High tide - the fish speaks

Over the weekend we have experienced an awful lot of wind, rain and some rather large waves. This is all very excitng especially as I chose Friday to return to the volcano and get wet. According to "meteo france" the waves have been averaging between 4 and 5 metres with rather too many at some 8 metres. Jolly exciting what?


Well, that is what I thought, but it seems that I am somewhat in a minority. The journal for today, Sunday, has decided that all this rough weather merely serves to indicate that we are not prepared for a tsunami. Some of youse will remember that I noted the article in the "Quotidien" the other day proclaiming the end is nigh with tsunami type warnings. So, whilst strolling up and down the beach at Etang Salé enjoying the force and majesty of a Nature untamed, I got to thinking...


You see, of course you do, what this scare mongering is all about, is money. The authorities just love dreaming up new ways to get money for developing useless projects so that they can enrich their already fat and wobbly buttocks. After the chikungunya was the publicity plague, after the shark attacks we now have the "marie" of St Pierre pondering the feasability of installing shark nets. Obviously, somebody's brother's, uncle's, aunt's minah bird needs employment, so now we have the TSUNAMI SCARE!!!! Strange, one does not find this money driven doom laden prophecysing (is that how you spell it Andrew?) on Mauritius. Maybe it is because they "know" that they are living in the tropics and are not trying to pretend that it is some cosy French province. Ouch!

The tourist office try to sell Réunion as "the intense isle" and yet, when it is intense everyone is running around griping that we need money for projects - everyone must have a project. Bollocks! The attraction of the intense isle is just that, intense. People come here because it is nature being intense - and not in the student bar, existentialist, angst driven pre-eclamptic, philosophical sorta way -in much the same way as one would visit a game park and not a zoo.


Fortunately, there are those who understand this and treat Nature with respect and humility. It is only when we treat her with our petty hubris that we need to be afraid - and no, I have not been ingesting Whitman, Lawrence or Gide, just walking on the beach and talking to fish.