Lagadishi is the Papiamentu word for lizard. Specifically the small, fast, sun-loving ones that live in the cracks between rocks all over Curaçao. If you've been to the island, you've seen them. They scatter the second your shadow falls on them.
My cousin and I spent entire afternoons trying to catch them.
The game
The rules were simple. Find a stone. Turn it over carefully. If a lizard was underneath, you had about half a second before it disappeared. Whoever caught the most by the time the sun started going down won. Loser had to admit it. Winner got to brag until tomorrow, when we'd do it all again.
We weren't gentle. We weren't patient. We were kids, sweating in the heat, racing each other across rocks that were probably too hot to touch, and we didn't care. We were inside the game completely.
What I didn't realise at the time
Catching lizards taught me things I only understand now, looking back. Patience under pressure. If you moved too fast, the lizard was gone. If you moved too slow, same outcome. There's a specific tempo for that kind of work, and you only learn it by failing a thousand times.
It also taught me that the simplest games are the best games. We had no equipment. No screens. No prize. Just rocks, sun, a cousin, and an animal that was way better at this than we were. That's a kind of richness I didn't appreciate until I lived in places where afternoons fill up with notifications instead.
Why it became a collection
When I started designing Lagadishi, I didn't want a literal lizard print. I wanted the feeling of those afternoons. Sun-bleached colours. The texture of rocks heated all day. The scratchy details you only notice when you're crouched down close to the ground, focused on something small.
The collection is for anyone who remembers what it feels like to chase something that didn't matter to anyone but you and the person next to you. The freedom in that. The sweat. The tiny stakes that felt enormous.
For my cousin
If we ever counted up who won more days, I think it was probably him. He was always faster. But that's not the point. The point is we were there, every summer, doing the same useless brilliant thing. Lagadishi is for that.
If any of this sounds like a memory you also have (different country, different game, same shape) the collection is at /shop/lagadishi.
