School and holidays

Today was my first day back at school after the half term break. In the six weeks I worked before the holidays, we had two public holidays which fell on Mondays and gave us a three day weekend, and two days where the school was closed because of torrential rain warnings. Add that to the fact that classes finish at lunchtime on Wednesdays and Fridays, and you can understand why I feel like I only just started!!

The first of the public holidays was to commemorate the abolition of slavery on 1st February. Slaves were brought to Mauritius by the Dutch in the 17th century, and by the time the British arrived in 1810, 70% of the population were slaves. It took the British 25 years to abolish slavery and cost them £2 million in compensation payments to the plantation owners. 

The following week was Chinese New Year. I know that in other places around the world, it's inappropriate to call it that, but in Mauritius that's the name everyone uses. I didn't go to see the festivities because it was raining, but we did see a dragon doing the rounds a couple of days later. They visit all the shops run by Chinese Mauritians, dancing and letting off firecrackers to ward off evil spirits. We have some Chinese children at school who brought in lots of prawn crackers and other goodies to celebrate. My favourite part of this holiday is "gâteau la cire", a sticky cake made from rice flour, sugar, water, oil, and orange zest. It's an acquired taste; most people I've spoken to think it's revolting, but I really like it, especially the gooey ones.

Yummy!

This one was a bit hard, could have done with a few seconds in the microwave, but we don't have one.

 

 

 

Yesterday was the biggest Hindu celebration of the year; Maha Shivaratri, or the Great Night of Lord Shiva. It's the day when Hindus from all over the island walk to Grand Bassin carrying "kanwars." Originally they were bamboo poles with pots to hold water, but nowadays they can be pretty fancy - I've seen them covered in flowers and statues, flashing lights and all sorts.  It often takes several people to carry or push them, and they're worked on for weeks before the pilgrimage. 

When the pilgrims arrive at Grand Bassin, they fast, pray, make offerings of fruit and vegetables, and collect holy water from the lake to take back to their home or local temple. I've never been there during a festival, but you see a lot of the pilgrims on the roads, as well as the resting stations, manned by volunteers, which spring up all over the place. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the roads this weekend, but the cars that did venutre out were pretty much guaranteed to get stuck behind a group of pilgrims at some stage of their journey.

There was a policeman guiding this group

Kanwar

This is the closest thing Mauritius has to a motorway. It's a dual carriageway with a speed limit of 110 km/h but that doesn't stop people riding bikes or crossing on foot. I'd never seen groups of people this size though. They seemed oblivious to the cars speeding past.

There are also people who make the journey by car, discreetly, with a loudspeaker on the roof, or a giant poster like this hanging off the back...

 
Friday is another celebration, but sadly no day off this time. It's Mauritian Independence Day, celebrating 48 years of freedom from the British. All the school children have to learn the national anthem, in English and French, and there will be a flag raising ceremony and an official speech at school. I was asked to rehearse the anthem in English with my class of 6 years olds, but considering I didn't know it myself, I would have struggled. Fortunately one of my Mauritian colleagues stepped up and we've been singing "Glo-o-ry to thee, Motherland" all afternoon. It's a good anthem, uplifting and patriotic. You should check it out on You Tube.

I think that's it for the upcoming celebrations, and rainy season is coming to a close. We're going to have to go back to working full weeks until our next holidays! It will be tough...

New Island Life!

Hello. If you come to the blog regularly, you'll notice I haven't written on here for a reeeally long time. Sorry about that. I've been pretty busy since Diwali - I went for a job interview, went to La Réunion for a week to see my Belle Famille, went to England for a month to celebrate Christmas with my family, and I got back last Saturday and then started my new job on Monday morning! 

The new job is the reason this post is entitled "New Island Life"; not because I moved to a new island, but because life as I knew it is over. No more day trips, or visits to the beach on a weekday when all the children are at school, no more flying to Réunion to see Belle Maman (unless it's the school holidays), no more Pilates classess, and much less time for baking experiments. On the plus side, I'll be teaching English to small children, keeping myself busy and getting out of the house to meet people. 

It's only been a week so far but I'm really enjoying it. My colleauges are friendly and the children are (mostly) well-behaved and very sweet. I could fill a blog post already with the funny stuff they come out with, but I'll save that for another time.

I haven't done much visiting recently, but I do have a few photos which I've been saving for the blog. In no particular order:

This sign (Do not wash your clothes in the river) is on a temporary bridge near to the Balise Marina, a posh complex of apartments and villas which all have their own moorings outside the front door. There are some rocks in the river where people obviously did wash their clothes, but I can't help wondering if the residents are actually bothered if people do their washing, or if it's just that the owners of the development think it makes their area look less attractive. One of the big problems in Mauritius is local people and habits being displaced for wealthy developers and this is a prime example.

Another one for the funny shop names category. Sorry for the photo quality but it was raining and I almost missed my chance. It's the One and Only Hairdresser Beauty Saloon. As well as calling it a saloon, I love the fact that they advertise a hairdresser with a picture of a woman in a headscarf whose hair you can't even see.

Home of the Perfect Bread. I haven't tested it, so can't tell you if this is true or not.

Creepy creature spotted on the living room ceiling. He minded his own business and didn't land on me or anything, so I left him to it.

Hopefully I'll have a lot more to say (and time to say it) soon. Bye for now.

A belated Happy Diwali

I've mentioned before that each religious group in Mauritius gets two public holidays a year, celebrated by everyone. The 11th November was Diwali, the biggest celebration of the year for the Hindu majority on the island. I missed it last year, so this time I wanted to see how Mauritius celebrates the festival of lights. 

Merv told me that when he was little, every house in the neighbourhood was lit up with hundreds of "diya" - little clay pots holding candles -  along driveways and window sills, in front of doors and up staircases. In this celebration of light over darkness, people would walk around the streets, admiring the lights and sharing traditional sweets with friends and family. 

Our neighbourhood is mainly ex-pats and fishermen (who are generally Catholic) so there weren't a lot of lights around, and we decided to drive to some of the places that Merv visited with his family as a child. Unfortunately, Mauritius and Diwali have been modernised since then, and nowadays it's all about the electric lights. It was a bit like Blackpool illuminations which, although impressive, wasn't really what I was hoping for. I'm not very good at night photography at the best of times, but from a moving car the photos were a big blurry mess. Here are the best ones, just to give you an idea of what was going on:

A temple in Bambous

House in Port Louis

Here's one of the worst, just for fun. I actually think it's quite artistic...

As well as the lights, Hindus also decorate their houses with "rangoli," which are patterns created on the ground using coloured flour or rice, flower petals or sand. They are decorative, but also said to bring luck and are a sacred welcome place for Hindu deities. Merv's family in the north were a bit too far away for a spur of the moment visit, so we didn't actually see any of these, but luckily my friend Pascale and her daughters made some in their garden and she let me use the photos on the blog. 

The other important aspect of Diwali, and the one that non-Hindus get the most excited about, is the sharing of traditional Indian cakes. People make hundreds of them and hand them out to friends, neighbours and colleagues in little bags like we used to be given after a birthday party; a kind of Happy Diwali party bag. The most common one is the sweet potato cake. I found a recipe for on this great Mauritian food website, just in case anyone wants to try them at home. Bon Appétit!

Rodrigues mini-series part 3: Port Mathurin

Port Mathurin is the capital of Rodrigues and the island's main port. As you can see, it's a bustling place...

Almost everything on Rodrigues arrives by boat from big sister Mauritius. The "Trochetia", named after the national flower of Mauritius, arrives in Port Mathurin on a Saturday morning, after navigating the zig-zaggy pass through the coral reef. Merv made us sit and watch it for almost an hour when we should really have been eating lunch, but it did give me the chance to take some nice photos.

Saturday is also market day in Port Mathurin giving the locals a chance to buy their fruit and veg and catch up on the local gossip, and giving tourists the opportunity to stock up on local specialities before the flight home. A trip to Rodrigues isn't complete unless you've bought some jars of "achards" and "piments", and some baskets or trays woven from vacoa plants.

Aside from the market, there isn't really a lot to see in Port Mathurin, though it's worth going up to the statue of the Virgin Mary who keeps a protective eye on the capital and the incoming boats. 

We also saw a pretty cool statue near the port. It was designed for the Millennium and represents the artist's dreams for the future of Rodrigues:

The base of the statue shows people holding hands, symbolising unity and the importance of working together towards a better future. The second level represents sustainable development and use of machinery, while the third level highlights the importance of new technologies and means of communication to connect to the rest of the world. At the top of the statue is a "solitaire", a bird similar to a dodo but endemic to Rodrigues. On the statue it represents the dove, sign of peace and hope.

One of my favourite things in Port Mathurin was this wall, which they built around the tree instead of chopping it down!

Rodrigues mini-series part 2: Ourit

The lagoon surrounding Rodrigues is twice the size of the island itself, which explains why fishing is such an important part of the economy. On the picture below you can see the white line of waves breaking on the reef, and the clear colour difference between the lagoon and the open sea. The zig zag is a pass where the fishing boats travel in and out of the lagoon.

It's not all about the fish though; the main catch to be had in the shallow lagoon water is "ourit" or octopus. It's estimated that there are around 500 professional octopus fishermen, and 2500 more who rely on octopus fishing to feed their families. 

To catch an octopus, you need to go out at low tide looking for clues as to where they might be hiding. They are apparently clean and tidy creatures, but the piles of empty crab shells they leave outside their holes are usually what gives them away and leads to them being speared on the end of a big metal stick.

Fishing for octopus is a job carried out mainly by women. It's tiring and not very well paid, but those who do it professionally are subsidised by the government on days when they can't work due to bad weather. This means that more and more people are starting to fish, and is having a negative effect on lagoon life. The octopus population is decreasing rapidly, and the huge numbers of people out in the lagoon at low tide are destroying the coral and harming the fish. In order to fight this and protect the environment, the Regional Assembly decided to ban octopus hunting for two months of each year. Unfortunately, that happened to coincide with our visit:

In this great example of Rodrigues Kréol, you can see that fishing (lapes, like la pêche in French) of octopus is closed between 10th August and 10th October. Anyone caught with an octopus of more than 5kg without a permit can receive a fine of 2,000-3,000 rupees (£40-£60) for a first offence, and 10,000 rupees and up to 2 years in prison if you're caught more than once. During the two months where they're not allowed to fish, the Regional Assembly pays all the professional fishermen to work on the land, planting forests and reintroducing endemic trees and plants.

The image on almost every postcard from Rodrigues shows octopuses drying in the sun on a kind of wooden washing line. Since we were there at the wrong time, I didn't get any photos of those, but I found this one online from Le Mauricien newspaper:

 We may not have seen any octopuses, but I did get photos of fish and sausages:

Empty octopus line

Sausages

Fish

I've never been that adventurous when it comes to food, mainly because I don't like things with strange textures. Since I moved to Mauritius though, I've made it my aim to try everything offered to me, so although the idea of eating octopus didn't really appeal, I didn't feel I could refuse. It is the regional speciality after all. 

The first time I tried it was in a restaurant where the waitress was most apologetic that it had been frozen and wasn't fresh from the lagoon.

It was served in a big clam shell with a vinaigrette. As I wasn't sure I'd like it, and one of our friends wasn't keen either, we got one between four. It wasn't enough - it was so tasty that I could have eaten the whole thing myself! We later had it when we went to see some friends, and they put out two large bowls, one of which Arno (the friend who wasn't keen) and I finished between us!

We learned that the secret to preventing your octopus from being rubbery in texture is to put it in a pressure cooker without any water, as boiling it is what makes it so chewy. It can be served in all kinds of dishes; curries, stew type sauces, salad, and in a spicy condiment called achard. You can buy it in the supermarket in Mauritius, but I'm not sure it would taste the same if I made it at home!

Rodrigues mini-series: Part 1

The blog has been a bit quiet recently, partly because we went on a trip to Rodrigues with some friends. It's an amazing place, and there's too much to say about it to put in just one post, so I decided to make a mini-series. Part 1 will start with a bit of background info...

With a total area of 42 square miles, Rodrigues is an even tinier dot on the map than Mauritius. It's about 350 miles east of here and has a population of 41,000. The inhabitants are Mauritian citizens, but the island has been autonomous since 2002, meaning that they have a regional assembly to write laws and manage their budget. 

From what I saw, the two islands are quite different in terms of landscape, population, and industry. The dry, arid land in Rodrigues reminded me a lot of Gozo, off the coast of Malta. Unlike Mauritius, there are animals everywhere; mainly cows and goats. The only place I've seen goats in Mauritius, is by the side of the main road through Tamarin!

There's no sugar cane at all, and the economy is driven by fishing, agriculture, tourism, and handicrafts. Everything that can't be produced on Rodrigues is brought in from Mauritius (more on that later).   

The population of Mauritius is mainly of Indian origin, with some Chinese, African, and Europeans, whereas the people of Rodrigues are mainly descended from the African slaves taken there by the French to tend to their livestock during the 18th century. For some reason, when the British took over and abolished slavery, the French cleared out completely - in Mauritius they stayed and kept a lot of prime land for themselves!

I did find two things the islands have in common; their creativity with shop naming, and their buses!

The Fair Price supermarket

The Corner Store

The Safe Drive, Happy Life bus

Anniversary lunch in a château

Last week was our second wedding anniversary so we decided to go out for the day and have a nice celebratory lunch. After a bit of research, we decided on Le Château de Labourdonnais; a colonial house similar to Eureka, situated in the north of the island.

 

We had some things to do in the morning, so arrived just in time for lunch at the Table du Château. There were a few large tables of business men in blue shirts, who must have been there on some kind of office team building exercise. Lunchtime was clearly the first moment they'd had to check their phones, and the lawn area in front of the restaurant was full of people texting or chatting, fortunately not too close to our table! 

 

 

Taken after lunch when they'd all left.

I'd taken a sneak peek at the menu online when we booked, so I had a good idea what I was going to eat before I even sat down. The prices are mid-way between the cheap and cheerful local restaurants we usually eat at, and the fancy places you find in the posh hotels. There are a few restaurants like this around Mauritius where you can eat tasty and creative dishes at a fraction of what they'd cost in Europe. Here's one page from the menu:

 

Our starters - prawns for Merv and fish of the day tartare for me - were beautifully presented and absolutely delicious.

 

I'm not sure what was in the dish next to the butter, but I didn't get much chance to try it after Merv discovered how tasty it was! It was a little spicy for me anyway so I left him to it.

 

Often when we eat out, one of us at least is disappointed when we order and they don't have the thing we've chosen from the menu. I don't know why it happens so much; maybe because it's an island and everything is imported. I don't remember what Merv's first choice was, but they didn't have it and he ended up with this:

 

He didn't regret it though. I think this was braised beef cheeks with carrot and taro crisps. I went for some more fish. When it arrived, I realised I'd basically ordered the same thing as my starter, but presented in a different way and with a taro puree, which I wasn't that keen on as it was a bit too sweet and creamy for my taste. The rest was lovely though.

Merv maintains that, however much you eat, there's always space for pudding because it goes into a separate stomach. Normally I'd struggle to eat a three course meal at lunchtime, but when I saw the menu, I decided I'd try out his theory. Besides which, I knew he'd sacrifice himself if I needed help clearing my plate.

 

Chocolate and caramel tart with ice cream

Some kind of crumble; I can't remember exactly.

After all that food, which I managed to polish off without Merv's help, we decided a walk would do us good, so we set out to visit the house. To be honest, I didn't have very high expectations after my Eureka experience, but it couldn't have been more different.

 

Shame about the cloudy sky, but it is Winter after all...

 

Information boards are plentiful and bilingual, and I especially liked that it wasn't just lists of facts. There were stories and anecdotes about family life and happy times spent in the house. It was as if the owners were giving us a personal tour. 

Normally in museums, I wander around looking and skim reading the information boards before heading to the shop (does that make me a bad person??)  In this house, there was so much interesting stuff to read that I'd need to go a second time to take it all in. The only thing missing from the explanations was why this chair has such amazingly long armrests!

Le Domaine de Labourdonnais doesn't stop at the family home. The business employs 175 people and produces 3500 tons of sugar cane and 1000 tons of citrus and tropical fruits annually. These are used in the production of fruit juices and jellies, and rhum which is distilled on-site. Included in the entrance fee there was a chance to taste all of the above. In the summer months, they also do cycling tours around the 40 hectares of orchards. I'd love to do that one day, and there were definitely some options on the menu that would be worth going back for. We paid the "locals" price of 200 rupees for the museum visit and the tasting session, which I thought was pretty good value. The restaurant also has the advantage of being separate from the house, so you can just go there to eat, without paying the entrance fee each time.