Absent minded

I think deep down I have always been a little absent minded or forgetful – whatever you like to call it, which is why I always write lists and then I can happily forget things. Having this trait of forgetfulness has meant that I rarely ever have to cook a meal, which is a real bonus; as it was the burning of the boiled eggs that put Melv off my cooking.

Well coming to the Seychelles hasn’t helped this trait, Melv asks me to stir the dhal and I forget - so yes it burns in the pan. However it turns out to be more serious lately in relation to our drinking water supply. Aride doesn’t get its name from a history of being wet – it is dry for many months and at times the rain clouds just seem to avoid us. Well we have two seasons, the North West monsoon which is the wet one and the South East which is the dry one. During the North West we have to fill all our barrels with water off the roof, which we then use for drinking, this then needs to last us through the SE and into the next NW when it rains again, so a period of what can be 5 months without rain. The other added complication is that the number of birds that live on Aride means that our roofs tend to get rather dirty with pooh and so we have to wait for heavy showers to wash them clean before we can start harvesting clean water.

Before we drink this water we pass it through filter which will take a further nasties out of it, the filter takes a couple of kettle loads at a time and so has to be filled up about 3 times a day from the larger barrels. This was always Sal’s job. Well you can probably guess what is coming, mmmm whilst filling up a kettle from the barrels one day to top the water filter up, I left the tap on and managed to drain out half a barrel of drinking water, so reducing the supplies to 5 – Melv found out...

Then when I did it the next day from a new barrel – so reducing our supplies to 4 – Melv wasn’t happy... Sal was instantly dismissed as water monitor.

I can laugh about it now – and as I write this I am sitting in a tropical storm and all barrels and buckets are full. I have never been so glad to see rain as I was a few days ago, after 6 weeks without – I thought we were heading for the SE, with not a drop of rain to be seen.