the beach - that way?

If you turn right when leaving the gated compound that my house is in you can follow the road past shacks and abandoned buildings until you reach the cement block makers. Veer left and continue through the tiny collection of ramshackle homes and past a few other block-making groups. Eventually you’ll wander past children who shout hello and wave excitedly seeking your acknowledgement. You will have seen a glimpse of the beach at this point but still the path is not a direct one. Asking locals they all point in the same direction, same as the way you’ve been heading, but their explanation that you can just follow the path isn’t proving as easy as it sounds. Choosing your route based on what looks like a main road, as opposed to a path that leads to someone’s back door, you eventually stumble upon a narrow, well-worn path. After the first couple above-ground cement burial boxes that you pass you think it was just a fluke, but within moments you are travelling down this windy, narrow trail through a graveyard that contains perhaps a hundred or more above-ground cement tombs. It is a well-worn path so the safe assumption is that you’re not venturing down a taboo road of sorts. The beach is not far off now and just past the graves you arrive to stares from young and old. It’s obvious that neither you nor your two local escorts are carrying food to sell, a hand-made canoe for fishing, or have the necessities for weaving fishing nets – you don’t belong here. This is the beach. Waters of the Atlantic crash into the shore with such velocity that it seems an amazing feat for the fishermen to navigate their canoes out to sea and miraculously back to shore. Children lie on the beach and laugh as the waves roll them all around while serious undercurrents display their force not far away. The journey back is not as adventuresome; you head straight to the main paved road, make a left and follow it to the familiar vendors where you make another left. Navigating the dirt road that leads to your home, within the gated compound with its barbed-wire along the top of the walls, is still a journey. The rainy season is just ending and the road has three mini-lakes of murky water that spread the entire width.