Our first morning in Bulungula was the start of The Very Bad Smell.
It was a briny and acrid scent, kind of like fish and garbage and feces, all tinged with the sourness of death.
A man from the village explained simply, “Dead whale.” He said it with a shrug, as if it happened all the time.
“Oh, of course,” I said. I shrugged in return and nodded, as if I should have known better.
The mammal had washed on the beach about three weeks before that, but it had taken some time for the decay and bacteria to form an horrible stew.
The villagers pillaged this gift from the sea, sawing off layers of fat, meat, bone. The rest of the carcass remained next to the surf, all rotting blubber and organs, bleached by the sun, washed by the waves, slowly returning to the ocean — a massive beast turned smudge on the shore.
The Very Bad Smell wriggled its way into our huts when the wind blew a certain direction, which, thankfully was not often. When it did, I only shrugged, as if being downwind from a gutted whale corpse was just a typical part of my life.
No Comments