Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a big girl named Kaia. Kaia was a strong student with an interest in science and also a talented amateur musician. Her auntie was a fashion designer who made beautiful dresses in bold, bright colors. Her designs were locally famous and customers would come from all over South Africa and even beyond to purchase custom dresses from her for important occasions like birthday parties, weddings, balls, state dinners, and even quinceañeras and bat mitzvahs. 

Well, once afternoon Kaia was sitting at the Glencairn Wetland practicing her guitar when a tune came to her that was very pretty and a little sad, and had a quality that echoed in her head even after she played. The tune made her feel very present in her body and connected with the beautiful place around her. 

She sat and closed her eyes and played it for a long time and as she played the thought about all of the beautiful places in the world, about her dreams and hopes for her own life, and about the water and about how everywhere we go and everything we do we always have some connection to water whether it’s a chatty stream, a rich bog, a crystal clear mountain lake or the dew in the grass when we step outside on a cool spring morning. She played for so long that she felt her song surround her and stretch out and connect her with the world around her like the water does. After a long time she stopped and opened her eyes and there was a peace and stillness in her heart. 

As she sat she noticed before her a beautiful woman sitting in the water. Her hair was long and flowing like waves and her dark skin was lustrous and almost blue like the deepest ocean. As she looked Kaia gasped as she noticed the woman had a beautiful finned tail covered in luminous scales in all the colors of the ocean - some green, some blue, some the deepest black, some white like pearls or pink like shells, some the nutty color of sand. The woman who had been listening to Kaia play was a mermaid. They gazed at each other for a long moment and then the mermaid dove into the water and was gone with a splash, leaving hardly a ripple on the surface of the water. 

From then on every day in the quiet part of the afternoon just as it slipped into evening Kaia would go to that spot and play the song. Sometimes she would see the mermaid and sometimes not, but always she felt her presence. 

One day when Kaia arrived to play the was surprised to see that the mermaid was already there waiting, and that she was holding a parcel wrapped in a bundle of of kelp, which she held out toward Kaia. 

“Thank you for your music,” said the mermaid. “It makes me think of the water and of how we are all connected. This is something humans don’t often understand, especially one so young. I have been inspired to see your feeling for the water expressed so eloquently in your music.”

“Thank you,” said Kaia. “At school we have been learning about the water cycle - how water from the ocean evaporates to form clouds and falls on our lands bringing us life, and how it is returned to the ocean by way of rivers, lakes and streams. I like coming here to the wetland to play because I’ve learned that wetlands remove pollutants and excess nutrients from the water before it returns to the ocean. Everything here seems so still but in many ways this is where the ocean talks to the land. The ocean is so vast and deep I find it almost hard to imagine but here I feel a connection to everything.”

“Music is important to us in the water just as it is to you on land,” the mermaid said. From the whale’s song to the singing of the water nymphs, music is how we communicate and how we express our connectedness through water. It pleases me to hear you feel the same way.?

The mermaid continued, “You must have learned that as more people come to Capetown and the city grows and develops, there are dangers to the watershed that forms the beautiful and important connection between the earth and the sea and feeds the health of land dwellers and ocean dwellers alike. Mermaids like me do not usually show ourselves to humans but I see in your a kindred spirit who wants to understand our delicate ecosystem and who has a way to express how everything is connected through music.”

The mermaid continued, “One week from today there is a concert for all the sea creatures - from the mermaids and sea nymphs to whales, dolphins, stingrays and crabs right to the humble sea snail. We would like to invite you to this concert to share your music and to hear ours. This will help you understand us better and to speak for us among your people, to help them find ways to live and grow that keep both of our worlds healthy.”

“We have brought you this cloth, made from the sea - the same fabric that we mermaids and nymphs use for our beautiful clothing, so that you can make yourself a beautiful garment to wear to the concert. And we have brought you this magic conch shell. If you hold this to your mouth, you will be able to breathe as normal under water. If you choose to join us at the concert meet me here in one week’s time and I you will accompany me as my guest.”

Kaia was overwhelmed and overjoyed by this chance to experience the beauty and the music of the sea and to deepen her understanding of the place she lived. She gratefully accepted the mermaid’s gift and went straight to her Auntie’s house for help making her outfit for the concert. 

But Kaia’s auntie was skeptical. The fabric appeared a dull, dry, brown and coarse - not at all like the vibrant wax fabrics she was used to working with for her high fashion designs. Surely, she thought, a beautiful mermaid electing a young girl as a musical emissary from the human world would give her something more impressive to wear. This fabric looked like old burlap or desiccated seaweed. But Kaia’s auntie loved her very much and so chose to humor her and play along. “Of course lovely,” she said, “I will make you a dazzling outfit for your concert with the mermaids. Why don’t you choose a fabric from the rolls I have here? So many lovely colors - this one is turquoise and yellow, like the ocean as the sun shines upon it. Or this one, deepest blue with vibrant greens like the sea. Leave me that old brown cloth and choose one of these for your garment.”

Kaia looked around in wonder at all the beautiful prints in her auntie’s shop. The brown one did look rather dull by comparison and she wondered how she would look beside the luminous mermaid and her multicolored tale wearing an outfit of such drab brown. But the fabric from the mermaid was a gift given with love. It might be the result of the mermaid’s own hard work or her friends, and it was a symbol of the friendship they bore her. She would not insult them by declining to use their gift. She thanked her auntie but insisted that they must use the brown fabric from the seaweed bundle. Her auntie, artist that we was, made from it a lovely flowing dress and a wrap for Kaia’s hair. Although the color was dull, they felt light and easy on and Kaia was happy to wear them for the concert. 

At the agreed time Kaia went to her spot in the wetlands, and the mermaid was there looking resplendent in her shining tail and an equally shimmering top and headwrap. Kaia felt a bit shy of her own outfit but put those thoughts aside as the mermaid showed her how to hold the conch shell by her mouth and breathe through it. Hand in hand they swam out from the wetland and into the saltier water of the ocean. Along the way Kaia could see bits of trash and rubble that impeded the flow of water, and saw how the wetland looked less healthy in those areas. 

Arriving at the concert Kaia had never imagined such an array of beautiful and glistening sea creatures. She saw majestic old whales, scarred from encounters with Orcas and with boats. Sleek dolphins, ever curious. Crabs carrying the most remarkable array of shells as homes, and a few that had taken bits of trash - a bottle cap, a soup can - as their houses. Everyone was so beautiful and vibrant she again felt a pang of shyness but then, glancing down at her brown dress she saw that in the water it had taken on a whole rainbow of colors and was as shimmering and variegated as the mermaid’s beautiful tail. This kind of fabric, she thought, must need water to bring it alive. Everything does. In that moment she felt acutely aware of her own dependence on healthy rivers, streams and oceans.

In the music that evening Kaia heard the joy of the sea creatures and the connection they felt to one another. She saw nymphs singing haunting melodies while dolphins and crabs accompanied with rhythmic clacking and whales with their low song. And she felt their sadness over the things that did not feel right in their world. She could hear the drilling of an offshore oil rig in the far distance introducing a note of danger and menace. Could see the occasional evidence of human pollution - a dolphin dragging a bit of fish net, a turtle stuck in the plastic holder from a six pack of soda, interrupting the otherwise joyful sight of so many highly complex and interdependent creatures gathered together to celebrate their connected roles in this under water ecosystem. Walking among them, breathing underneath the water like they do and shimmering as they do in the dress made from the fabric they had given her, she felt more acutely than ever how precious they were and how delicate the balance that allowed them to coexist with humans like her who live in and around vitally important watersheds but rarely get to see inside. 

That night at the concert in the sea Kaia vowed to herself that she would learn everything she could about water and oceans and to use her music to connect not just with creatures of the sea but with other humans as well, to share what she had learned and to help others feel connected as she did now to this vast and beautiful but delicate world. When it was her turn to play her guitar for the sea creatures she played something like the tune she had always played for the mermaid but with some new notes added. The beautiful sadness of the song was still there but there were also notes of hope and resolve as Kaia began to imagine what she could do to help preserve and protect the water and its beautiful mysteries. The sea creatures listening felt the sadness of the tune but also the hope, and they began to feel that all that came from land was not just garbage and danger but that there was also love and care, and they felt hopeful. 

From that day on, whenever Kaia went out to view rivers and streams or to check on the health of the wetland she always wore her brown dress, and if some water splashed on it as she was removing a piece of litter the beautiful rainbow colors would remind her of the sea concert and of all the creatures that depend on us to protect the health of our rivers and streams.