It feels like I have spent the past few weeks at summer camp! I got to hang out with my friends all day and play in the water, while teaching life saving skills. The day the school year ended (I teach middle/ high school English online during the school year), I hopped on a redeye to The Caribbean for three weeks- part volunteer swim outreach/ part vacation. I’m exhausted! As I enter the next decade of my life, I can’t believe that I am able to weave all of the things I care about into a life with purpose. Being able to educate, connect, empower, travel, and laugh- all at the same time- is truly wonderful. This was my fifth international swim outreach and my second time on the island of Eleuthera in The Bahamas. This year there were four of us: Me (SwimKim Shults), Alissa Magrum (Alissa Magrum Consulting), Peri Kowal, and Courtney Kline (Swim4Life, CO). We packed up our Sun Bum and Watermen gear and met in The Bahamas.

When we arrived in Eleuthera, it felt like coming home. You know when a place just feels right? Safe? Friendly? We slipped right back into driving on the left side of the road (Alissa) and navigating dirt “roads” that seem a little frightening, then drop you into paradise (Peri). We were excited to show Courtney around the island and introduce her to all of our friends at The One Eleuthera Foundation. We got to work right away and realized that Courtney was the perfect addition to the team this year with her open water skills curriculum!

This year we expanded our outreach to the open water, which is the big picture goal since this is the primary access point to water for everyone on the island. Just writing about Tarpum Bay, where we swim, makes my blood pressure drop. The place is serene and calm and beautiful. We (4 instructors) swam about a mile there every morning, then talked about our plan for the day as we watched the sun come up. Then we ended our day there teaching the community- friends that wanted to float, women that didn’t put their faces in the water, moms that brought their kids so they could learn together.

We talked to them about their relationship with water, their story that brought them to us that day, their goals, their hopes, and their fears. It’s so important to learn their stories. They watched friends drown during Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Their father threw them into the island’s blue hole as a “sink or swim” method of teaching them when they were young. There is a lot of generational fear on the island and we feel so honored that they trust us to help break the cycle. All four of us were busy each evening as more people learned about the program.

While we were there, we participated in the World’s Largest Swimming Lesson again and once again did a live stream of our lesson! Last year, I led the group and taught all of the skills to the instructors. This year, everyone chose a skill to teach and presented it to the group. We even had 11-year-old and 14-year-old volunteers teaching!

We also brought some blow-up goals and introduced Splash Ball (an introduction to water polo) to test the waters and see if they might be interested in water polo next year. What a reaction- they absolutely LOVED it! We are already planning on teaching the sport and putting goals in the bay when we return next year.

It’s amazing to see how much one can learn in just a week. Watching the instructors and volunteers gain confidence in their teaching makes my heart beat out of my chest. It’s so exciting to observe an empowered individual and watch them use their powers for good! Now, we watch in awe as they send us photos of their progress via What’s App. We absolutely love the people of Eleuthera and are already planning more impact for next year!

When Eleuthera Outreach ended, I had the pleasure of meeting my college roommates from UCSB in St. Lucia for a magical week of swimming, exploring, and laughing until we cried. The five of us met on the UCSB swim team over thirty years ago. Swimming has always been a huge part of our lives, so we chose St. Lucia because of the warm sea. The locals were all so friendly, but like Eleuthera, many of them don’t swim. We had the pleasure of meeting Stephanie and Bibi, two lovely women that worked on the property where we stayed. They welcomed us with open arms and took tremendous care of us!

At one point I told Stephanie about the Outreach I had just done and I could tell by her reaction that she didn’t swim. I asked her about it and she responded with, “Oh I don’t swim… Nobody will ever be able to teach me… I will never swim…” In my brain, that translates to, “SwimKim- I challenge YOU!” I can’t teach someone that is not ready, so I told her that I wanted to give her a gift (in return for her INCREDIBLE cooking). I told her that she could have a life-changing experience if she gave me 30 minutes of her time in the pool. She scoffed and shook her head at me. She said it was impossible. I told her that I would be there all week and that she should think about it.

While she thought about my proposition, she asked if I could teach her two kids, 5 and 11. Then Bibi asked if I could teach her 21-year-old daughter and her 7-year-old grandson. Absolutely! What I love about my college ladies is that they are always up for an adventure and everyone got excited about teaching the locals how to swim. All of us have taught swimming at one point in time, but for some it had been decades. So we made a plan, the families showed up, and it ran like an orchestra. And…Stephanie got in, swam across the pool, and was teaching her 5-year-old how to back float by the end of the lesson! There was no better feeling than empowering the families of these beautiful women that had been taking care of us so kindly. Our vacation turned into so much more!

I thought I was ending my blog post there, but it is with a heavy heart that I report two drownings on the island of Eleuthera just last week. We don’t know the victims, but one was a woman who saved two teens caught in a rip current, then drowned. When we started our instructor training at One Eleuthera Foundation last year, we introduced a lesson on rip current safety. The scary thing about not going into the ocean is that if/ when you actually do, you might not know how to navigate the open water safely. That is why we will continue to go to Eleuthera- our work there isn’t done yet.

Thank you to everyone that keeps me going through words of encouragement, guidance, and donations to Face in Water. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to Face in Water, every penny goes to community education and outreach.