Bad week, Good people

You know those times when everything seems to go wrong at once? It was like that last week in our house, right in the time between me arriving home and Merv coming back from work. Still no regrets about leaving our old house though; it's actually reassuring to know that we now rent from people who get the job done and don't take any nonsense from lazy workmen!

After almost 24 hours of travelling, the first thing I wanted to do when I arrived home was have a shower. Ever since we moved in, our shower has been a bit dodgy. It's an electric one and when it works it's fine, but I think there's a bad connection in the box somewhere, and often it refuses to heat the water. When it was really hot and we were having 2 or 3 cold showers a day that didn't matter, but now that winter is here and the temperature has dropped to an average of 22 degrees (!), we need some hot water. On Sunday night of course there wasn't any. I also noticed that the cistern didn't fill up again after I'd flushed the loo, and I started to get a bit concerned.

Monday morning I realised that the direct debit we'd set up to pay our water bill hadn't been activated and that we were two months behind on the payment. Panic set in as I read the small print on the back of the bill: "Late payment can result in the interruption of your water supply without prior notice." I was convinced they'd cut our water off and the stuff coming out of the taps was just dregs from the tank. After a nice, hot shower at our lovely neighbours' house, I called the water board helpline and was told that the water hadn't really been disconnected, despite the fact that we were currently in debt to the tune of 110Rs (a little over £2!) After a bit of investigation outside, I discovered that the handyman had turned off the tap to the toilet, but left the rest of the water on; I'm still not sure why.

I called the landlady about the lack of hot water and she promised to send Monsieur round to check it out sometime that day, which was fine except it meant I couldn't go out to pay the water bill in case I missed him. Fortunately, one of my friends came to the rescue and went to the water company office in Port Louis on my behalf. Normally you can pay bills at the post office, but because we had a late charge to pay, this was no longer an option.

The landlord arrived late afternoon and, as he couldn't see what was wrong with the shower and he didn't want to make me wait too long, he said he would replace it asap, rather than getting someone to try and fix it and then potentially having to get a new one anyway. In the past, my landlords have always tried to spend as little as possible, so I was pleasantly surprised by his reaction. The new shower was installed the next day and the hot water back on just in time for Merv's return.

Our very sophisticated shower!

On Wednesday evening, I'd just started cooking dinner when the gas ring spluttered and died. I'd been through this once before in Albion, but we had a spare bottle and it just needed connecting. This time it was a little more complicated. The majority of Mauritian households cook with gas, which they buy in bottles from the supermarket, petrol station, or corner shop. The gas is the same in each bottle; the colour just depends on the manufacturer, and each colour has a different connector. We had a yellow bottle left over from the other house, but we now run on red gas and you can't connect a yellow bottle with a red connector. Argh! It was also too late to go and buy one that evening, but luckily we have an electric oven, so I didn't starve.
 

The empty gas bottle

The next day, I put the empty gas bottle in the car ready to go and swap it for a full one. I did briefly wonder how I would lift the full one in and out of the car, but I recently saw this quote on Pinterest and, though I'm not sure they were really talking about physical strength, and I thought it was quite apt for the situation:

I got in the car, put the key in the ignition and.....nothing. The car wouldn't start. I know nothing about cars and had no clue what to do except pay a visit to my friends across the street. I've only known them for 2 months but they are amazing. They checked on our house and watered our plants while we were away, they cooked me dinner for when I got back on Sunday evening, and the boys even made me a poster to welcome me home. I showered at their place while the water was cold, and they check in regularly to see if everything is ok. They came over immediately to see what was going on with the car, and Bryan called a guy who'd helped him out in the past with his own car, and who lives in Black River, not too far from us. He said he'd call in on his way home to see what he could do.

The poor man who turned up that evening probably had no idea what he was getting into. It was a simple case of the battery being flat, but the battery on a Prius is in the boot, and you can only open the boot from the outside by using the remote, which doesn't work if the battery is flat...He had to fold down the seats and crawl into the boot to open the door manually before he could even confirm that was the problem. He went to buy a new battery from the service station opposite, but didn't have the right tools with him to change it that evening. He said he'd come back the next morning on his way to work and put it in the car.

As he was leaving, he noticed I had the empty gas bottle in the car and I explained that I'd been on my way to get a new one when the car wouldn't start. The kind, kind man took my bottle in his own car, got a full one, came back to my house and connected it up for me, making sure it worked before he went home. He then came back at 7 o'clock the next morning to fix the car. After he'd finished, I asked him how much I owed him. I'd already bought the battery, but was prepared to pay for the evening call out and the work he'd done. He told me I owed him nothing; that it had been on his way home, and that there was nothing really wrong with the car. His generosity and kindness after the stress of the week made me want to cry.

I realise that for most people and in the grand scheme of things, these problems are all pretty minor. There was nothing life-threatening or scary about any of them. They are, however, things I've never had to deal with before, and especially not in a country where I don't know that many people, and things work a lot differently to what I'm used to. As well as the practical things I've learned this week, I've also realised that you don't need to know a lot of people; if the few people you know are as good as the people I've met here, you're already doing well.

A bird's eye view

I travel back and forth between Mauritius and La Réunion quite frequently and I've worked out now which seat you need to be in to get the best views of both islands. I can't tell you which one it is, otherwise next time I go to choose it you may already be sitting in it, but as I love taking photos out of plane windows (like Father, like Daughter!) I thought I'd show you what you're missing.

Mauritius is most famous for its beaches. It's almost entirely surrounded by coral reef, creating huge turquoise lagoons with calm water and lots of fishes. I love listening to people's excitement as they look out and see this for the first time:

On the Mauritius-Réunion trip, you fly along the south coast of Mauritius and approach Réunion from the north-east. I've talked before about Le Morne and the famous underwater waterfall illusion. I try to photograph that every time I go but haven't succeeded. I like this picture of the mountain though:

I recently came back to Mauritius after a trip home to visit my family. Flying in from Dubai you cross the island from north to south. I didn't have a window seat for this flight, but the Italian honeymooners next to me were so excited that I wasn't bothered. I was proud that they were so enthusiastic, I wanted to tell them that I live here, to claim credit for the beauty, like I somehow played a part in it. I then realised that, even if I knew how to say all that in Italian, they might think I was a little crazy, so I kept quiet. 

I was once sitting on a plane next to an Iranian woman and we started talking about where we lived. She knew nothing about Mauritius, and asked if we have towns and buildings and stuff. I think she thought it was like one of the smaller Seychelles or Maldives islands where there's nothing but sand and posh hotels.

Of course we have sand and posh hotels, but we also have towns. The first picture is Port Louis, and the second is the central plateau where the towns of Beau-Bassin Rose Hill, Quatre Bornes, Vacoas-Phoenix, and Curepipe all kind of merge together. When the English were in charge, they decided that these places were the only ones which could be classed as towns, so everywhere else is a village, even Flacq and Mahebourg which are pretty big. The Mauritians, for some reason, haven't changed the rules in the last 50 years.

In the second photo, you can also see the mountains in the background which surround Port Louis. I was standing on one of them for the first photo. I've heard that Mauritius was created by the volcanic eruptions of the hot spot which is currently under La Réunion (Piton de la Fournaise volcano), and that these mountains form part of the collapsed crater of the volcano. I'm not sure that's true, but it sounds reasonable.

Aside from the beaches and towns, the rest of Mauritius is pretty green. There's still a lot of sugar cane, though some sugar manufacturers seem to be selling off a lot of land for building, and there are a lot of crop fields, particularly in the centre of the island. I don't have any photos of them though, because it's always cloudy and raining there. You can arrive from the north or west to glorious sunshine and beautiful coastline, but you have to pass through a giant cloud mass before emerging into the sunshine of the south where the airport is.

La Réunion couldn't be more different. The only coral reef is down a stretch of the west coast, meaning the rest of the island has rocky beaches leading directly into shark-infested open sea.

The towns are all along the coastline as the interior of the island is all mountain and volcano. Each town has "les hauts" and "les bas", separating the people who live on the slopes of the mountains, and those who live on the flatter land by the sea. 

This is Saint Denis. It's not the capital because La Réunion isn't a country; it's the "chef lieu". 

One day, when I win the lottery, I'm going to fly over La Réunion in a helicopter and take lots of photos of the volcano and the mountains. Until then, you'll have to Google them.