‘Pour une petite île, c’est énorme !’ – November shenanigans

   This week marks the third month of being here, and shimmy oh-jangjang has it been busy since I last blogged. Aching from an unexpectedly long hike in Cirque de Mafate, and with a week ahead of rushing around in tropical heat trying to yoink some good grades, here I go with les évènements of the month so far.

Feeling hot, hot, hot – but someone took it too far

            As you’d expect on a tropical island as we enter the warm season, it’s getting pretty darn toasty. About three weeks ago, whilst walking to a roller disco in Saint Denis in the evening, we could see not too far in the distance a bright orange glow – this was no light pollution glare, but in fact the forest fire in Maïdo that had already been burning for about a week. It’s been extinguished now, but all in all it raged for about two weeks, consuming around 1% of the area of the island. As I had heard that there had been a fire in the same place last year, I had assumed that it was sadly down to the climate and was a natural occurrence. But in fact, more tragically it was started deliberately by an arsonist, and suspected to be the same culprit as last year. I do believe they have arrested a suspect, but it’s a story which is still developing.

            The roller disco was fun anyway; I fell over just once, as I was trying to do some kind of fancy trick of course.  I always find the best way to come out of a fall is to punch the air and say ‘Yay!’ with all the ironic enthusiasm you have.

              I’m in France, Réunion, Southern Africa, India ...

         A few weeks ago the Dipavali (Diwali) festival held its main event in Saint André in the East. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, the last time I visited Saint André it was a fairly quiet place. But that weekend we saw it at its best; bright colourful processions with pineapple lined floats, lantern-lined lanes and an Indian market. Whilst sipping on a sliced coconut, we enjoyed other culinary delights such as the usual Samoussa Fromage – who would have thought that the French and Indian cuisine experts would have worked together to come up with such a genius idea? Cheese samosas!
       Anyway, it was great to be able to go to a festival which was clearly so popular but also completely open and welcoming to anyone. The following day included La Holi, the festival of colour, and included dancing, a procession of a sacred bull, and la pièce de la résistance: a giant paint fight in the square with kids and grown-ups alike basically just going mental and spreading as much colour on the other participants as possible. Someone I met on the bus told me this was basically a festival of sharing and to get everyone to mix together and essentially be good painty friends. It was certainly effective and was brilliant fun.

       Seriously ... where is Nemo?

        I’m not too upset that the now novelty clownfish isn’t to be found in these waters, as during the first two scuba dives I’ve already done I have already seen colourful fish aplenty. The very first time I had to complete a baptême, literally a ‘baptism’, for first-timers to prove they can use the required skills. I had had two training sessions in the pool already, but going in the water for the first time was nerve-wracking, and I was told I was stressing out too much under the water so had to sit on the boat for the rest of the session. Rubbish. However, for the second session I was determined to  succeed and indeed I did so. We went to a depth of about 12 metres, lay on the seabed and glided through the coral with its array of colours and awesomely tropical fish everywhere. Amazing. In my first session, the instructor pointed upwards towards the surface and I saw a huge shadow just above us – my heart leapt. Oh my goodness, I thought, I never knew turtles could be so enormo... oh. Oh it’s the boat. Maybe next time!

       Hmm ... let me sea ... DEAL

  So after teaching my lovely family last week I got a call from the Abyss association in Saint Denis. I’d sent my CV to them and a few other places to enquire about doing some voluntary work or work experience. Abyss are a voluntary organisation funded by the WWF who do a wide variety of conservation projects, ranging from hands-on work, to making documentaries, to giving talks and lectures. So the guy that called me up told me they’d made a documentary about the whales and dolphins off the Réunion coast and would I be interested in doing the English subtitles for it? Erm, YES. I’ve seen the documentary and had a meeting with the dude about it; he explained that they do have pretty professional filming equipment thanks to the funding, and it shows from the incredible footage they have of them there sea critters. This particular documentary will be shown in conservation-themed film festivals in southern Africa. So after exams have finished next week, I will get on it. SWEET.

    Quatre jours ridicules!

  This weekend I had four consecutive days of activities, pretty much non-stop. Thursday was a 5am wake-up for diving, Thursday evening was travelling to the south and sleeping over at the Grande Anse beach after a par-tay, Friday daytime many hours were spent travelling back then concocting a Créole dialogue for our exam next week, Saturday morning we hiked in Cirque de Mafate, traversing incredible mountains and melting in the muggy heat, ending up at Ilet à Bourse to a Kabar of maloya, séga and reggae music. After camping over, surrounded by the straight-up peaks of the surrounding gargantuan montagnes and pitons, we hiked for another ten hours or so I reckon. Not without the occasional ‘Oh hot DAMN’ from whiney-o’Riley here, but it was worth it to see the views. And now I can hardly move for achiness. Hadn’t realised as well that there were no roads in this cirque; I had remembered someone telling me their grandma lived somewhere remote in the mountains and got a plane or helicopter to take her to the towns. So we really were in the wilderness.

  Exams finish next week, then I can do n’importe quoi!

Best wishes to all,

Sophie