Mauritius

Hello Again!

This time, I’m going to talk about Mauritius (L’Ile Maurice). Mauritius was like Hawaii, but with a lot of people who speak French, Creole, and some Indian languages and with a lot more poverty. I’d love to go again, but I’m not sure if it would be worth the plane ticket cost.

Mauritius’s past is interesting in that there was no indigenous population that the Europeans wiped out and/or enslaved. The only thing they wiped out was the Dodo bird, which the Mauritians are apparently really proud of (it’s even on their seal).  They did still manage to make a lot of people miserable , though. They brought slaves and then indentured Indian servants once slavery was outlawed to do the work on their sugar plantations, which means that most of the population is Creole or Indian. Even though the last foreign power to control the country was Britain, there’s still a strong French influence because the English just let the French do whatever they wanted after control passed from the French to the British. Apparently Mauritius is also the only (or at least one of the few) places where the France actually won a battle in the Napoleanic Wars. Or at least, I think they (my Global Studies Professor and the U.S,. Diplomat in Mauritius – talk about a nice post!) said it was the Napoleanic Wars.

While in Mauritius, most of my friends went off to the beach, but I went with my Aging & Culture class to an ashram and vocational school. This was not my first choice, since we were only in Mauritius for 2 days, but I needed an FDP for that class to write a paper on, and my professor was in charge of the FDP and had strongly encouraged the class to go. Only 6 of the 20 people who signed up showed up, which I actually liked because it meant we really got to interact with the people and could easily hear the tour guide. I ended up being really glad I did the FDP, because I got to interact with some adorable Mauritian girls in my terrible French (I think we only half-understood each other) and then dance the Sega, which I guess is the national dance of (or at least widely practiced in) Mauritius. That was all at the vocational school. We also stopped at the ashram, which from what I could gather is a sort of shelter for old or battered women.

That night I had meant to meet up with my friend Jacob because it was his birthday, but that ended up not really working, so instead a few friends and I went to Grand Baie (a place with good beaches) and got dinner and then put our feet in the nice water. I actually went all the way in, and I really wish I’d been there during the day, because the water felt OK at night, but I’m sure it would have been awesome during the day time.

The next day I wandered around with my friend Nimish around Port Louis, which is not a very picturesque place, and it is certainly not what is on the postcards. All the postcards show the places to go hiking, the beaches, or Dodo birds in these places. Anyway, we wandered around a long time and got some awesome cut pineapple off of a street vendor (probably not the best idea, but it tasted great), bought some stuff at the market, and bought stamps/sent postcards.

And that was Mauritius! I’m a bit sad I never got to the beach during the daytime, but my FDP was really, really awesome, so it’s OK. I have plenty of time for the beach in Hawaii.

As for life in general, as I said, I just finished the bulk of my midterms last week, between South Africa and India (with Mauritius in the middle). Today is the Sea Olympics, and we’ll see how that goes. Our Sea (the Mediterranean) still doesn’t have a chant ready and I’m probably going to lose my events (the Orange Pass and Hula Hula Hoops) and let everyone down, which I normally would not care about, but everyone seems really cutthroat so I don’t even know if it will be fun. The winning sea is the first to get off the ship in San Diego, so the incentive is there, but I don’t know. Hopefully I’ll have more fun than I’m anticipating I will.

Oh! And I forgot something about South Africa, way back when I posted that entry: the first day, I actually climbed Table Mountain. Well, I didn’t – I chickened out ¼ the way up and took the cable car because I kept making my friends wait for me and I was completely out of shape – but my friends did.  Anyway, the views at the top are great. Well, they are until the fog comes in. Then it’s freezing and all you see is fog. But we got to see the views before the fog came in, so all was good.

That’s all for now.