All Golfed Out

Last Sunday, P and I were invited to a "Grand Golf Initiation" organized by my new friends the Bretons of Mayotte. As P likes golf, and as I don't, we were asked to bring our instruments and at least play those. We ended up playing both golf and music. First, we learnt to "putt" the ball into small fake holes made of floppy metal cups, then to lob the balls across the green so that the people opposite didn't have to go and fetch theirs, just catch ours as they hurtled over everyone else's. After having fun catching each other's badly-aimed golf balls - we were spread all around the circle, so it didn't really matter who sent what where - we were shown how to lob a ball over a high hedge, but didn't get to practise that ourselves for some reason. Finally, we were shooed onto the "practice" court and shown how to hit the ball as far as possible. Which for P meant roughly 40 or 50 metres, for me about 2m. Very unfair.

Ornella, the girl I went kayaking with the other day, was there too, she's a journalist for the local paper. And today, we saw photos of the golf outing in said paper - even a small photo of the musicians afterwards ! My first photo in the local paper ! This said, anyone can send in photos of their birthday party or whatever and get them published, so that's not saying much. Ornella's going to put a few photos in the monthly women's magazine - I can say "the" as there's only the one - which I will put on the blog when the magazine comes out.

  

 

  

We ate a good meal with the association - and the headmistress of my school, who turned out to be an excellent golfer - and played plenty of music there. Two of the girls from my music group were there too, so we had accordions, a guitar and recorders all going at once. Everyone said they loved the music - then again, they're not exactly going to say the opposite to our faces - and my headmistress came up and kissed me on both cheeks, which hadn't happened before (and hasn't happened since). Hmmm.

On the way back, P stopped the car for me to take photos of the scenery. The golf club is in Combani, in the centre of Mayotte, the mountainous (well, hilly) bit. Red earth, green trees everywhere and a good view of the stone quarry - not the only one, but not far off.