Scuba diving is quite an adventure
In Summary
Exploring the fascinating underwater world of the Indian Ocean is such a thrilling experience. However, it takes guts to unleash your adventurous side.
There are some sports that should be a preserve for the strong-hearted, for you can only play them if you’re deeply adventurous or never listed cowardice as one of your downsides. But again this shouldn’t suffocate your adventurous side.
Scuba diving is one such sport and to tell you that I enjoyed it, given its dare-devil nature, I risk sounding like I’m self-praising, so I will carry on with my tales. Well, as our lead boatman Juma Omari, from Charlie Claw’s diving team, begins the brief, everyone is all ears.
“This is a dive to the floor of the oceans,” Juma announces in his introductory brief and goes silent as he smiles, studying his guests. The crowd thirsting for the underwater adventure grew thinner. “I will do it,” Hillary confidently went forward.
The bigger number, all journalist friends, chickened out for the obvious reason, they couldn’t swim. “I will teach you how to breathe in and out while in the water,” Juma reassures us as he illustrates with a deep water costume of plastic and cloth complete with face-mask fitted with oxygen tubes.
“While in the water, we can use oxygen both on top and within the water so we can stay longer underwater,” he goes on. Juma is a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) instructor who tells us that he started out as an open water instructor.
“I caution you that if you’re asthmatic or have breathing problem then you’re free not to scuba dive,” he adds. “Scuba diving”, Moses one of the journalists says out loud, at a missed chance because he loves his cigarette. Scuba diving was already more like slang in our circles for naughty connotations of course, so we all burst out laughing.
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“Do we have more participants,” Juma asks in his light-hearted disposition, trying to encourage even the most nervous first time diver to explore the fascinating world under the water.
“Don’t worry, as long as you know where the coral reefs are, it’s all good,” Juma attempts for the last time to encourage the hesitant spectators.
When ready, the scuba divers made one big dive 25 metres deep into the blue fairly chilly waters. Oh what a feeling! Just across on another boat, are experienced foreign tourists who freely dive into the waters.
An hour later, the tales were rich from excitement. “Guys you have missed a once-in-a-life opportunity. It is not that hard after all. I have seen them all, all tribes of fish, the orange ones, the green ones, red ones. These are the fish you will only watch on National Geographic,” a visibly thrilled Hillary shares as he catches his breath, immediately after removing his face-mask and water gaggles.
“Andrew, please prepare for me my camera. I need to sign off from down here in these cool waters, man,” he adds, tactfully moving his hands on top of the water for buoyancy. “Scuba is short for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. It’s fun down there,” he laughs amidst his sign-off. “Cut,” he bellows.
The beautiful Indian Ocean will never leave you the same. Finally, the team, Barbra, Moses, ‘uncle’ Michael, Nisha, Andrew, Regina our host from Air Uganda and Robert all tried to overcome their fears and made their modest dive into the gigantic fresh water body and swam across. It doesn’t matter whether you know how to swim or not, the Charlie Claw’s diving team make your boat cruise, swim in the ocean or scuba diving an experience to remember.
by Joseph
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