The day I met a fisherman

I'm writing this down, just in case, as something seems a bit odd about it.

I had a fitful night of sleep, woken every few minutes by trucks and buses and cars hooting their horns outside my window, so rose from my bed too late for any breakfast. With nothing planned for today I decided to walk the 20 minutes or so to the Marina Public Beach which is at the end of the street I am staying on. At the end of the street is a statue to Ghandi.

It's a huge beach, with not too many people on it. Lots of old fishing boats on the right hand end of it looking out to sea. I wandered along the waters edge to where the boats were. Lots of crabs were darting in and out of holes in the sand. The sea edge was full of discarded debris, old plastic bottles and as I neared the fishing boats lots of piles of human excrement... yuk. The fishermen have no where else to go.



I took a few photos of the boats and as I was turning to leave a man of about 30years old called out to me and came running over to shake me by the hand and ask me where I was from. He told me he was called Vinu. He seemed very articulate for an uneducated fisherman and explained he had been at University but had to go back to fishing to provide income for his family as he was the oldest. He asked me my name and we had a bit of a chat about fishing and he explained that the Tsunami had reached the shores here and taken the lives of several fisherman and destroyed their tents and boats. He himself had been injured and he showed me a big scar on his leg.

I asked him if I could take a picture of him to remind me of our meeting and the place. He said of course. Can you email it to me? At this point I started to think something didn't add up. He'd told me he lived here with the boats so it seemed unlikely that he had an email address. Anyway I said I would and wrote down his email address and a phone number in my phone.

We chatted for about 5 minutes and he seemed a decent chap. He said he wanted to meet up with me and for his family to meet me. At which point I decided it was time to move on. He asked me if it was "OK if I call you at your hotel?" - I made some lame excuse that I was meeting with colleagues. Now I feel a bit stupid. I always assume people are honest but a few times now have been caught out by my trusting nature and hope this time I haven't done something silly by giving away information about where I am staying.