Winter woes

The last few days have seen the weather taking a turn for the tropical worse with lashings of rain and enough wind to bring a smile to the face of the capitain of the Cutty Sark - Ah if only we lived in another sea-faring age. With all this wind gadding about one could be forgiven if the first 0° C of the year went unoticed the last two days. Yes it is now Winter and the "Hauts" are settling in for a cold snap with a light frost appearing in those regions over 1500m.

Of course, this is all relative even if the papers have started the ritualised "La Réunion s’enrhume" and if any of you are concerned the minimum temperature ever recorded at the gite near the volcano was a spectacular -5°C.

La Réunion s’enrhume? Well it is a bit much really if the main headlines are reduced to creating and perpetuating crises. If the Chikungunya wasn't enough! Well, actually it would appear that the Chik is not enough. The latest figures from the beginning of June this year showed "only" 100 people infected between the 05/06 and 12/06 - a long way from the 40,000 in one week in February of this year. So what is the problem? Apparently, the authorities conducting research into the Chik are having trouble finding enough people infected!!!! Perhaps, they should have come sooner...

La Réunion s'enrhume? Or should that be "Rhum" - rum to you and me? The authorities are always at pains - however tentatively- to address the problem of alcoholism on the island (some 12 - 15% of the male population are chronic alcoholics) and earlier this year announced the phasing out of the "pile-plat", or little plastic bottle of rum. They have now obiously realised that this would only encourage dipsos to buy rum in larger quantities and so have proposed the reduction in the strength of rum from 49% to 40% from 01/07/06. Of course, the price is not set to be reduced by the same amount. For those of you interested in figures - 3 million "pile plat" are sold on average each year *.


Me? I am off to find a jumper before I catch a chill, and other things my grandmother used to say before going to bed with a hot toddy...

walkabout

Apart from a brief sejour to the other hemisphere last month - a jolly time had by one and all despite the "chik" and the "grippe" - nothing of any relevance to la belle Réunion has occurred within the periphery of my ever so blinkered vision.

However, since my return I have managed to reaffirm my faith in the island by passing some pleasurable moments in the company of the landscape and some good folk.

Quite often, tourist places suffer from an overdose of superlatives and hyperbole - last weekend proved the exception (which proves the rule etc). Passing the weekend at Cilaos I descended on Sunday to "la chapelle", a "grotto" in the cliff face far below Cilaos which provides a supplementary cascade to the "Bras Rouge".

Perhaps some images would help to purvey the sense that this chapel was more a cathedral and the lack of photos of the cascade at the "altar" is only because getting there involved a 20 metre swim through the all but icy cold water in the grotto - beautiful, I almost forgot to be miserable for a moment there!


... Ah!

...and where was i this weekend?

I do not think that executives, politicians, criminals and pimps should have all the fun, so I went to the beach and partook of a few beers. I really wanted to say something sleazy about the visit of Dominique the PM this week but a friend and confident informs me that he is really a nice chap and will be president one day. Besides he has just promised 4.5 million € to boost tourism on the island following the CHIK fiasco and I am wondering if he could see to it that a mere few cents would come my way for continuing with my anglophone website - unique and probably up a digital evolutionary blind alley, but then given what wanton development is doing to the island maybe tourism is not exactlly the future...

I had slaved for hours over a rather astonishing (to my small and twisted mind anyways) photo of the PM's visit to be found on the Réunion wanadoo site and had produced a scathing satire of post colonial life, but...

... but another close friend tells me that many expats here wouldn't like it, or worse. Not that I am one to be intimidated (oh yeah?) but I thought I would leave it up to your imagination and publish here the original photo...


... please feel free to add you own comments or quotes and I'd love to see if you are as cynical as I am. An added bonus could be that as no-one got the brown-noddy I have plenty of my unique, trendy and half stupid "Chiracagunya" t-shirts left and will send several to the best entry as chosen by the three judges - Myself, Bishop and Mrs jones. The last two are cats so there might just be a little bias..

Back to the photo, and just who are the couple on the left engaging in small talk? Looks like something out of an ad for Renault or Piat D'Or.

Have fun.

i may be some time

... it has all been far too long, and if I were searching for an excuse, it would be upon the greasy shoulders of France Telecom that I would place the burden. Having waited one month and five days for the phone to be connected one can probably understand my rancour...

So, enough of that and back to life on the rock. Yesterday was the newly instated (is that a word) "fete" for the abolition of slavery, a day to be aware of the fact that slavery has not really been abolished and a day that Mons Chirac wants seemingly to make his very own as though that would atone for "everything.

Strange also, that Mons Sarkozy chose the same week to give his speech to all - my impressions of that speech are as follows :



Now, quite what this has got to do with the hot rock time will tell. Myself, I disappeared up the volcano at five this morning and crunched along cinder paths in the fag and rain to my little heart's content.

Sorry about the delay in posting and I can assure you that I haven't stopped dribbling and this will continue...

Eyes only

Friday, "Le Monde" published a report by the WHO into the handling of the Chikungunya epidemic on Reunion. This is strange in that it has yet to be made public, but then, some of us are more public than others. Whatever, it doesn't make that interesting a read and its recommendations could be put forward by anyone over a glass of beer and a packet of crisps. All we need is what was called in my old seafaring days as a bit of "common dog". For example it points out that diurnal mosquitos are not usually about between one and four in the morning when the mossie busters are about spraying willy nilly. The weekend before last I was returning from a delightful "soirée" with my friends to be confronted on the road by a 4x4 awash to the gun'ales in pesticide. One week and a bit later there are no mossies and my week long asthma attack was in no way linked to the toxic fog which enveloped the neighbourhood in the wee hours.

However, the report did comment on the perseverance of the health and allied workers and the remarkable way in which statistics et al were gathered and how the great administration performed well even if it was not well co-ordinated. No doubt come the next epidemic we shall have plenty of statistics and lots of brochures just as long as there are enough victims.

Not surprisingly the report also focused on the fact that the epidemic was often seen to be the fault of the poor as is all too often the case the world over :

The poor "were stigmatized by certain sections with the population" and were shown "to generate diseases like chikungunya" .

I quite like the way it is all in the past tense as though it is all but over! Nay, the trend is down but there were still approx. 8000 new cases the week before last.

Latest figures released by the "Institute de Veille Sanitaire" indicate that some 236,00 people have been infected and there have been 181 chik related deaths since the beginning of the year. Figures relating to other parts of the Indian Ocean can also be found here.

oil change?

I should apologise for the delay in submitting something to this blog, but...
...as nobody reads it anyway, no one will have missed anything.

Besides, I have a reasonable excuse. I have been moving from up there to down about and across. Unfortunately this is only a temporary stop but then so is life. More on the new mantis abode later if I should ever get the phone connected. However, moving has become rather a strain as I managed to explode my sump - not that I am one of a prestigous sump, but an exploded sump is worse than useless. Now, I can admit to being responsible for the great oil slick of 2006 and I was not hiding underneath my car but trying to repair it.

Nobody wants to know about any of that but my search for a second hand sump and oil pump has led me to previously unknown parts of the island. I could waffle on - yet again - about chikungunya (174 dead 230,000 infected) but frankly, it is all becoming a bit boring, even for those suffering.

The coast road is still closed to traffic due to the great land slip of 2006 which pushed my great oil slick off the front page...

... I am off back under my car, if it works after all my fumbling about I'll finish moving then get the phone connected and continue writing this dribble.

Oil change? No all change, its time for a revolution.

Chirac eats his hat... if only.

"Nothing, with the exception perhaps of the occasional cyclone, disturbs the charms of Reunion, where tropical disease is unknown."

...and who writes this stuff? I would very much like to encourage people to visit the island. Reunion is beautiful and the mix of cultures is a breath of fresh air after the stuffy monoculturalism of Europe. This is a tropical island and I do resent the lying hypocrisy of those who would have it be Margate or the Costa Brava. The above is from the web site of the French govt.

www.diplomatie.gouv.fr