kgs at most. They would be absolutely useless in trying to save a flailing, panicking, large and overweight tourist like myself. In truth, they are not there to save the Western tourists, most of whom can swim. They have been brought in to stop Indian tourists from out of state from drowning themselves. Most of them cannot swim. It is quite often a humorous spectacle observing their antics in the sea. The men strip to their underwear and the unfortunate women have to go in fully clothed. They often walk in hand-in-hand to about just over knee height. As the waves knock them over they get up with much screaming and shouting, then the next wave knocks them over again and again and again…… you get the picture! The drowning normally occurs when groups of drunken men just show off and go out too deep. The Goan Minister of Tourism claims, to counter the great expense to the state, that it has been a great success, with over forty lives saved already. I find this statement really hard to believe because since we have been here the sea has virtually been like a mill-pond.
There is a more sinister side to the introduction of the lifeguards and their jeeps. The lifeguards inform the police on the whereabouts of the beach sellers and the jeeps are being used to transport the overweight ‘plods’ to their hard-working prey. The sellers are ever watchful. When a red jeep is spotted, they often hide their goods under the sun-beds of compliant tourists and they lift the bottom of their saris a little and run away to the back of the shacks in a wave of flapping colour. Two days ago I witnessed them getting caught by the police. The police used their wooden sticks (called lathis), hitting them on the legs and feet to get them into the jeep. They let one girl go free because she is pregnant but they still confiscated her goods.
Xmas eve was a quiet affair for us – another excellent meal at the Meridian and then home to bed for 10.30p.m. I slept really well thanks to large port and brandies but TG was kept awake by the setting off of very loud firecrackers which continued until well after 8.00a.m. the next morning.
The rumours of terrorism and supposed terrorist are still circulating yet the Indian State Minister for Goa has said that Goa is safe and there are no intelligence reports indicating that Goa is a target.
Thurs 26th
We met an interesting girl yesterday who was sat next to us in the Hawaii shack. She had both knees strapped and she was using a longhi (sarong) which was wrapped her outstretched feet to do so exercises to strengthen her legs. TG was curious as she had been doing similar exercises earlier in the year after her operation on her ankle. The girl was from Indiana and was in India working out a two year contract teaching PE in a school in a small town south of the Himalayas. Here knee was strapped after ligament damage playing rugby. Apparently, rugby is very popular in the Mid-West!! Conversation turned to events in America and she informed us that ‘everyone she knows is excited and hopeful’ about the forthcoming Obama presidency. I hope for all our sakes she is not disappointed.
