[00:00:00] What's good y'all? Welcome back to another episode of Black in Aquatics: Freedom Through Swimming. I'm your host, Tazaria, also known as Coach T. Today is going to be a solo episode, so I'm going to go over some housekeeping for the project. It should be short and sweet. First, the biggest change is location.

I'm now in Belize, Central America, my family's motherland, and it feels good to be back home. So if you have a project or business here, I would love to get involved. So please reach out to me. Or if you know of a project or business down here, please let me know so I can check it out. Next, I'm looking to do a few more interviews for this season, so I'll be reaching out to some more instructors and advocates to interview.

But if you are a black professional in the aquatic space, or if you serve the black community, please don't hesitate to reach out to me.

It'll help me out a lot since this is a one [00:01:00] person operation, and there's a lot of us in the space. Third, blackinaquatics. com, the website. Honestly, I'm not sure if I want to keep maintaining this right now. It just doesn't get a lot of, traffic, but the podcast will still have a website, because most hosting providers provide that with a subscription.

But also I like the fact that I have a place where I can just put up a blog post when I do have something to say. I also know that I have to commit more time to the project, so there's that too. I'll keep y'all updated for sure. Speaking of having a place to post content, that brings me to my last update.

I try to post on Instagram because that's where my community is and I love it. I can't promise y'all that I'll post more, but I'm still around. If you know me personally, you know I'm kind of a nerd. So, lately I've been posting a bit more on Nostr, but it just lacks content and community right now.

If you don't know what NOSTR is, NOSTR stands for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays. If you look at NOSTR. com, they [00:02:00] have one of the simplest explanations of the protocol, It's a simple, open protocol that enables global, decentralized, and censorship resistant social media. I'll put a link in the show notes, so if you want to check it out, you can.

But just as a heads up, the core content comes from bitcoiners that left Twitter a few years ago. But the content on there is growing. Maybe I'll do an episode that just covers Nostr. We'll see. That's all for housekeeping.

Tomorrow, Friday, September 20th is World Cleanup Day. The UN has added this to their calendar to bring people and organizations together to tackle the global mismanaged waste crisis and to help create a new, more sustainable

and waste free world, which we direly need. To close out this week's episode, here's some banter from Coach Q, Kalvin, Shana, and myself. Thanks for checking in. Peace. That parents still can't save them from. So I love to push family learning swimming. Yes. I agree. [00:03:00] And I'm talking to everybody.

Yeah. You know what you're talking about? That's my dad. Remember me? We were having that conversation. Backwards. I don't know what. Get on a boat. Go on a cruise. deep sea fishing. No life jacket. I'm like, I don't know.

My brother and swimming, you know, it was the water park, but that as well, my mom was the one going out and was like, we'll get in the water for six feet, but he was never like, okay, y'all can come and get y'all. Like it was never, he's so stuck. He's in that generation where they're stuck in their ways, you know, everybody, I'm old.

I don't like what I'm saying. I'm not gonna lie. I'm swimming out. Yeah. And you still, you know, Yeah, and I tell my mom that all the time because she was in the Navy, she was like, she was a big advocate of me and my brother learning how to swim, and she was like, you guys need to learn how to swim, and you know, she got us all the things, and I do it, and like, even I do it professionally, and I'm like, hey ma, she's like, no, she's like, girl, I'm too old now, and I'm like, you're really not, and we would go to the water parks, we'd go on the boat, we'd do this, we'd do that, and Yeah, [00:04:00] she just like, there's the desire isn't there.

It's not, you know. No, it's not. And it's funny, I was talking to that stubbornness and I don't know if it's stubbornness or they feel like they just passed that state their life where they need to learn how. So I'm like my mom. I don't know that it's that she's stubborn or that she legitimately has a fear of water, but she's not willing to learn how to swim.

But she's also not a liability, meaning she's not on anyone's boat. Yeah, that's true. She didn't have her ankle. She's not even at the beach. She's not going to be in any situation where water is involved and can just kind of suck her in. You know, my dad was the one that pushed me into swimming. Pushed my brother into swimming.

He was a competitive swimmer coming from Panama. You know, there, we were far and few in between. Um, but in Panama, like everyone swam there. Yeah. At his [00:05:00] time, everyone swam, because that was the actual, like, that was mandatory, every child was going to learn how to swim. Schools had pools, you know, and what happened when the U.

S. took over in Canada is that the pools went away. And they focused on things like soccer, baseball, you know. The land sports. Right. Right. And so you're now back into this time frame where. A lot of the kids are not learning how to swim. We hadn't been to the Olympics in God knows how long. Yeah. Yeah, like, I'm like, are you even here?

They'd be like, hello? Anyone here? Yeah, even when I, yeah. So, um, my desire is not just for Belize and for the Bahamas, but to bring swimming back to the, to the country of Panama. We've got people on board. Yeah. That's right. That's gonna push this swimming initiative into these countries. It's 80 percent of the Bahamas.

[00:06:00] Yeah. And it's like the same in Belize. You go to beautiful country, like the oceans and stuff. But like, that's the thing, I guess, because it is coastal. They'd be like, Oh, like, why do we need a pool when the water's right there? And I'm like, Yeah, I mean, there's all types of stuff in the water. And you know what I'm saying?

There's so many other things. Yeah, yeah. But you see the kids, like, they'll be out there. And I love seeing them do that. But I was like, I also want to see them do that in a pool. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So that's, I am, like I have my, my sight set on something when I do go back, um, when I do go to Belize, I wanna do something.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like I was telling last night, hopefully we can just like, really get it done. Yeah. Last night, my passport. Anytime y'all Oh yeah. I told, we, I said we gonna hit a police. You're gonna soon as.

Like, you know, I'm [00:07:00] passionate about this. Like, I do this full time, you know, like I was saying earlier, I'd like to leave something to do this full time. But, you know, I know my value and I know what I bring to the table. Yeah, I, I, that's amazing. That's dope. To be here working and be at this event, you know, with y'all.

Yeah, exactly. It's not like it's gonna be just this happening. Not at all. Not at all. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Like last month, I drove up to Indiana and I helped with the water safety festival there. Our people loved it. You know what I'm saying? I want to do more events and stuff like that. You know what I'm saying?

Exactly, travel. Yeah, yeah, the world is so big. You know what I'm saying? Let's go diving in the [00:08:00] Maldives.