Manuana

It's been another busy week here in Andava. I don't get it. The general attitude to work here in Madagascar is pretty laid back and 'manuana'.
However, Blue Ventures staff seem to work pretty much every waking hour, and seem to fit a tremendous amount of work in one form or another into the week. For us, diving is work, eating is work (we sit and eat with the volunteers), and pretty much everything else in between is work too.
We've got a new initiative though, which is to separate staff and volunteers for Sunday lunch. We had our first 'staff lunch' yesterday and it was quite a treat just to sit with staff and hang out and eat together. We might instigate a staff dinner as well once a week, and Richard (the big cheese) is also encouraging us to take time out and eat on our own when we need a break from volunteers and work. It's a good idea.
Talking of 'time out', I had my first proper full night off since Valentine's Day last Saturday. Justin and I went to Laguna Blu along with about 9 other people and we had a lovely meal together and lots and lots of wine. We stayed up chatting and being silly until 2am and it was the first time in a long time that I've managed to completely switch off from anything to do with work and just hang out with people as People instead of me as a member of staff (well, the boss) and them as volunteers... .. It was great!
I had to tell some of the the volunteers off last week for breaking curfew, and for almost the first time since I got here, actually 'punished' them too - by making them miss dives and do additional 'boat marshal' duties. I'm not much of the punishing type really, but I think in this case, it really was necessary. Thankfully, no punishments needed this week though.
We've done more diving - and the visibility has improved markedly. I did a double dive with Justin as my buddy and we measured table corals. It was absolutely beautiful and probably one of the most magical (two) dives I've done here. It just felt really lovely to actually share a lovely dive with Justin.
We saw an electric ray (quite a small sting ray) and lots of fish, and of course, many many table corals. I've also given lots of fish point-outs to volunteers (no one has passed their fish tests yet).
Fruit in the village this week: baby bananas and some citrus fruit that
looks like a lemon, but is segmented inside and tastes like a cross between a grapefruit, a lemon/lime and a mandarin. Mandagrapelemons? Or limeone fruits? That's it for this week. Short and sweet. :) unlike the mandagrapelimes, which are still quite sour.