Jamila How I met Jamila of the Wild Coast When I was seven, my grandparents Louis and Aggie Symonds hosted some distant relatives from South Africa. Since I was raised on Babar, the charming French tale of an elephant king who learns the ways of humankind and dons suits and hats, and whose mischievous monkey friends live in adorable tree-houses, I was unprepared for the sophisticated urban look of our visitors. Instead of explorer hats and jungle gear, my cousin Nigel had on the typical outfit of a schoolboy from the Jewish community of Johannesburg: Spats and suspenders, short tweed pants and cap, not at all what I expected. He was shy. I was shy too, but intrigued. I had always imagined lions, giraffes and spear-wielding natives would be the principal inhabitants of the "jungles of South Africa." Here was a boy my age, but looking so different from the rough and tumble boys I knew in Providence, Rhode Island.

Many years later, long after apartheid was fortunately overthrown (awarding my moral conscience with the right to visit), I finally had the opportunity to go see South Africa for myself. The bustling metropolis of Johannesburg was exciting for a few days, but my heart cried out for the more remote regions, for the outposts far from the smoke and hustle of citified ways. And so it was that I journeyed to the Eastern tip of South Africa, drawn by its very name: The Wild Coast. I was not disappointed. There, steep cliffs bejewelled with waterfalls plunge into unpredictable waters. Exotic birds fling multicolored wings across the panorama, crying to the sea creatures below. Sunsets create a light show across the vast wild scene and tinge the pastel walls and thatched huts of the Xhosa people with magic fire. Waves crash on rock formations that jut like abandoned statues above the turbulence, hardened witnesses to all the many tradeships that have gone down to watery death throughout the centuries. The Wild Coast has earned its name.

After a warm welcome from my Xhosa hosts who told me of the early days of Nelson Mandela (for this was his first home), I took a swim mid-day in a broad inlet, enclosed in such a way as to make the waves more gentle than farther-out-to-sea would offer. As I splashed about, I suddenly heard a bubble-sound and someone speaking to me in Mermaid Tongue, "Where are you from, pale woman, and where is your tail?" Startled, I began to swim away when all of a sudden, laughing, the African Mermaid (for that is what she was) began to beckon me with a gesture that I soon would recognize as a form of playful mimicry: Her cupped hands poured forth a fountain of waterdrops, in imitation of the waterfalls trickling like diamond necklaces across the cliffs behind her. I spoke haltingly, unaccustomed to the bubble-click of her African dialect (so like the clicking tongue of the Xhosa language spoken by my hosts): "What is your name?" And so it was that I met Jamila of the Wild Coast. (Jamila means "beautiful" and it fits her quite well, don't you think?)

This was my first encounter with an African Mermaid and what I was to learn that afternoon was that bitter or drunken survivors of the Wild Coast shipwrecks had not told the tale right --- they had blamed mermaids for dragging their companions down to the deep, whereas the real truth was that many a Wild Coast mermaid had been injured trying to save sailors or had been rammed by boats when venturing close to warn of impending storms or rocky outcrops hidden in the fog. I vowed to Jamila that I would set the record straight! It was then that she allowed me to sketch her warm smile and capture the cupped fountain of oceanwater gracefully falling from her fingers. Where had she gotten the headdress, I asked? "It's a secret", she winked. "Oh, alright," she repented, "it's from a little girl in the tribe that I saved from a whirlpool. She's a Mother now and has forgotten all about it." A small tear appeared in Jamila's left eye or was it a bit of ocean water? After that I put my sketch pad back on the beach and the two of us laughed and jostled in the gentle waves of the inlet, content just to smile and enjoy silence. I have learned that it is best to ask a Mermaid only one or two questions at a time....