THE SEYCHELLES - THE REAL GARDEN OF EDEN







WORDS © MARION FRIEDEL

The Seychelles - the remains of a sunken continent, wild, romantic beaches, unique plants and animals, a verdant tropical paradise. This island world, so richly endowed by Nature. The granite islands of the Seychelles are one of the geological wonders of the world

For over 30 years we have been harnessing our desire to visit distant corners of the world, and turning it into pictures and traveller's tales. Sometimes we have risked our lives, venturing into the remotest nature reserves of the world. We have explored new holiday destinations, yet have scarcely ever found time for a holiday ourselves. But this time we are packing for a trip to a place where the working conditions are simply blissful, somewhere which even the most jaded globe-trotters will tell you is unmatched for beauty anywhere in the world. It makes no difference how often we go there: each time we are overcome by a desire to surrender to its beauty; we are surprised every time by the discovery of something new.

Six hundred miles (1000 km) north-east of Madagascar is where you will find these islands of superlatives - the Seychelles.

There are several groups of islands. Out of a total of 115 islands, forty are literally rock-solid, being, unusually, made of granite. There are also the coral atolls of the Amirantes, Cosmoledo and Aldabra, but it is the granite isles which give the Seychelles their unique character.

In the middle of the Indian Ocean mountain peaks rise from an undersea granite plateau, to a height of about 3000 feet (1000m). Around the principal island, Mahé, lie the islands of Silhouette, Praslin, La Digue, Curieuse, Félicité, Frégate, Sainte Anne, North Island, Marianne, Grande Soeur, Thérèse, Aride, Conception and Petite Soeur.

Geologists claim that these rocks are the remains of a sunken continent which millions of years ago linked Africa to Asia. If this is true, it makes them amongst the oldest pieces of land on earth.

The complete isolation of the islands has meant that a unique flora and fauna have evolved here, with plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world.

The first Europeans to discover the islands were Vasco da Gama in 1502 and Pedro de Mascarenhas in 1505. But not until 1609 do we get a description of the uninhabited islands, which were explored by English sailors: "We found many coconuts, wonderfully ripe and green, of many different kinds, as well as an abundance of fish, birds and sea-turtles, and many rays and other fish. Furthermore, in the fresh-water streams there were crocodiles. Later, on other islands, we found the finest timber that I have ever seen. The trunks are tall and thick and very hard indeed. This is a good place to restore and refresh oneself, with the finest wood, water and coconuts, fish and fowl, and where there is no danger to fear save the crocodiles."

Later, pirates came, bringing notoriety to the islands which still had no name. The many bays and beaches offered ideal hiding-places for their booty. The most famous of the pirates was Oliver Le Vasseur, known as "The Hawk", who is said to have hidden fabulous treasures here. When he was finally hanged on 17th July, 1730, he threw a coded map into the watching crowd and shouted: "Anyone who can read this and finds the treasure, may keep it with my blessing." To this day, driven by the hope of finding some of this loot, natives and foreigners alike devote a great deal of time, money and labour to the search.

French expeditions in the 18th century returned with tales of the "Islands of Plenty," and they revealed the greatest and most precious secret of the Seychelles - the origin of the legendary giant nut, the Coco de Mer.

This, the largest and heaviest tree-growing nut in the world, has an erotic shape, resembling the buttocks and pudenda of a young woman. Ever since the nuts of this tree were washed up on the coasts of India, Ceylon and the Maldives, they have excited man's imagination. Since no-one had seen the nuts growing on land, it was thought that they were the fruit of a strange, gigantic underwater tree, growing somewhere off the island of Java, and so they named it Coco-de-Mer-sea-coconut.

Potentates whose potency was flagging paid unheard-of sums for this rarity, the "mirum miraculum naturae" - amazing miracle of nature, to which magical powers were attributed. The highest price ever - 4,000 guilders for just one coco-de-mer - was offered to the Sultan of Batam by King Rudolph II of Habsburg, but without success. When the nuts were found growing on 100-foot (30m) high palms on the islands of Praslin and Curieuse, the Podex Botanicus lost for ever its mystery and fabulous value.

When General Charles "China" Gordon visited the Vallée de Mai on Praslin in 1881, he announced with enthusiasm: "This must be the Garden of Eden and the coco-de-mer is the forbidden fruit."

By tradition, the Garden of Eden had human inhabitants; but man did not set foot in this remote island paradise until its "natural" development was almost over. The history of their settlement goes back only 250 years, which is a very short time when measured against the many hundred years of the coco-de-mer palms.

The French annexed the islands in 1756 and named them after Louis XIV's finance minister, Count Moreau de Séchelles. The French planters brought African slave labour into Paradise and created a successful economy under the motto: "God plants and the Seychellois reap."

The following decades passed in peace and tranquility. The white, French-speaking landowners, the "Grands Blancs," enjoyed life on the "Islands of Love and Laughter" and imposed on them the unmistakable stamp of French culture and way of life. In 1811, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British took over the islands and did not grant them their independence until 1976. Since 1981 the national language has been Creole, a mellifluous linguistic cocktail of French with African dialects, patterns of thought and grammatical peculiarities. English and French are also official languages.

With the opening of the airport in 1971 the paradise of the Seychelles became - virtually overnight - accessible to the world.

The dream, or rather the reality of insular remoteness, was thus brought to a sudden end, at least for the inhabitants of the Seychelles: a colourful blend of peoples of French, African, British and Asian origin. Up till then the people of the "Islands of Eternal Summer" had literally lived from hand to mouth, since everything necessary for life lay at their doorstep: a sea full of fish, timber for their huts, palm-leaves for their roofs. Coconuts, breadfruit, papayas, mangoes, and bananas grew as though destined for their mouths. Contact with the outside world aroused a previously unfelt need for consumer goods, which the bounty of nature alone was unable to satisfy.

Coconuts and fish were insufficient to earn foreign currency, and the government of the day decided to "package" the islands themselves. The Seychelles were to become an Eldorado of the international jet-set.

Many of the foreign visitors were so taken with the place where "the water is clear, the people are friendly and the servants cheap," that they soon decided to buy a piece of paradise. This began a sell-off of the Garden of Eden, with government approval, but the hopes of many people, that some of this windfall of foreign money would stay in the islands, were soon to be dashed.

More than 70 per cent of the total land area, including the most beautiful islands and properties, were acquired by foreign speculators.The local inhabitants found themselves in the role of a modern Man Friday, once more working as servants, waiters and housemaids. Food, which before the foreign invasion was cheap and plentiful, became scarce and expensive.

Tourism and its negative effects became a political issue in the development of Africa's smallest nation and its 65,000 inhabitants. It was painfully realized that "Money is good - but it costs too much."

A year after independence there was a coup d'état, and the left-wing party - led by the current president, France-Albert René - took over power. The sell-off of the homeland was stopped. Where possible the land was bought back and in some cases confiscated. With the help of a carefully worked out social programme, strict conditions were imposed on the foreign owners of islands, hotels and properties, so that they might take part in the general development of the country to the benefit of all its inhabitants.

The most important source of income, tourism, came under state control. The government showed commendable caution in preventing any form of mass tourism. Thus a natural landscape was preserved, to keep alive the dream of the Garden of Eden - of an untroubled relationship between man and nature.

Today, after years of shrewd manoeuvring, with development aid from East and West, these efforts have paid off for the islanders. Although still a developing country, its per-capita income is now among the highest in Africa.

In the north-east of Mahé, at the foot of Morne Seychellois and Morne Trois Frères, lies the miniature capital of the archipelago - Victoria, where about 30,000 people live. "The town begins where people put their shoes on," has long been a true saying. The little town of Victoria, with its alleys of colourful tin-roofed houses, is free of rush and hassle. New and sometimes quite imposing buildings like the National Library have risen up, and more and more cars crowd the narrow streets. But you will still not find a big-city atmosphere here, the island metropolis is full of rural charm.

However, none of this can conceal the fact that even here, albeit in a modest form, world politics are being played out. Like a "mini United Nations" it is packed with the embassies and missions of the EU-states, the USA, Cuba, several Scandinavian countries, Russia, China, North Korea and India.

Victoria has a charm and an atmosphere all its own, which invite you to just sit and stare. Amid the colourful bustle, tourists are hardly noticed, since the islanders of European origin can scarcely be distinguished, if at all, from European visitors.

In the colorful square, redesigned and renamed the Sir Selwyn Clarke Market, there is always a cheerful bustle of activity, especially in the afternoon when the freshly caught fish are delivered.

Not far from here is the terrace of the "Pirate Arms" restaurant, the social centre of the town. This is where people come to see and be seen and to swap endless rumours and snippets of news. It is quieter in the National Museum across the street. Here the visitor, undisturbed, can gain an insight into the history of the islands and their settlement, as well as looking at a host of natural exhibits.

For a Third World country the standard of ecological conservation is astonishingly high. Almost half the territory of the Seychelles, including some entire islands, has been declared a protected area. Under the aegis of the World Wildlife Fund, the government has been able, with international help, to save and maintain the wide variety of plant and animal species, many threatened with extinction, which are unique to the Seychelles.

elcome to Aride. Twice a week this island bird-sanctuary is open to visitors, but for most of the year the sea is too rough to land. Our hosts, Ian and Gill Bullock, are among the six biologists and ornithologists who have been sent by the International Council for Bird Preservation to work on Aride.

If you are in any doubt that man has no more than a subordinate and protective role in this refuge of nature, you should see who you are sharing the old planter's house with - the birds,lizards and giant millipedes. They have taken over every last corner. Ian says with a wry smile: "In April it's not so bad, but by the end of May, when as many as two million sea-birds have virtually taken the island by storm, and you have to be careful putting one foot in front of the other, it gets really crowded for us, and for several months we can hardly sleep for the background-noise."

Eleven different species of sea-bird, including some very rare ones, have once again found a place to nest on Aride, and to bring up their young undisturbed. That this has happened, is thanks to the British chocolate manufacturers, Cadbury. Unlike many other buyers, they acquired the island in 1973 solely to return it to nature. It takes a great deal of money and effort to restore the balance of nature, once it has been destroyed by man. By 1973 practically all the trees on Aride had been felled, and the sought-after delicacies - the thousands of birds' eggs, and the young of the tropic-birds, which only had to be plucked from the branches - had been collected. Today nature is again showing how flora and fauna not only complement each other, but are irrevocably dependent on each other: the sea supports the fish from which millions of sea-birds live, and the birds' droppings fertilize the soil, making vegetation possible.

n this rich earth thrive coconut-palms, mapou-trees, cinnamon, tropical apples, lemons, oranges, mangos, grapefruit, papayas, aubergines and yams, as well as strange plants which grow here and nowhere else in the world, such as the Wright's Gardenia.

Near this wild vegetable-garden lie the nesting-sites of the little Seychelles brush-warbler, a land bird threatened with extinction, which was originally only to be found on Cousin island, but has successfully been introduced on Aride. On the limply hanging leaves of the papaya-tree, the Lesser Noddy terns sit and let the blazing sun burn the tiresome parasites out of their feathers. In the thick layer of leaves on the ground we hear the rustling of geckoes and shimmering, friendly lizards. Wherever you look you see a sun-soaked picture of peace and harmony.

After a pretty exhausting expedition up to the highest peak of Aride, we slide down a steep slope of granite rock, polished by wind and rain. Some 500 feet (150m) below us lies an ocean of deepest blue. A school of porpoises romps in the afternoon sun, a sea-turtle paddles towards the beach, a shark cruises through the turqoise water around a coral reef.

Above us the huge, majestic frigate-birds allow themselves to be lifted through the air on thermals, and the innumerable sea-birds in never-ending flight send out mating-cries to their partners.

" Do you see that pair of terns gliding through the air with their wingbeats perfectly synchronised? Every year, after being separated for months far over the ocean, they return to Aride and find each other again, among the countless other sea-birds, by using a special mating-call."

On that day we saw a corner of paradise, which might no longer have existed. We will long remember the wish expressed by Ian Bullock: " I would like to have visited the Seychelles two hundred and fifty years ago, when they were still in their original, unspoilt state, but what I would really like to do is come back again a hundred years from now, and enjoy seeing how nature has completely reconquered Aride."

"Coming back to the Seychelles..." is a perennial hit by the singer and songwriter, Michael Mancham. His song is about separation and homesickness, things which so many Seychellois have to suffer these days. Nearly 30,000 of them live abroad; since anyone who can afford to, wants to go out into the world to study or earn more money. But it is like being banished from Paradise and, like the birds, everyone wants to ...come back to the Seychelles!









THE SEYCHELLES - THE REAL GARDEN OF EDEN

WORDS © MARION FRIEDEL