Seychelles National Day!

At the end of June (29th) Seychelles national day marks the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1976. This year this public holiday fell on a Monday and the President declared the Tuesday a public holiday as well so we had an extra day off that week. On the Saturday (27th) everyone joined together for ‘Station Clean’ which happens on a Saturday morning between 8am – 12pm. Everyone divided to different parts of the station to prepare for National day.

On Sunday myself, Rona, Andy and Joe had a lovely afternoon at a place called Anse Var, it is about a 40 minute walk from Station and has a beach hut area and a lovely little beach. It was my first time going and I had a lovely day. I took my hammock, my book and a packed lunch. Joe and Andy cooked a fish over a fire and had it with chicken noodles they had made.

For Seychelles National Day Clarisha had organised a sports day for us all to participate in. We had all bought a few random items from the shop to contribute as prizes (I had bought honey, crunchy peanut butter and green tea). She assigned us all teams of 3 people and one team of 4 (4 teams = Flamingo, Tyomityo, Dugong and Caspian). My team included Gino and Clarisha and we were team Flamingo.

We all helped with the setup of the day, meeting at 8am. I helped make the start and finish lines for the team relay races out of coconuts with William and Rona. The logistics team made some temporary modifications to the fish hut so we could use it as our base and for food for the day. They also moved tables and chairs out to between Yanick and Rona’s house for us to have a base for the day. Rona made mini pizza for a snack, Norisha had made ‘Chilli Cake’, I had made some peanut butter oat cookies for a morning snack and there was BBQ for lunch alongside pasta salad and spinach tart made by Francis. Angela made a coconut cake for desert and William made a crepe cake with layers of caramel and cream.

Our first activities of the day were the relay races, we started at around 10:00am with a relay sack race (or Gunny bag race) called ‘Tay dan Goni’ in Creole and I think this might have been my favourite activity of the whole day! We were discussing the race before and Rona mentioned that people don’t jump in the sacks they tuck their feet inside the corners and do a funny little run, William and I both agreed that is not how a sack race is usually allowed to run but Rona was adamant that in the Seychelles that is how they normally do it. Although I think its normally kids that do that because they have smaller legs that can move in the running motion. I am glad she told me about it before the race though because I would have been caught very off guard seeing people try and do it, grown men trying to run inside a sack was quite hilarious and in the end most people did jump like normal. I think my team came second in the sack race (it’s hard to remember now). It was a very funny morning.

After the sack race was a three legged race (I was not participating as it was only two people from each team). Then it was egg and spoon race – we did three races with a ping pong ball so every team member could have a go and then one person from each team was nominated to do the race with a real egg. The last relay race was just a regular running race. After the relays we then moved onto a tug of war, my team came last in this (Poor Gino was mostly on his own as Clarisha and myself are much smaller than the guys on the other teams). During the first tug of war both Clarisha and me ended up on the floor almost immediately!

After tug of war we then had lunch and Clarisha organised a Quiz based on different areas of work on Aldabra, we had questions on Research/Monitoring, Health & Safety/First Aid and Logistics questions. Two teams went head to head and then we had a round played by the two lowest scoring teams for 3rd place and the two highest scoring teams for 1st and second place. For the final round we used cards from the family fortunes board game to determine the winner. After the quiz was a volleyball tournament, I’m not the most talented at Volleyball – I was mostly trying to get out of the way of my team for them to be more help but I gave it my best shot. My team came third in the volleyball overall.

The next activity planned was dominoes, however some people had started to disappear so instead of doing dominoes we went straight to Hoopla, which Clarisha had set up with glass bottles either filled with sand or water and each bottle had a different prize written on masking tape on the back. We positioned a rope to mark our distance and each took it in turns to throw the hoops to try and win prizes. I hooked one that won me some raisins and orange jelly powder, I hooked two which said ‘Nothing my friend’ and another which said I get to plan a lagoon trip in the future.

Once all the prizes were won we concluded the Hoopla and all helped pack up before the ending ceremony at the Mess where Clarisha announced the scoreboard of the day. 1st Place: Caspian (39 points) 2nd Place: Dugong (34 Points) 3rd Place: Tyomityo (30 points) 4th Place: Flamingo (29 points)

Sadly my team came last, but we were close to third, and it was a really fun day! The prizes I received for 4th place were a pack of raisins, a can of oats, a can of sprite and a jar of tomato pasta sauce.