The girl and the dolphins

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Survival is a constant battle in Africa. Many – perhaps most – Africans struggle to survive against one thing or another. Hunger, factional warfare, pestilence like malaria and tuberculosis. And, most recently, AIDS.

Generally, they are perceptible dangers. This is not about those. This is about survival against the elements and the odds and the unknown which, on the Dark Continent, lurks in manifold shadows.

Years ago, in Mozambique, I interviewed a young Portuguese girl who had an astounding tale to tell about survival. So astounding was it that I did not at first believe her. But, after checking her story against unequivocal facts, I had to accept that she was telling the truth.

She was sailing on a yacht with her parents on the edge of the Mozambique Channel, north of the island on Inhaca, when a freak storm struck. The vessel was swamped and sank before the family could secure their lifejackets or inflate the rubber dinghy.

The 13-year-old girl found herself alone in the ocean. She tried to swim but had no idea where the land lay. All she knew was that it was very far.

Exhausted and barely conscious, she suddenly discovered that she was being transported through the water. Several porpoises, bottle-nosed dolphins, had come to her rescue, bearing her weight as they swam.

The porpoises seemed to know precisely where they were headed. They nudged her against a navigational buoy and continued to swim around her while she clung to it. Then they left.

The buoy was in the middle of the main shipping channel east of Lourenco Marques, now Maputo. Not two hours later, the girl was spotted by the crew of a fishing boat and taken aboard.

Port authorities in Lourenco Marques had received a Mayday signal from the yacht before it sank. The skipper, the girl’s father, gave a position ten miles north-east of where she was found on the buoy. There was no way she could have swum that distance, in those seas, unassisted.

From One Man’s Africa