November 25

Above: The view of the Indian Ocean from our Zanzibar hotel (Note - Drunken Irish idiot singing national anthem not pictured)

With a history of claustrophobia from when I was young (although it has not been put to the test in recent years), scuba diving was always something I decided I would leave to other people. 12m underwater with a little mouthpiece to breathe through? No chance.
But in the spirit of this journey, I decided I would try anything once and psyched myself up to face another big fear of mine. The evening before, we had done a little course in water shallow enough to stand, breathing techniques and dealing with emergency situations, after which I actually felt quite comfortable and excited. We were then given a book to read overnight which must be read by any learning divers. The book wasn't too comforting. It went through the science of diving and going metres and metres under water, warning that if one held their breath at all when under, they were likely to die, while one also had to hold their nose and mouth and blow to 'equalise' every half a metre, to stop their head from bursting! It's quite a lot to take on for someone who is already just shit-scared of being 40 seconds under water with no quick escape - if you inflate your jacket while under and fly up towards the surface, you may well die from 'the bends'.
So our boat drove out for an hour and a half to he reef. The first dive, I was a little nervous at the start and found the breathing a little difficult, but eventually got over it with the help of my teacher and we descended to the surface, seeing some incredible fish, getting a few pics on an underwater camera and even finding someone's recently dropped camera at the bottom! We went to depths of about 10m or so and I was feeling relatively comfortable for the 45 minutes or so we were under.
The second dive, however, was not such plain-sailing. It started off OK but as it went on, I began to feel that I was breathing in more and more water with my air. There are two techniques to rid water from your mask and I tried both various times. When the water failed to clear (sometimes taking more in) I began to panic, calling my instructor and trying to communicate to him the problem. Of course, when you can't talk to each other it's hard to specify what exactly was going on, but he again signalled to breathe slowly and calmly, which helped briefly before I began to take in more water. At this stage I was absolutely overwhelmed by fear (while also noting the irony that my passing from this life may be caused by a condition which shares the same name as my favourite Radiohead album!). The instructor handed me the back-up regulator mask and told me to switch but at this stage I was worried that I would hold my breath during the switch and suffer a collapsed lung, so I signalled that I couldn't do it. I was still breathing OK but the water was still there and putting my mind completely off-track. The instructor asked if I wanted to go up, I said I would be OK for the moment as I didn't want to end the two other lads' session early, but a minute later I signalled that I wanted to go up. I had worked myself into too much of a panic that I knew I couldn't continue comfortably. It was quite an ordeal.
Nevertheless, we were under water for 42 minutes on the second dive and would have been coming up only a couple of minutes later but I was still disappointed by the experience, if a little proud that I had at least given it a shot. I do plan to hopefully give it another shot in Malawi or Asia, but I decided I would skip another go tomorrow in Zanzibar and instead spend the day chilling and not worrying about dying of asphyxiation!