The Many Ways of Being Human

6.8

The Bajau

A man spits into his wooden goggles, wipes them, and slips over the side of a boat barely longer than a delivery van to walk a reef, weighted with a stone. The famous thirteen-minute breath-hold was one diver's claim, never measured. The chapter follows the Sama-Bajau through enlarged spleens, the sea cucumber trade, and a life without papers.