Magali Michel discovered it’s never too late to follow your dreams...
Sitting beside the water, I saw two little girls approaching me. They had a look of wonder and awe on their faces, and I guessed what was coming. Dressed in my crown, shell-top bikini, prized silicone mono-fin, shimmering make-up and seashell jewellery – part of the job was capturing the imagination of children.
‘Please could we touch your tail?’ one of them asked, politely.
‘Of course,’ I replied.
I got into the swimming pool and showing off, I flipped my tail and then settled so the girls could touch it. ‘Oh, it’s so slimy!’ they said, giggling. I was working as my alter-ego Mermaid Tanganyka at a kids’ birthday party and many questions followed. They wanted to know how I’d travelled to England, so I made up a story for them, which had them both spellbound.
It couldn’t be any more different to my very down-to-earth day job cleaning offices and working as a carer for an elderly lady.
And if you’d told me six years ago that I’d be a free-diving mermaid at the age of 59, I wouldn’t have believed you.
Back in 2012, I was involved in not one, but two car accidents. The first one was a hit-and-run, which happened when I was on a pedestrian crossing. Thankfully no bones were broken, but I was left with big bruises.
To make matters worse, a week later, I was driving home on my own street in Birmingham, when someone hit my driver’s side door, it was a lateral impact. I suffered from severe whiplash that left me bedbound.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned ‘Trust your gut and don’t hesitate to follow your dreams. You can overcome obstacles.’
Nothing could prepare me for what I was about to go through, I was given strong painkillers to deal with chronic pain and spiralled into depression. I’d been fit and active before, but I was no longer able to do the things I loved, including swimming.
Eventually, I stopped taking the medication but was still in chronic pain. Seven years after the accident, one evening I was scrolling on my phone to take my mind off the pain. I stumbled across a woman from Australia known as Hannah Mermaid.
She was a real-life mermaid, who had made her own tail to swim with, and was an eco-activist who protected the ocean. She established the international mermaiding movement – free-diving with a mythical twist – you wore a mermaid tail.
I started following Hannah Mermaid on social media.
My dad is from Belgium and my mum is from Rwanda, and I grew up in Burundi, East Africa, by the shores of Lake Tanganyika. I’d swim in the lake and, as a teenager, I learnt to free-dive there. Inspired by Hannah Mermaid, I dreamed of revisiting my passion, getting my own mermaid tail and get
