Old Dream 5 - Africa

I dreamed I was an African tribesman back in the later part of the era of European colonialism.  I feel that I was somewhere on the eastern coast of Africa, possibly across from Madagascar. 

I was on the beach, being forced by my chief and his spear-wielding enforcers to swim out into the ocean and gather some sort of rare sea herb. Apparently the last few men to attempt this were swallowed up by the ocean, which had grown hungry for human flesh.  This puzzled me, as in the distance I could see a bunch of British people playing golf out in the water.  The fact that they had invented an aquatic form of the sport was somehow not so puzzling to me (though in retrospect it IS odd because I didn't know they had ESPN2 back then) as the fact that the malevolent sea was not trying to kill them as it had my fellow tribesman. 

I scaled down the cliff to the beach as my chief sat on a lawnchair sipping a fancy drink and shouting half-hearted encouragements. As I approached the ocean, it beckoned me closer in a way that was far more enticing that frightening, as it should have been.

The next thing I remember I was scaling back up the cliff with the herb tucked under my arm. The sea had risen and was lapping at my back, whispering eagerly for me to let go and fall back into its embrace. As I reached the top, the chief ran to the edge and was commanding me to toss the herb up to him. I reached up, grabbed his leg and threw him to the ocean.  No longer hungry, it receded back out to the horizon.

Fortunately the chief's enforcers did not require vengeance. I can only assume they were happy to see him gone. As I headed back to village, I saw the sea-golfers returning from their game. I asked one how it had gone. "Not well, I'm afraid. Several people drowned!" Pfft. Stupid white people.