Grounded by water
At the launch of his debut novel, Before We Hit the Ground, Rowan Clarke finds out why Selali Fiamanya swims outdoors
Publishing your novel is a nerve-wracking moment. So, for debut author Selali Fiamanya, there’s excitement and vulnerability as his first novel Before We Hit the Ground hits the shelves. But its glowing reviews affirm his skill at beautifully portraying emotive themes of family, migration, identity, sexuality and belonging.
Among the many reasons we swim, worries around family, home, identity and a sense of belonging bring us to the water to find relief and release. The novel’s central character, Elom, does just this. And the way Selali portrays Elom’s swims, you know that he must be an outdoor swimmer himself.
“I am an outdoor swimmer. I’m reticent to say it with that level of boldness because I don’t have a regimented routine of how and when I swim,” he says. “I got into it a few years ago when I went for a big group skinny dip as part of a friend’s birthday weekend. It was invigorating and liberating, and so fun, silly and physically shocking, and then afterwards, you’ve just got that complete sense of elation.”
Young men and water
There’s also a vulnerability in starting to swim as an adult – something Selali reflects through Elom’s experience when he first swims in the sea on holiday in Before We Hit the Ground.
“When I was younger, I was a poor swimmer, and I had bad experiences swimming in the sea,” says Selali, who started to swim again as an adult. “I was going on a group holiday with friends a few years later, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed or get into trouble. So, in my lunch breaks, I went training in the local pool until I could do four lengths.”
Like Selali, Elom is drawn back to the water after that first bad experience. His impression of wild swimming is ‘somewhere between sport and meditation’, describing middle-aged men in wetsuits and wellbeingseeking women. And while men, younger people and people of colour are immersing in cold water more and more, it’s still a very white, middle-aged, middle-class space.
“I think so many Black people in the UK live in urban environments and don’t feel comfortable heading out into nature. And there’s often a real suspicion or fear of nature,” says Selali. “There’s not the creature comforts of urban places, but also there’s a real sense of not feeling safe or comfortable in these majority white spaces, which I’ve certainly felt. I think once you get people out there realising that this space can be for them as well, then why wouldn’t you?”
Growing up in Scotland, Selali had many opportunities to immerse himself in nature, and he says that his joy completely overrode any fears. It’s a joy that he’s carried through, that’s helped him, and that he’s shared with others. He describes his morning swims while writing Before We Hit the Ground on a retreat on Iona.
“There’s a sense of relaxation that comes after wild swimming, but there’s also a sense of capableness or agency,” he says. “I got up, it was freezing and barely even light, and I jumped into ice-cold water. It was like, if I can do that, of course I can handle this day.”
Finding home
Written from the viewpoints of Elom, his sister Dzifa and their parents Kodzo and Abena, Before We Hit the Ground moves between Ghana and Scotland. Through Kodzo and Abena’s migration and the contrast of Elom and Dzifa’s experience of being second-generation immigrants, Selali explores one of his main themes about what makes a place home.
“One of the questions I’m interested in is, what feels like home? Is it where you’re born? Is it where you choose to live? Is it where you raise your kids?” he says. “I guess that it’s a very personal thing and that your sense of home and your sense of place is really defined by your experiences as opposed to what it looks like on a big, grand scale. You can contrast Glasgow and Ghana, and say one’s hot and one’s cold, one’s richer or poor, or one’s got X, one’s got Y, but are those the things that really make the decision as to whether you stay there or not? Not really. It’s how you move through that space and where your heart lies, and so it’s interesting to me to show that despite these contrasts, different people can have very different ideas about what’s home to them.”
For Selali, home is Glasgow where he’s spoilt for choice by a wealth of beautiful swimming spots from the Lakes and Peak District to the Scottish Highlands and islands.
“There are a lot of opportunistic dips. Just that freedom of being out in the open where there’s a body of water and instead of all the thoughts going, I shouldn’t, it’s too cold, there are people around I have that spontaneous joy of just being like, yeah, I’m going to jump in.” From learning to be a better swimmer, to publishing his first novel, to finishing his GP residency, to plunging into cold water wherever he finds it, Selali shows us that from vulnerability comes empowerment.
“There’s a sense of relaxation that comes with wild swimming, but there’s also a sense of capableness,” he says. “Like, I’m a capable human who has agency over my body and mind, and that’s the feeling that carries me through, and that is so empowering.”
‘Before We Hit the Ground’ is published by Harper Collins and available from any good bookshop.
