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Published: March 7th 2006
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Last Wednesday night, I went out with my friend Dan, his cousin of 27 years, Caito, and his other cousin who is 32, Neno to fish from the shore with these huge fishing poles. I have never been a fan of fishing anywhere but in open sea. In the open sea you get huge fish that bite left and right, but anywhere else it reminds me more of Tom Sawyer sleeping at the river´s edge than of an MTV reality show where the kids pull up fish one clip after the next - no patience involved. So, we planted the fold out chairs on the beach, dug the holes for the rods and cast as far as possible out into the pitch dark where the only notable difference between the sky and the sea is the lack of brilliance in the reflection of the stars that bounce of the water. We sat and joked around and nothing. No fish, nothing. After 3 hours of nothing but thoughts while looking into the heavens, we made one last cast and caught an eel. He/she (you choose) was a foot log of pure ugliness and hissing squirming violence. After trying to get it off
the line for 10 minutes, we finally just cut it in half killing it immediately. The tail dropped into the sand and kept moving as if it was swimming in the water from about 2 minutes until it final stiffened.
We returned home as hunters with our heads hung low and sure enough we bore the brunt of the jokes from everyone in the family. Neno is quite a proud guy, especially when it comes to fishing, and such a poor outing he was determined to return home another day with food for dinner. So, on Thursday at 3:30P we arranged for a boat to pick us up from the beach and to take us off into the bay where we would fish until 11PM. The entire trip cost us $15 USD a piece. We had to supply all the bait and tackle, but Neno had all this so that presented no problem.
There is an interesting side note to this trip. Neno, the determined fisherman, is blind. Neno was born with normal vision just like most of us, but at age 24 he was driving his girlfriend home and as he slowed down to pass over some
railroad tracks, two guys pulled up in a motorcycle and shot him in the head. The bullet went in the left side and out the right side just behind his eyes. He was lucky to walk away with his life but the nervous tissue that allows you to see way destroyed. All he remembers is feeling the holes in the side of his face and hearing his girlfriend scream behind the high pitch of the constant noise that rang in his ears from the gunshot. It was interesting to find out he, like my other friend who was shot, didn´t any pain. Neno is now married to another woman, the girlfriend left him a few months after the accident, and he has a 5 year-old son who is beautiful. He has never seen his son and Neno constantly asks him to sit down beside his father so that Neno can pass his hands over his son´s face. He has hope in microchips like the ones being developed at MIT and in stem cell research to restore his vision.
As you can tell from fishing, this has not stopped Neno one bit. In fact after our unlucrative outting on Tuesday,
it was Neno who really put the pedal to the metal in arranging a boat for Thursday afternoon. As we arrived to the beach Thursday afternoon, there was a blue and white boat with the paint peeling off the side waiting for us about 30 yards out in the water. After waving and yelling, the skipper finally saw us and beached the boat into the sand for us to climb aboard. Along with the three of us that had gone out on Tuesday night, Dan´s uncle also came along to help out. Neno chose the fishing spots since he knew the habor best but it seemed like it took us forever to get out to the first spot. As we began to ask how much longer, Neno just chuckled and kept saying - We´re almost there.
Finally, we reach the first of the 5 different spots where we would end up finishing. It took a while for the first hit, but after about 45 minutes I pulled up the first fish and from then on every 30 minutes or so someone pulled up something. At 11 P we returned to the beach we had originally left from with a styrofoam (isopor) container containing 17 fish, of which I had caught 7. Yes, the foreign who generally dislikes fishing had caught the most fish! Beginnner´s luck. Sure, but I also tried to develop a fishing technique in order to improve my ability to feel what was going on at the end of my line. I think it paid off.
This time we arrived home to eyes of awe and few jokes. Well, of course they had to make jokes about something...who had caught the smallest fish and that the foreigner had beat everyone else. But the most impressive of all was the way that Neno could do everything without seeing anything. He would grab the fish off the line, rebait his line, and he even cleaned the fish. Just makes you realize once again how much life is about desire and attitude and perhaps much less about ability.
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Alexhica
non-member comment
Que emoción!
Aunque ya estoy tarde no puedo dejarte decirte que estoy muy emocionada de leer lo bien que te va, te vas a reir pero hasta ganas de llorar tengo, es que todo lo que cuentas es demasiado bueno y las fotos igual. Así que estoy pensando mucho en tengo que ir al Carnaval de Rio, no me puedo perder ese espectáculo. Y nada, disfruta el tiempo que te queda y eso si cuidate mucho. =*