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Category: Island Life

Volunteers & Staff Turtle Cove Olympics - Team Waves
BlogIsland Life

Turtle Cove Olympics: February 26th, 2016

Volunteers & Staff Turtle Cove Olympics - war paintFor the 2016 Turtle Cove Olympics, everybody at camp (both staff and volunteers) took the day off.  The entire camp readied themselves for war and painted up for the competition.  The camp was then split into 4 teams: Stars, Waves, Wind, and Leaves.

The competition got underway and teams set off with various games like javelin throw, long jump, wheelbarrow races, stick and stone (coral) distance, dizzy bat and Frisbee golf.

Volunteers & Staff Turtle Cove Olympics - Team WavesBy the time the games stopped for lunch, Waves were ahead with Leaves in second place and Stars were followed by Wind.  All teams were very close in points with Waves off to a decent lead.

The second half of the games commenced and the competition heated up.  Stars overtook Waves with win after win in long jump, and stick and stone distance. Leaves were left splitting third place with Wind.

Two games remained: Frisbee golf and wheelbarrow races but Stars kept their winning streak going. Waves crashed, Leaves burned and Wind picked up heavily.

Staff & Volunteers Turtle Cove Olympics - relaxing in the seaThe 2016 Turtle Cove Olympics finished and the results came in: Stars came out on top, followed by Wind and Leaves tied for second.  The low tides were out and, unfortunately, Waves went with them (they blamed it on their full stomachs).

As the Turtle Cove Olympics ended, volunteers and staff took a dip in the sea to relax after all the high intensity competition.  A great day was had by all – we even have the photos to prove it!

Read more about life at our base camp here.

 

Madagascar Volunteer: Learning to make Coconut Rice
BlogIsland Life

How To Make Coconut Rice

It’s Tuesday today which means we get to enjoy coconut rice for dinner tonight. Here at camp, Raissa, Perline, Marie-Solange, Micheline and Nadia treat us to a different, delicious meal each night of the week, but ask around and no doubt this dish would prove a popular favourite. I sat down with the ladies and asked them to share the recipe with me…

Madagascar Volunteer - cooking coconut rice

The ladies at camp show us how to make coconut rice

madagascar volunteer - making coconut ricemadagascar volunteer - coconut rice

Firstly, fresh coconut is scraped out of it’s shell using a special stool, crafted specifically for this purpose – an arduous task but the result is definitely worth it! (Should you not have a Malagasy coconut grating stool at home, there are other coconut grating tools available).

The coconut is then combined with white rice, salt, water and a cinnamon stick. Mix together and bring to the boil. Simmer until the rice is cooked through and enjoy with almost anything, or just on it’s own!

Thank you so much ladies for all the fantastic food – you’re the best!

Madagascar Volunteer: Nosy Komba Starry Night
BlogIsland Life

Our Night Sky

In light of Sunday night’s supermoon eclipse I decided to do an astrology themed blog post…

Madagascar Volunteer: Supermoon Eclips
Here at camp, our night sky acts as an overhead gallery. Each night we go about our business under a phenomenal display; deign to look skyward and you’re almost guaranteed to see a  shooting star. When you live here it’s easy to become complacent with the light show above your head, but look up and no words seem fitting for what lies there. All the language that springs to mind feels trite given its use in the day to day. It is so easy to forget the true meaning of words when they are so frequently rolled out; ‘awesome’ and ‘magnificent’ now finally content in a description befitting of their definition.

Sunday night saw the eclipse of a supermoon, some 31,000 miles closer to Earth than usual (that’s around the world 8.6 times), one of only five supermoon eclipses to have occurred since 1900 and the last one for eighteen years.

Madagascar Volunteer: Turtle Cove Star Dust

I went to Chile last year and was introduced to astronomy by a man called Jorge Coranthes who, after twenty years as an astronomy tour guide, gets the same joy from visions of the universe that he did when he began. He had meant to become an engineer but on a routine trip into the Atacama Desert two decades ago, he encountered a German woman (her name still fresh in his memory) who asked him to point out the Southern Cross (constellation of Crux), which he did. Her reaction, he said, was one of delight. She had always wanted to see it, and that interaction caused him to pursue a career in astro tourism, taking people into the desert nightly to have their minds blown by what sits a loft. We can see the Southern Cross from Turtle Cove too, in the company of Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn and for September at least, Mercury.

I am no scientist – physics, frustratingly, is beyond me, but space is too interesting to leave alone. The wonder of it all… To know that when you are looking at the Andromeda Galaxy, you are looking at a moment 2.57 million years ago. That on Neptune it rains diamonds, that technically we are all made of star dust and that a day on Venus extends beyond a year on Earth. That a soup can full of neutron star material would have more mass than the moon. That all the reactions, the forming and death of stars takes place in total silence and that there are more stars in the sky than there are grains of sand on our planet.

Madagascar Volunteer: Nosy Komba Starry Night

Coming home to Nosy Komba at night by boat might just be the best taxi ride of your life! A canopy of unfathomable proportion, bioluminescence igniting under the water. It’s pretty great.

Thank you to Brandon, Tamara and Julia for the beautiful photographs.