Jonathan Morgan, Clovelly
On Friday February 24, the day after my 63rd birthday, I was the first person to lay down footprints in the sand, which is my daily practice on Clovelly Beach.
It was still dark, with orange just appearing in the sky, and at my feet, I noticed an object where the surf meets the sand. I picked it up and immediately saw that it was a message in a bottle.
The bottle was a 12cm-long glass cylinder with a cork, and inside was a rolled-up piece of paper tied with a ribbon.
I put it in my pocket to be opened and read at home. I then continued my walk with my dog, Jembe, went for my swim and drove home, full of curiosity about what the message in the bottle might say.
Would it be deeply meaningful to me? Would it say just what I needed to hear right now at this time in this place?
I also wondered how long the bottle had been in the ocean? Had it been released yesterday or 100 years ago? How far had it travelled? Where had it been released? On the same beach or on a distant shore on another continent?
At the kitchen table, my wife, Kyoko, and I opened the bottle. The cork had become water logged and brittle and was difficult to remove. With a screwdriver we prized it off. We unrolled the paper, which was damp, but the writing was clearly legible.
It filled the page, and we soon realised that it was a message from a young woman to a young man, Eth, who had died.
We read how Eth had bright orange hair, wore flip flops and board shorts, had an amazing personality, was very kind and how much the writer of the message missed Eth and how life was a struggle without him in her world.
We also learned that she had waited nine months before writing this message and letting it go in the ocean.
On Google, I searched for “Ethan dies, Cape Town” and read on the UCT website about the death of student Ethan Minnaar, 22, in a car accident on Thursday August 19, 2021.
Mr Minnaar was a final-year BSc student. He will be remembered as a vibrant, witty, joyful and genuine individual who had immaculate fashion sense and music taste.
He had a smile that would light up the room, and his laugh was contagious. He was always there for his friends during their good and bad times.
He was a talented young person whose death is devastatingly premature.
If the writer of the message in the bottle had written the message nine months after Ethan died (in May 2022), this meant that the bottle had floated around in the ocean for another nine months. Nine months, the time it takes for a baby to develop in the womb.
I don’t know if it was chance or fate that I found this deeply moving and deeply personal message to Ethan, but I do know that if I had written and released it into the sea and someone had found it nine months later, I might want to know this.
Maybe you want to re-read your message, maybe you want to add to it, maybe you want to re-release it into the ocean?
To the writer of this message in a bottle, if you read this letter in the False Bay Echo, just know your message turned up on Clovelly Beach, half way to the Fish Hoek side, and if you want it back, please contact me at 083 256 2221.