BOTTLE & LIZA

Liza’s great uncle bought a farm in Nanyuki, in Kenya’s Rift Valley in the 1930s. Fifty years later her mother took her sister Emma to visit him. Emma decided to stay, she had met David, the man who was to become her husband. A few years later, when Liza flew out to see Emma, she too met a man who was to become her husband. Liza not only fell in love with Willy but also with the country, with it’s remoteness, it’s night skies and the sense of danger, where even daily walks were charged with the electrifying threat of being on something’s menu. Liza and Willy’s existence was simple, two wells served the island of Kiwaiyu where they lived. They fished to eat, catching tuna and dorado, sharing it with friends in the local village. Closer to shore they swam in the coral gardens, their eyes trained to pick out octopuses camouflaged against the rocks. It was here that Liza spotted her bottle, it’s neck decorated with a ruff of coral. The bottle is perfectly intact, gauging it’s age by the slow growing coral Liza estimates it must have been sixty years old when she found it.

04 Dec 2011