Paradise Preoccupied

Tomorrow is the last of the June holidays in Seychelles … June being THE month for them with a total of three days dedicated to the celebration of political events and one religious day off … the 29th of June, Independence Day.

On the day in 1976 the British lowered their flag, folded it up, and went home, as Seychelles became a nation in its own right with no colonial overlords to placate.

Two hundred years after the USA became states united in America under the Stars and Stripes, and without nearly the fanfare, the event was nonetheless momentous and will be celebrated in island fashion with beach picnics, barbecues and no small amount of driving aimlessly around the island with frequent beer stops and the equally frequent pit stops for peeing alongside the road.

Here at our place we’ll be livin’ it up in our usual devil-may-care way … by working. I’ll be blogging from the veranda and getting stuck in to a couple of speeches, while Mark clears land and makes hooch … a licensed, legal venture that brings in needed extra cash … a yummy concoction called baka consisting of fermented sugar cane juice that is aged in the finest of blue plastic barrels and provided to discerning clientele in expertly crafted 50 liter jerry cans and is deemed most desirable to the local palate.

We have a special building on our property … the baka barn … for this sideline, a jaunty little pied a terre down the road from our house that’s locked up tighter than the back string on an Italian tourist’s thong bikini any time Mark isn’t in there doing his impression of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice … without the brooms, of course.

The weather isn’t the best in June, so some of the festivities organized for any of the holidays are always rained out. Thankfully, rain here doesn’t mean anything but wet, as cold doesn’t really happen, so most folks just get on with whatever they had planned and pay little attention to drizzle.

June is also the slowest month for tourists, so some small hotels and many restaurants are closed for the month. In my neighborhood, this means the beach at Grandma’s is like it was when I first came to Seychelles … no one but family day after day. Lovely.

If it’s a nice day tomorrow, we’ll certainly make time for a swim and to enjoy a run-around without having to dodge those aforementioned Italians in thongs.

Because it’s a holiday, however, that will have to wait until after Mark delivers the celebratory baka to all the local establishments that will see a roaring trade.

Santé! Bon zour Lindependenz!