19/11/2010 Talking Terrestrial

The ‘new’ terrestrials have been learning to make friends with the sun, sand and sea; and implacable enemies of the sandflies. They have now the legs (covered in bites), the skin (mottled) and clothes (dirty) of initiates; muscles no longer scream merely whimper and the pleasure pain index is, by the end of one week, in equilibrium.

It is a strange world to come into where everything that flies is not in the bird book, everything that rustles is not a cockroach, and everything that bites is not a mosquito but can be found in your dormitory: and to need to drink three litres a day to have the strength to throw things at them.

Settled in to our accommodation and porridge for breakfast, our ‘one’ luxury on our desert island is a flush toilet: it is a cruel irony that this should be a facility shared with tourists who use it with such profligacy and in so doing believe that they know all about suffering in a tropical paradise.

The preparation of a blog, between the compost bin and the generator in the pitch black, in bed, under a mosquito net in an old leprosarium, is not as easy as it sounds but certainly makes for an interesting skill to add to ones CV.

19/11/2010 Talking Terrestrial