When Work Met the Tide
As the day broke,
the sun shone bright,
surely, whoever was in charge of sunlight
was working overtime.
The morning found us at work,
our hands moving from propagules
to seedlings,
from preparation to planting,
each mangrove finding its place
in the soil that would one day hold a forest.
Dick, Tom and Harry were all excited,
not merely planting trees,
but restoring a forest
one seedling at a time.
With every propagule we prepared,
and every seedling we planted,
the island taught us something,
that mangroves were more than trees,
that their roots held more than soil,
and that their silence spoke
for an environment worth protecting.
But as the days folded into one another,
the work we had come for
slowly approached its end.
And as the old saying goes,
all work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.
So when the afternoon sun softened,
we traded our tools for the sea.
We swam,
played along the beach,
laughed until the day's labour
felt like a distant memory.
Then came Pastor Kagoto,
our local captain,
whose boat seemed to carry
more than passengers.
Some of us would quietly follow,
one by one,
as though joining a secret expedition.
But this was no ordinary voyage.
The boat became our stage,
folk songs filling the air,
poems crossing the waves,
and sudden stops along the channel
turning strangers into dancers.
And somewhere between the songs
and the laughter,
Pastor Kagoto would introduce
some of his new friends
to the local brewery,
where freshly harvested mnazi
waited to tell its own story.
By day,
we restored the island.
By afternoon,
the island restored us.
And somewhere between
the mangroves, the music,
the saltwater and the laughter,
we began to realise-
our time on the island
was running out.
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