A GVI Week on Curieuse with the Seychelles Marine Park Authority

GVI Volunteers are given the opportunity to work on Curieuse, another of Seychelles beautiful Islands. This first involves getting up at 5:00 a.m. to get the ferry from Mahe to Praslin, then the bus from the ferry dock to the Anse Volbert Village, where the group meets up with the Marine Park Authority (MPA) rangers who work on Curieuse and shuttle workers back and forth between the islands.

The work GVI volunteers do varies from day-to-day and week to week. Our tasks this week were:
• Plant mangrove seeds
• Paint a sign of Curieuse to be posted at the Doctor’s House
• Help re-install the Marine Park boundary markers, which had been freshly painted the week before from red to yellow. (There had been a problem since red is a colour for navigation buoys.)
• Create an Excel spreadsheet for recording daily rainfall
• Cross reference individual receipts of park fees with master list
• Pick up tortoise droppings

We lunched with the rangers, eating huge meals prepared by a woman the rangers affectionately call “mama”. (This is a key attraction for going to Curieuse!) She mothers about 10 rangers a week who stay on the island. They come and go from the Doctor’s house on Curieuse, from one island to another, acting guides and collecting park fees. Rangers are stationed on Curieuse from 5 to 24 days at a time, with their free time spent on Mahe or Praslin. Only about five people actually live on Curieuse fulltime—the head ranger, an assistant ranger, and mama and her family, who also work for the MPA.

My week on Curieuse started a little slow because I had stitches in my foot and wasn’t supposed to get it wet. Getting to and from the boat was a challenge, not so much for me, but for the others who had to carry me. A fellow GVI volunteer was gracious about this, as well as the Rangers, who upon meeting me, immediately tossed me over their shoulder. It drew attention for the first half of the week, but then when I got the stitches out, the jokes ran out, but not the fun. We’d already established that special bond! Now I could more easily walk the half hour to and from the Ranger’s station (when we couldn’t get a ride from the Rangers), get in and out of the boats on my own, and finally go snorkelling!!! I missed snorkelling at Coco Island because of my foot, but nothing after that. I even did a long walk through the jungle on the northern part of the island with an expert on black parrots, which are indigenous to Curieuse.

Being on Curieuse gave me more of the Creole feel of the Seychelles than back at Cap Ternay. All in all, the pace of life is a bit more relaxed and made me appreciate where I am.