Diving and weddings

This week saw the first BV wedding on site between one of our staff members and her boyfriend. They only set the date about two weeks ago, so it's been a bit of a frenzy trying to get everything organised. However, it ended up being a really cute day, with the bride being surprised with a new (cotton, non merengue) wedding dress bought by one of our scientists when he was in Tulear. We bought the happy couple a night in the 'posh' Laguna Blue resort and the local children from the environmental club (and quite a few hangers on) sang as the bride walked up the beach aisle of shells. I have to admit, I was pretty moved. The ceremony itself was pretty short and sweet, and the choir and associated villagers sang and ran after the couple as they wererowed back on site on a pirogue. It was quite a spectacle.
Other than the wedding (my personal highlight was a couple of glasses of proper, South African white wine), it's been quite a quiet week. Have been busying myself with rewriting or writing various information sheets for volunteers and staff, and getting to grips with the temperamental laminator.
The weather is definitely hotting up - it's got to be well over 30 degrees most days and standing in direct sunlight is pretty painful. We got good news from London -as well as a brand new water filter, we're also going to be getting a solar stove for staff use. I'm quite excited about the prospect of making a few sauces or a pasta dish... Am also definitely starting to get bored of pasta, beans and omelettes. Fresh vegetables/salad are a luxury. I spose we're still getting the Uk government's recommended "five portions".... Only we're probably getting through five portions a week, rather than a day.
I'm taking vitamins of course, but my body still craves the fresh stuff. If only the Unicorn grocery did a delivery to Madagascar..... However,on the plus side is that right now, it's mango season good and proper. I'm eating a mango a day (not the same mango, a different one) and it's my main source of fresh vitamins and fibre...
Have done a couple of really good dives this week however - including a really nice exploratory dive on a new reef where we saw a turtle and most of the fish that we're supposed to learn for the science.
Then, this morning, we did a special 'staff dive' as one of our field scientists is leaving at the end of this expedition (on Wednesday). We went to a site that we're not supposed to take volunteers to. The coral wasn't much to write home about but the fish were really spectacular. The visibility was incredible - the best that I've seen so far this expedition and we could see clearly for at least 20 metres. Probably twice that. There was a huge school of large jacks, a potato grouper almost as large as me, and some Great Barracuda.
Towards the end of the dive, while we were doing our 'safety stop' in the blue, one of the group also pointed out a huge ray above us on the surface a few metres away. It was too big to be anything other than a devil ray (which is sort of a mini manta ray). So that was pretty exciting too. It feels somewhat unfair to be doing dives that we're not allowed to take volunteers to (for safety reasons - it's too deep and there have been extremely strong currents there in the past). I'm going to sit and have a think about whether I'd allow future staff dives to go to such sites during expeditions.
Not much else to report this week in fact. I can hardly believe we're almost at the end of our first expedition. All the volunteers leave on Wednesday already. Time really does fly out here. We did a staff expedition feedback and totted up our achievements for this expedition and lessons learnt. We have a long list of things achieved, and some good suggestions of what we can improve on for next time.
The general mood seems to be that Justin and I are doing really well, and creating an open atmosphere and that as a result, there's been no bickering or bitching amongst staff. I'm pretty flattered, but of course it's still relatively early days in the scale of things, and we're probably still in the honeymoon period as far as all the staff are concerned. But also, the staff were really welcoming and helpful and we wouldn't have been able to fit in as well as we have if it wasn't for them.
For anyone interested in the fate of the zebu from last week's non-sacrifice, I'm afraid to report that it was tracked down in the spiny forest and finally killed on Tuesday. The basketball court saw its first official game. We were all out diving though and missed the whole thing. By the next blog, I might have a whole new set of volunteers to contend with - depending on the reliability of their transport.