Splash Café was a happn’n place in South Mahé. Mark and I opened it in 1996, shortly after moving to Seychelles and it was our gig for almost five years. In the village of Baie Lazare and on the only road around the island, most tourists found us eventually, enjoyed the food, loved the atmosphere and hung around a while. With books and games and cards and food and beer, it was easy for people to come in for a late breakfast, linger through lunch, then leave as we closed at six in the evening, too full to need dinner. Sometimes they’d sandwich some beach time between meals and Scrabble... more

International adoptions draw attention ... good, bad, rarely indifferent. Who hasn’t heard about Angelina Jolie’s kids? And while there are many who applaud her decision to bring her family together from far-flung corners of the world, others line up to criticize choice of country, second guess process and question motives. Publications specializing in slimy sensationalism regurgitate conjecture and innuendo and sell a lot of papers in the process.

Slamming the idea of adopting from struggling and/or developing nations is very popular these days. Some international organizations, many agencies... more

When we were last in Cambodia, July 2005, we were hoping to eat spiders. Well, Mark (my husband) and Sam (our then two and a half-year-old son) were hoping to eat spiders. My plan was to look the other way and try very hard not to shiver, scream, make creeped-out faces or otherwise foist my debilitating arachnophobia, learned at my mother’s knee, on my son.

There were loads fried cockroaches around, baskets and baskets overflowing with them in the markets, and no shortage of frogs-on-a-stick. The roaches looked crunchy and the frogs put me in mind of that most famous of fairground faire, the corn dog, albeit without the corn and with legs sticking out, but I wasn’t tempted. Surprisingly,... more