Grand Anse EcoAride Club Visit Aride

On the last day of term over 30 children from the EcoAride Club at Grand Anse Primary School were given a real treat, courtesy of La Reserve Hotel. The club which meet every Tuesday during Extracurricular time have more members than ever this year and they are all keen to learn about Aride Island and its special wildlife. La Reserve kindly offered the use of their boat at a greatly reduced rate to enable the children to come out to the island and experience the wildlife first hand. So far they have only been able to hear about it from the Sally and teachers, or see and read about it from pictures and books, but last Friday they experienced it for themselves.

Close to the beginning of the breeding season, the children were greeted by flocks of sooty terns circling above the hill nosily, together with numerous pairs of fairy terns flying in formation as they dance over head, their white plumage perfectly lit up against the pure blue sky.

At this time of year especially, the island is a live with wildlife, and as young wildlife explorers the children were able to see young tropic birds at their feet, and fairy tern chicks at eye level.

Shearwater chicks snuggled into burrows and magpie robins came and fed on cleared ground in front of them, skinks and crabs played around their feet, the smell of the Wright’s Gardenia flower greeted them as they walked into the garden, geckos skulked on the trees protecting their eggs and lesser noddys croaked in unison as they walked along the paths.

They also found out about the social history of the island, about the Copra house and the Lodge and how the inhabitants used to use wooden boats to get supplies, not like the same inflatable ribs of today. They learnt about island life, with no running water and at times no electricity, about the importance of the garden and of growing food especially for the times when the sea is too rough to launch the boat to get to Praslin. There was time for relaxing too, as the children had lunch in the visitors shelter and a chance to enjoy the sand fly free beach and the waves for which Aride is known.

Projects this year for the children back at school will include writing articles and poems about their day on Aride, creating a model of the island marking on where the different species of wildlife live, and writing an information panel on the history of the copra house that can still be seen on the island today, from the times when it was a coconut plantation. To do the latter they hope to conduct interviews with people that worked on Aride at the time.
So don’t forget to keep watching...