27/09/2013 - Bread, Birds and Bottle Tops

 

Hello everyone. So it’s been several days since arriving in the Seychelles and already I’ve lost track of time. The base is at full capacity at the moment, with twelve volunteers and four staff members, and many shenanigans have already been had.

 

The first thing that comes to mind is when we all got taught how to make bread. Fresh bread is made every day here on base, to go with our meals and also for snackage between treks. Anyway, this seemingly simple task took up much of the afternoon and needless to say there was much laughter and confusion as flour was spilt all over the benches.

 

The second thing that I have really loved this week as been the tweets. These are bird surveys and I’ve taken part in two so far, one morning one and an afternoon one. Both times I saw many of the wonderful birds that live around the island and was quite proud of myself the other day for recognising at least five species of birds. With the threat of a test looming next week, bird recognition has become a popular topic of conversation and trying to learn not only the names but the markings is proving quite a difficult task. This results in many a group revision session, with the aid of flip cards and a slideshow on our lovely base laptop, Shakira.

 

The final thing I’ll quickly mention is the card games in the evenings. What does this have to do with bottle tops? Well we’ve replaced the money you would usually use for ‘‘Chase the Ace’’ with the bottle-tops from the beer that resides in the base freezer. These games seem to keep happening due to us being shocked at the earliness of the hour. On most nights, when it feels like we’ve been up for ages, it generally turns out to be approximately eight in the evening so to pass the time and not feel like nannas’ we play these games. Another, slightly more vicious game, that has become quite popular is ‘‘Spoons’’. In this the bottle top can prove quite deadly, as in the flurry of scrabbling for the tops to stay in the game, many people emerge with cuts and scratches to their hands. Of course, when you raise your hand in victory, having acquired a bottle top, you hardly care at all.

 

Regardless, I now feel like I’m gushing too much so I shall stop. I guess you’ll just have to come and see for yourselves.

Love,

Zoe.

 

 

27/09/2013 - Bread, Birds and Bottle Tops