"You fill up my senses..."

Night after night.....
I’m sitting on a big rock under the branches of our avocado pear tree.
I’m watching the sun setting into a millpond-calm sea. Silhouette island is a two-dimesional cut-out. The sky is on fire.
The knobbly granite presses into my skin.
Way off to my right, the music so loved by the Seyhcellois drifts my way, throbbing gently.
The sweet scent of some exotic shrub in my neighbour’s garden fills my nostrils.
The taste of the Bourgeois fish we had for supper lingers on my palate.
Seychelles....you fill up my senses.

But on some days.....

My skin feels hot and sticky, itchy and prickly and I'm irritable with the heat that goes on day after day. It's much warmer than it says in the brochures - it must be global warming.

I look at the majestic Albiza tree in front of our house and I feel sad...and mad. Someone has ring-barked it and it is withering and dying. It used to be green and lush. At dusk, the fruit bats used to swoop into its leaves and hang, wrapping themselves into barely visible pod-like shapes.

The stinky pong of the tuna factory has oozed its way through the hills and slithered up toward our house. I long for the wind to turn.

I can hear the pitiful mooing of one of Andy's cows. It must be tethered somewhere near us again. Is its rope too short, has it grazed everything within reach, is it thirsty and hot like me? I would love to set it free.

Man's encroachment on this beautiful island leaves a bitter taste.

This too is Seychelles.

No place is perfect. There is no paradise on earth.