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Archive for November, 2007

Seychelles Rocks

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 20, 2007| 13 Comments »

My house sits on some of the oldest dirt on the planet.

Yep.

I’m not talking about the grit behind my fridge; although that has been there a while, it’s nothing compared to the soil, pebbles and boulders that make up the island of Mahé and the 39 or so other inner islands of Seychelles.

Mahé, Praslin, LaDigue, and other smaller lumps are the oldest ocean islands in the world, and our dirt here is so old that we don’t even have fossils. Can’t, because at the time what is now our little country formed there was nothing living anywhere — no plants or animals, no single-celled pre-living thing. Nothing. There was sky. There was sea. There was here. That was it.

Unlike islands people think of when tropical beaches come to mind, this island and her close neighbors have never seen a volcano. Our ground is granite … ancient, strong and lovely granite, the only mid-ocean granite islands in the world … and to geologists, granite means nothing less than continent.

There’s not much left to see now … Mahé is, after all, only 17 miles long and 4 miles wide … but where I sit writing this blog is the vestigial remains of Pangea, the super-continent of all super-continents, the one that started it all.

The soil in my garden was here before Gondwanaland decided to be its own chunk, and that was about 520 million years ago. Before dinosaurs roamed, before the places dinosaurs roamed were even places, the rocks I train my alamanda to grow over were warming in the sun and shedding rain.

These are rocks worth celebrating, wouldn’t you say? As ancient as the planet itself, slowly decomposing as granite does over the millennia, tiny residual land masses sinking a fraction of an inch every 1000 years, what else could signify Earth as well as these islands?

Apparently, the answer to that question would be: Well, a whole bunch of trendy hotels that are guaranteed to be out-of-date white elephants within little more than a decade should do the trick.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, these islands are being hacked and hewn at a rate that provides a horrifying example of the destruction humans worship.

Our rocks? Blown to bits by dynamite over and over again, as my house shakes with each blast and I jump out of my skin as the booms sneak up and bite another piece of beautiful granite and reduce it to rubble. And now the hotel construction devils … proudly making the way for environmentally sensitive tourists to stroll manicured gardens and swim in temperature-controlled pools … are employing a silent destroyer of venerable rock — a chemical that gets poured down a jackhammered hole, expands overnight, and cracks and splits what has for millions of years held its form.

Yesterday I was mad as hell. Today, I’m still mad, and totally sick about it.

Sam on rock

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So damned mad!

Posted in Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , on November 19, 2007| 4 Comments »

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!

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Another year, another blog?

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in on November 18, 2007| 4 Comments »

I must be seriously out of my ever-lovin’ mind, but I’m thinking about starting up another blog once this whole NaBloPoMo business is finished for the year. This one is good for a lot of release and stuff of interest (to me), but doesn’t focus, and my pro blogs are all about adoption, a topic that has my passion, but is restricting, nonetheless.

There’s not a day that goes by that something arising from my trawl for blog fodder, my perusal of newsal, doesn’t have me bursting at the seams with too much to say about events in the real world.

From this isolated little perch here in the Indian Ocean, a great deal of the stuff of life beyond these shores looks darned silly, menacing, imprudent, overindulgent or worse, and it seems a glance from a perspective that’s not marinated in the au jus du jour just might be interesting … perhaps, again, to me alone, but personal blogs are, after all, the journalistic equivalent of singing in the shower.

From my old hometown newspaper to the Times times at least three (New York, London, L.A.), to the WaPo and the WSJ, I read what’s fit to print, and it might be nice for me to be able to print what gives me fits.

We’ll see how it goes, but January could see yet another place where my opinionated blather goes public. Another year, another blog?

Speaking of …

On the women-over-50 group at NaBloPoMo it was mentioned that this demographic … women over 50 … is the fastest growing in blogs and web design on the Net. Apparently, we all have something to say. (I’m guessing our husbands already know.)

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Who lies about their age?

Posted in NaBloPoMo, Older women, On getting older on November 17, 2007| 2 Comments »

I don’t know if it’s a Boomer thing, an island thing, or just a thing with people I choose to have conversations with, but I don’t know anyone who lies about their age.

Okay, I don’t know any ADULTS who lie about their age. That is more accurate because I do occasionally run into the four-year-old claiming to be five and the eight-year-old who so longs for puberty that “I’m nine” pops out almost without thinking, prompting the issuance of an involuntary groan from somewhere near the please-don’t-rush-it area of my brain.

But grownups declaring a false age? Nope. I’ve not even heard a dodge in a long time, nor a “How old do you THINK I am?” recipe for disaster. When the subject comes up, as it does, real numbers pop out.

Being 56 … see what I mean? … I’m old enough to remember TV episodes in which Lucy or Donna or June clearly made the point that asking a lady’s age was a sin punishable by glares and accusations of totally inappropriate rudeness and that lying about how may rings were on one’s tree was not only a right, but a responsibility to womanhood in general.

People were expected to chronologically constipate at 29, or at the very outer limit of 39, and stay that way until sometime around 80 when they could relax enough to unclench and own their age.

Trying to pass as younger has never made much sense to me. It seems preferable to be seen as a semi-ravishing 50-year-old who appeals to some tastes than a tired 39 who looks to have been rode hard and put away wet way too often.

I mean, really! Who do people think they’re fooling?

Anyone with eyes notices hair color that comes from a bottle and spots neck wrinkles and liver spots even post-botox, so the charade seems to be a game of one. Does anyone really think that the generation of your mother’s hands at the end of your arms is an invisible phenomenon?

In my crowd, thinning skin and too-frequent urges to pee are nothing to be denied …. What would possibly be the use of that? … but commiserated and comfortingly compared.

For the most part, people in my world are okay with the aging thing. We can name it, we can claim it, and we won’t be shamed into lying … the capital of the State of Denial … because there is no shame in the neighborhood. We may creak and crack and come in handy as visual aids in lectures on gravity, but we hold our heads up high on these scrawny necks of ours, happy enough to be whatever age we are.

After all, we are well aware of the alternative, and that is NOT dewy youth no matter how hard one tries to make it so.

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A big, white mutha of a well-slung vessel — or ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 16, 2007| 4 Comments »

There was a boat bopping around Isle Therese the other day … I watched it for a while from my veranda … a big, white, sleek thing with a helicopter pad on the back complete with helicopter.

Now, thought I, isn’t that exactly what everyone needs? A big white mutha of a well-slung vessel complete with chopper? What better to hug the shoreline of Mahé in, heh? Never know when one might need to hop quickly the four miles over to the other side of the island for … what?… some SupaSave youghurt, which by the way is going up to 14 rupees a tub next week.

I eventually mention said boat-of-superior-boaty-stuff, avec helicopter, to my well-informed spousal unit only to learn from him that during this given week it’s nothing but a trifle. Over on the Victoria side of things, there’s a big, white, sleek boat with TWO helicopters on the back helideck.

I’m guessing the one-chopper floater came over this side to avoid comparison and subsequent embarrassment — helipad envy.

Really! What could be worse than showing up in your big-ass-hangin’ bazillion dollar watercraft with sparkly chopper pleasingly perched aft at an island 1000 miles away from anywhere else only to find your parking space, or whatever is boatish for such a thing, is right down the way from a BIGGER one with TWO choppers?

Don’t know who the double-birdie boatie belongs to, but Radio Bamboo has it that the single-padder is the frippery of the owner of Tata, the huge Indian company that make cars, busses, and other carbon-producing mechanical clanky things, and that the big white mutha of well-slung vessel was tooling around Therese because Mr. Tata Boat Guy just bought it.

Great. This is what’s happening to my neighborhood: Bill Gates is carving a big honkin’ hotel to my left, with the addition of 20-some “executive villas” hewn into the scene; a Taiwanese company (Sofetel) is planning a big honkin’ hotel to my immediate right, also with 20-some executive villas; some Qataris are getting ready to plonk another huge hotel … WITH a dredged-up bit of bay attached as a ‘marina’ … and 20-some executive villas, just around the bend in Anse a la Mouche, and now the little wild island that makes up a bit of my lovely view is headed toward becoming something else.

Executive villas are going for $6 to 10 million to the sort of folks who hanker for big boats with helipads and toys of equal ostentatiousness, and although I’m sure some of them are right nice people, I don’t see them fitting into the Creole culture, shopping at SMB or working to level the Pearl S. Buck-type playing field that can only have the poor feeling even poorer in the face of so much bright and shiny loot.

I know we’re going to be looking a bit shabby in comparison with our simple wooden house, Mark’s desk-sized pirogue and our obvious lack of sycophants and hangers-on.

Progress, smogress, and ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron.

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Blah, blah, blahg

Posted in Adoption, Adoption Advocacy, Angelina Jolie, International Adoption, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Older women, On getting older, Younger men on November 15, 2007| 2 Comments »

There are topics arrayed before me like so many tubs of ice cream at a Ben & Jerry’s, some even looking as potentially tasty as Chunky Monkey, but I haven’t the energy to dip.

You see, I’ve already written almost 2000 bloggity blog words … 1,811 to be precise… on three blogs, and although I do this most days AND manage to plop something here since it’s NaBloPoMo, today it’s simply not in me to wax on again about the fact that today is Mark’s birthday or the very interesting “All Things Considered” piece on race in America or the new blather on Angelina Jolie’s adoption issues.

If you’re interested in what I’ve written, you can check out the News Blog, the Older Parent Blog, or the International Adoption Blog.

I’m going to go for a nice, long shower and get myself smelling sweet, brushed and tidy so I can welcome my Birthday Man home in an hour. Once clean and dressed, I’m going to sit down and read to my kids until Daddy’s truck pulls up and we all run to greet him with smiles on our faces and joy in our hearts.

Oh, one thing …

This morning, Mark asked Sam if he had any presents for him. Sam answered, “Of course I do, but you don’t get anything until tonight!”

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My November Blues are green

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , , , on November 14, 2007| 1 Comment »

November is a tough month for me under any circumstance. Following directly on the heels of a Halloween that isn’t in this country, we have a Thanksgiving that isn’t anywhere I’ve lived since 1993.

Thanksgiving is … was … probably my favorite holiday; all about family and food, but without the pressure of gifts and parties. Important traditions run deep and wide, and emotions can run high over things that to an outside observer might seem a trifle, like green Jell-O.

From the beginning of time, my mother’s Thanksgiving meal included a Jell-o mold of green Jell-O with alternating pineapple slices and red maraschino cherries. One year … for some reason she never clearly explained, but one that must have had something to do with the onset of menopause — at least that’s how we’ll call it now … she took it upon herself to throw years of comfortable ritual to the wind and make an ORANGE Jell-O mold, with carrots.

Well! You can imagine how THAT went over.

Yes, the customs of Thanksgiving are dear to my heart, and I have now had to forego them for 14 years.

Sure, I try to revive them here, but my attempts are pitiful imitations, piffling forgeries of fowl, as many years no turkeys make it this far until just before Christmas, and they’re pathetic representations of the species most of which have known the frozen state for many years before I can even think of stuffing them.

I’ve learned to be grateful for a skinny bird topping out at 6 or 7 pounds … Cornish Game Turkeys, if you will … and have managed in recent years to coax flavor and enough juice for gravy out of birds that died in Russia circa 1999.

Because there’s no holiday on a Thursday in November in Seychelles, any Thanksgiving that I may pull together has to happen on a weekend, and no matter how long I live here that just doesn’t feel right.

Because there are very few Americans, the guests I invite never ‘get’ the holiday, and few have a clue even about cranberry sauce.

Worst of all, of course, is the fact that my mother, my grown kids — my daughter, with my granddaughter, and my son — my brothers with their wives and kids, are all sitting down on the other side of the world. They may not be at the same table, but they’ll all be looking at green Jell-O.

There will be more on this before the month is over …

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A journey of 100 posts …

Posted in Adoption, Family, International Adoption, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles, tagged , on November 13, 2007| 5 Comments »

Yesterday I published my 100th post on this blog. Given that up until last month I was posting close to 100 per month on the triple combo of my pro blogs, 100 since April seems a paltry contribution to the tonnage of wordage in the blogage, and I’m actually surprised at how many days passed with me thinking, “Nah. I’m wrung out.”

NaBlogPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) is bringing me here every day of November, although I have no idea why I’m finding this challenge so compelling. Blogging every day is not new for me, although blogging HERE every day is.

Not only is it easier for me to take a pass on any given day on Paradise P’o’d than on the Adoption.com site because no one is paying me to post whatever dribblets I manage, and the fact that the only commitment happens to be one of no consequence whatsoever that festers in my little mind, the lack of any specific focus on this blog often stops me in my tracks. It’s never a case of having nothing to write about, but rather of having too many potential topics and not enough energy to pick just one.

I could write about adoption issues every day using this space for angles that don’t fit under news, international adoption or adopting as an older parent, but quite frankly I really need to get away from the subject after pounding out 1500 to 2000 words on one take or another every morning.

I like writing about my family, but I fear that waxing lyrical day after day about how wonderfully happy and content we are in our little cocoon would become dull as stamps for all but a few regular readers.

Tropical living, Seychelles in general and island quirks are fun, but even I’m not interested enough to yammer on daily about fish, the weather and who may be sleeping with whom … the pop-topics in local conversations … and with any luck at all the horrible trauma of recent days won’t repeat any time soon, or ever.

So … 100 posts and counting. So much to say, yet so much of life outside my office calling for me to participate, to enjoy, to get the hell away from my computer.

Note the graphic illustration of the choices as they are presented to me whenever I sit down to write:

Sandra’s office

My office

Not my office

Not my office, and only three steps away

The beach at the end of the road

The beach at the end of the road

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The deeper meaning of Scrabble

Posted in Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles on November 12, 2007| 3 Comments »

My friend Gay and I play at least one game of Scrabble on almost every Saturday that has us both on the island. We have a low level of competitiveness and get our big kicks from high combined scores.

We are happy when between the two of us we total over 700, but right chuffed when we top 800. I think our highest ever was 860-something, so we’re now shooting for 900.

This is not to say that we don’t get bummed when it’s our turn for the bag to release nothing but vowels for eight or nine goes. In fact, I tend to take more than a full ration of ‘i’s as a sign that my week may not be going the way I would hope and that I should take extra caution in all things. After all, if the bag is cruel other inducers of outcome may also be.

As a metaphor, Scrabble isn’t bad. (Metaphor, an eight letter word, would be a good point maker, and place it on a triple word square and you’ve got three-figures of speech.) Sitting down to the empty board on any given Saturday, we have no idea if the game about to unfold will be a high-scorer or a disappointing practice in three letter words.

Some games appear to greatly favor one or the other, while others either punish or reward both in close to equal measure.

Most of the time when a truly miserable game prompts us to give it another go we end up sorry we bothered. If it’s a bad Scrabble day it’s a bad Scrabble day, and no number of attempts to alter our Scrabble fate will change a thing.

Is it biorythms? … all about stars? … the fickle finger of fate that sets Scrabble up as an arbiter of seven days’ destiny? Could the same indisputable message be conveyed if we passed our Saturdays with checkers or Candyland? (Or is this all nothing more than a consequence of living on a tiny island?)

Since it’s not Ouija we’re playing at, our games don’t channel spirits communicating through the tiles. Looking at a board post-game would not reveal meaning through the words we managed to scrape off our racks; in fact, my biggest points last Saturday came from “swooning” on a triple. There’s no doubt, though, that a thorough tromping means that Gay’s week will be better than mine, and vise versa.

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Sam’s slide show

Posted in Adoption, Family, International Adoption, Island life, Seychelles on November 11, 2007| 1 Comment »

In honor of our boy growing up, here’s an encapsulated version of how that happened.

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