People are so strange. It takes just one look at the stats page for this blog to see how true a statement that is — here are some search terms entered that ended up bringing people to this site yesterday:
plastic boobs
top ten things in a good man
big honkin tits
adopt as an expat
nurses cleavage
things women want in men
the meaning of pre occupied
green thanksgiving jello
Okay, I get how it works, but can’t for anything imagine someone Googling “nurses cleavage”.
Anyway, on to what’s on my mind today …
Rape and pillage and plunder. Yep, that’s it. Not in the sense of ancient Vandals who found such methods conducive to compliance with their expansionist goals … well, not literally in that sense … but rather having to do with hotels doing what amounts to the same thing.
It’s land and lifestyles being raped and pillaged and plundered around here right now, and today provides quite the good example of how this works.
Please keep in mind that hotels in Seychelles will try to pass themselves off as all environmentally aware and culturally sensitive. Bollocks!
The new Four Seasons Hotel project that has been reducing nature to rubble in my backyard for the past couple of years is getting ready to move into another phase of destruction that involves an area yet untouched that will eventually be covered in ‘executive villas’ … multi-million dollar holiday homes for obscenely rich Saudis and Russians.
The first step in ruining this part of the island for anyone but rich Saudis and Russians is to get rid of the road that runs down to Anse Soleil Beach. Never mind that there is already a small, locally-owned hotel there, not to mention my in-laws’ house, the home of Mark’s grandmother, uncle and family, and a restaurant, because they apparently count for nothing. The plan is to build a parking area a good half-mile-plus of hell hill away and let the people that live down there, and the people who support the hotel and the restaurant, walk.
The arrogance of this is beyond belief.
Mark’s grandmother is 86. Mark’s dad is 67. The walk, even in good weather, is long and tough; in the rain it’s slick and treacherous. PLUS, it’s a public road there to provide access to people that need to get back and forth from the beach to the village.
I won’t even go into the mess they’re making of one of the world’s most beautiful bays, how the construction waste is taking a fatal toll on fish, sea turtles and corals. (In the environmental impact assessment required before permission was given to build this horror, a big deal was made about the “low impact lighting” they would have so as not to bother nesting sea turtles!)
We’re set to get 60 more of these hotel projects over the next few years … 60 … none of which will be built where the white elephants of past trends stuggle to keep afloat with 10% occupancy are rotting away. And all will be just as arrogant, just as much a disaster as this Four Seasons project. Tourists will come and go, see only the artificial and groomed corpse of what once was and figure they’re getting their money’s worth, while the super-rich will stop by as long as it’s trendy to stop by here, then will move along to the next victim.
In the meantime, the people living here will watch the bits and pieces of this beautiful body of land as they’re bloodily hacked away, and try their best not to be shoved out of the way with the rest of what belongs here.
Today it’s my in-laws fighting for the continuation of the right to drive to their own home. Tomorrow, it will be something else as this island is turned from paradise to playground, and like everywhere else in the world this has already happened, it will be ruined forever.
How long ago did Joni Mitchell sing the song?
I am so damned mad!
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 