Conches, Rastas and Snurkelling.

I haven’t written for such a long time – My life has been taken over by teaching, marking and assessing which left me little time to write until I changed that list for a more exciting one of conches, Rastas and snurkelling while I replaced the stress of teaching for a weeks stay on Roatan, a Caribbean island floating off the coast of Honduras.

Before this trip my only encounter with a conch was in literature, namely in “Lord of Flies”. Like you, I am sure you only considered a conch to be a great, big shell to blow in and create a bizarre, moo like sound. Yet I must tell you that a conch is indeed a lethal weapon. They are in fact deadly. Phrases like, “Oh no, he’s got a conch” or “Conch! - Run for your lives” will soon enter common usage. Or they will if the Central American airline, TACA has its say. Let me explain.

A few weeks ago, Ginnie, a fellow teacher visited Roatan to dive and proudly plucked a beautiful conch from the ocean floor. Ecstatic with her find, Ginnie resolved to transport the conch back to her classroom in Santa Tecla to recreate Piggy’s and Roger’s Conch stand off. Yet, TACA had other plans. They wouldn’t accept the delicate, fragile conch as hand luggage. No, it had to be put into the hold. Something that was impossible for Ginnie as her bag was already racing away on the conveyor belt. Heartbroken, Ginnie lovingly handed over the conch to her dive master who promised to get it to her one way or another. Now, you must be wondering what this story has to do with me. Quite simply, Marek and myself stepped in and saved the day. We have placed the deadly weapon in our suitcase, which is already full of tins of beans, PG Tips and Bramstam pickle due to the English shop on the island and will (hopefully) carefully return the deadly instrument to its owner tonight.

Nevertheless, our encounters will conches didn’t end there. Yesterday, we decided to go sailing on “Adventure Girl” with the gregarious Captain Alex, a “homeboy” Rasta who believes nearly every English word contains a “U”, hence snorkelling becomes snurkelling and the hero of this story now becomes a “Cunch”.

We set sail under the mid day sun with our “Surrender the Booty” skull and bone flag flying high until we arrived to what appeared to be just another spot in the ocean. The anchor was flung into the sea as Captain Alex shook his dreads and said, “Thus is the sput for snorkelling, bust in the ocean.” Without hearing another, “U” we hopped in, flippers, mask and snurkel for a “sput of snurkelling”. It was a considerable while later after we had chased the rays along the ocean floor that he realised Captain Alex had vanished. Were we the booty he had surrendered?

It seemed like an age (although it was probably only 10 minutes of hot sun) before a sign emerged. Great bubbles of water appeared and they were getting closer and closer to us. It could have been a shark (there is one (yes, just one) that swims around the island) or Captain Alex. With the theme tune to Jaws repeating over and over in my head, wishing I had a bottle of whiskey to reach for, I realised to my relief it was the return of the homeboy Rasta. To say the Captain had gone scuba diving would be an exaggeration; he had merely hopped over board with a tank of gas in an impromptu fish-dive. He returned with the real booty; one lobster and four “cunches”. All very alive. The “cunch” again became the protagonist of the story although what I hadn’t realised when I agreed to return Ginnie’s conch back was that firstly, the conch is a very ugly “animal” and secondly, a very tasty one. To my horror, two black tentacles began feeling their way out of the one of shells, desperately trying to inch their way into the ocean. But there were too slow. Within ten minutes, Captain Alex had killed, gutted and cooked the sea creatures and we were tucking into with just a touch of lime. That’s what I call fresh!

When asked about diving, the homeboy said “I’ve bum driving sunce I Furteen” and I had draw on all my restraint to not say, “yeah mun” in a poor inmitadation of Rasta speak. I just hope my restraint lasts and that tomorrow when I will leave this piece of paradise for the classroom that I don’t reply “yeah man” to my students’ calls of “miss”.

see the photos below if you don't believe this strange tale!