Scuba diving: Does my bum look fat in this?

Yesterday I learned that all three of the current scuba deep-diving world records are held by two divers from Johannesburg — which made about as much sense to me as the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team.

I mean, FFS, where do these geniuses train? “Honey, come out of the rain and get your head out of that puddle before you drown!”

Discovery’s Adrian Gore runs up and down his staircases between meetings when he’s in training for marathons. What does this mob do? Company memo to all staff: “Henceforth any staff members found with their heads in the toilets will face summary dismissal. You have been warned.”

Yet somehow Verna van Schaik, an IT systems analyst, and Nuno Gomes, a civil engineer, both from Johannesburg and whom I met at our offices yesterday, are current holders of the following world records:

Verna: Women’s world-record cave dive — 221m
Nuno: World deepest cave dive — 282,6m; and world’s deepest sea dive — 318,25m

Apparently the problem, as scuba divers will tell you, is not in getting down to a certain depth but rather the time required to come back up. In Verna’s case, her dive took a mere 12 minutes going down but a whopping 5,5 hours coming up. In Nuno’s case, it took 14 minutes to get down to those depths and 12 hours, in each case, getting back up. Those who surface too quickly risk “the bends” or decompression sickness. This can be avoided by surfacing slowly. (For my regulars, yahoos to a man, this deals strictly with “scuba” diving only)

What I can’t fathom … is what they do while they’re down there for 12 hours. (Verna’s even written a book, Fatally Flawed: The Quest to Be Deepest — probably while she was down there during her five hours underwater.) Do you do mental sudoku or try to train a fish?

I asked them why anyone would want to do this. “It’s the challenge, like solving a problem.” Brilliant — they are now joint holders of the 2008 sportsmen and -women’s cliché award. Nothing deep about that, then.

With them were sponsors Mercia Barnes, Rhys Couzyn and Rob Avicedubuisson, also members of the scuba-diving fraternity. Rob is a qualified psychologist who works as a “dive psychologist”.

Why?

Ask me, I’m Moses — why would anyone want to spend 12 hours underwater? If you ask me, they need a surface therapist, not a dive psychologist. I tried throwing a tennis ball for them to chase in the parking lot in case they just needed the exercise.

Anyhow! The reason they were down our way was to raise funds for two important charities — the Starfish Foundation, which raises money for Aids orphans, and Ikholwa, a home for kids who have been abandoned at hospitals, in shopping bags and even in dustbins.

I record that I had never met any of these lunatics before yesterday and I have never, nor will I ever, go scuba diving. What is important is that the scuba-diving fraternity is taking concrete measures to uplift people and giving of its time to help those in need. In yesterday’s post I highlighted the need to deal with poverty, and in this regard each of us can make a difference.

This post is, however, a one-off, guys. Don’t let me catch any geniuses from the “Friends of the Kaizer Chiefs Supporters Traumatised by Watching Kak Players Society” calling me for help — nobody asked you to watch those geniuses. I’m trying to demonstrate that you don’t need to wait for the government — your help can change people’s lives.

Poverty is a South African problem; the solution thereto and the benefits therefrom belong to us all. Make an effort.

The scuba-diving fraternity is organising a dinner for the two charities referred to above, styled “The Scubapro Firefish Dinner of Hope”, which is to be held at the Indaba Hotel — contact Mercia on Tel: 011 468 2530.

If I go, I’ll be armed — you can’t tell me that any of these geniuses are normal.