Paradise Island, Part 2

I’m propped up in bed in my San Mateo home, sipping on Ricoffee, a chicory based instant coffee manufactured in South Africa and exported to Mauritius. I’d drink this most mornings at my in-laws place in Quatre Bornes and when they came for the wedding they carried with them two cans. They also carried with them a large and delicate model ship and how they got that through two flights intact is a wonder. The ship was the St Geran, commissioned by the French Company of the Indies and sailed on her maiden voyage in 1737. She was destined for the East Indies, carrying textiles and metalware to be bartered for spices but, despite surviving numerous pirate attacks, she was wrecked off the coast of Mauritius during a fierce storm. Rescuers from Mauritius saved nine of the 149 officers and men on board, and the heroism of the Islanders was memorialised in the novel ‘Paul and Virginia’ published 24 years later by Bernadin de Saint-Pierre. Pieces of the ship washed ashore and were preserved in the museum of Mahebourg in Mauritius. Incidentally, Oli may trace his ancestry to a British pirate (John Oxenham) who, and this tickles me, once spied the Pacific Ocean from a tree in Panama and vowed to sail his ship upon that sea.

Oli and I did not visit the Mahebourg museum but we did pay our respects to the stuffed dodo at the Dodo museum in Port Louis, the country’s capital. When I was a young girl, six or seven perhaps, I watched Disney’s animation of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. This, as far as I can recall, was my earliest introduction to the extinct if somewhat mythical creature. The dodo floats (literally) onto the scene singing “A sailors life is the life for me” as a bewildered Alice looks on from her bobbing bottle in the (Indian?) ocean. “Dodo!?”, she exclaims. “Oh Mr. Dodo, Mr. Dodo, please help me! Pleeeeeease!”. She’s whining now. A wave casts her ashore — perhaps in Mauritius? — and the dodo continues to ignore her pleas as he conducts his running race around a rock to ‘get dry’. Carroll’s dodo is apparently a caricature of the author whose real name is Charles Dodgson, or ‘Do-do-dodgson’ as he would sometimes inadvertently introduce himself due to a stammer.

Mauritius really is Wonderland. The botanical gardens in Pamplemousses has these beautiful and quite immense water lily pads. Were I paper light I would curl up into foetus position on its wide, smooth green surface. Or perhaps strike a yoga pose. The gardens are serene (it helps to visit mid afternoon on a weekday) and bursting with botanical life. I identified plants that reminded me of Kiribati — the pandanus’ cousin, the breadfruits’ aunt — but the giant tortoises were unlike anything I’d seen in reality before. They simply sat there, as concrete and motionless as rocks, and it was hard to believe that there was life coursing through these ponderous creatures. But life there certainly was, as the squirming baby tortoise — hundreds of them! — evidenced. We watched a little girl squeal in delight as a friendly and equally curious deer nuzzled her fingertips, and we strolled arm-in-arm under the shady tropical trees. All was right with the world.

Not all our expeditions were so tranquil. We made a whirlwind visit to a sugarcane factory museum and, sadly, missed out on rather a lot. Despite the pressures of time, I had insisted we visit the ‘L’Aventure Du Sucre’. I felt that a visit to Mauritius would be incomplete without a tour of a historical sugarcane factory. Sugar and Mauritius have a long and troubled relationship. The country’s sugar production grew rapidly under the British Administration (1810 — 1968) and sugar became Mauritius’ primary commodity for export resulting in a mono-economy. At the industry’s peak in 1973, 85,000 hectares, perhaps half of the country’s productive land, was used to produce sugarcane. Though slavery had been abolished in 1835, freeing captives from mainly Africa and Madagascar, sugarcane planters brought in large numbers of indentured laborers from India, roughly half a million between 1834 and 1921. Life for the laborers could not have been much happier than that of the slaves. So there I stood, marvelling at the massive drums that once processed the cane, inspecting photographs of sober laborers engaged in their toilsome work. I pictured thick, leathery skin and blistered hands. I bought a packet of soft brown sugar and a history book to send to my mother.

Today, sugar cane fields cover about 40% of the country, though the economy has diversified to include textiles and tourism while agricultural diversity is encouraged. As Oli and I drive across the country we spot lychee orchards and banana groves. Peddlers sell fresh tropical fruit (mangos, pineapples, lychees, bananas…) stacked in mounds on the sides of the roads. These are my favorite stalls. But there really is no view more spectacular than a sea of sugar cane descending from a mountain slope and stretching out to the shore of a sparkling blue ocean. It does make me sad to think, however, that instead of this rolling field of light-green there may have once stood a lush and flourishing deep-green forest.

The encounters that stand out most clearly in my memory are those that contained within them a link, however tenuous, to my faith, the Baha’i Faith. Walking along a side-street in Grand Baie I’m captivated by the graffiti art and suddenly spot a makeshift sign advertising Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I grab my camera and tell Oli, ‘I must take a shot of this and send it to my jiu-jitsu enthusiast friend from Haifa’. This dear friend of mine was a close neighbor in my adopted (and spiritual) home of Haifa, Israel, and is now volunteering his time and efforts in service to the Faith in Russia, of all places. For a brief moment, a wave of memories from Haifa engulfed me and I felt a deep longing for the place.

On another occasion we traveled south to Blue Bay. I wanted to swim with the fishes and was told that this side of the island boasted the clearest most crystal-like waters. Once at Blue Bay we picked out one of the handful of skippers offering their services of a glass-bottomed boat ride and a tour of the best snorkelling spots. In between pointing out schools of fish and interesting coral our skipper made small-talk, asking us where we were from and what we were doing in Mauritius. I explained that I was from New Zealand but had spent the past two and a half years living in Haifa, Israel. At that our skipper perked up, explaining that his wife and daughter were en route from Haifa at this very moment, they had traveled there to join a Baha’i pilgrim group, and was I familiar with the Baha’i gardens? When he learned that I was Baha’i and was indeed familiar with the place, he took my hand and pumped it enthusiastically, exclaiming ‘Allah’u’Abha, ‘Allah’u’Abha’ in the manner of the Baha’i greeting. He was overcome with emotion, gushing about his wonderful family and sharing photos of them on his mobile phone. ‘What were the chances?’, we mused. It was a wonderful moment. And of course, we spent an evening with the hospitable Baha’i community of Quatre Bornes. It never fails to amaze me how truly universal this young religion is, and it was heartening to hear of the community’s activities which, in significant ways, resemble what the Baha’is and their friends here in San Mateo, and all over the world, are striving to achieve.

One night, I met a man named Patrick. Patrick worked as a reporter for one of the two major newspapers in Mauritius. His wife, Eilleen, taught alongside Oli’s mother at the boys’ high-school Oli had once attended. Patrick had a great sense of humor and a booming laugh. Besides that, he liked to talk politics and the state of the nation. So as we sat around the table, me sipping on mineral water and he on his whiskey, the conversation turned to poverty. “We have a very great problem in this country, a very great problem indeed”, Patrick observed. “So many people live in poverty here. You know, Gandhi once said, ‘there is more than enough for everyone’s need but there is not enough for everyone’s greed’”. Some culprits were identified: poor regulation of investments made by offshore investors, lack of political will, and lack of investment in new technologies and training of local talent.

The next day I kept my eyes peeled for signs of poverty. I didn’t quite know what I was looking for, and who was I to judge the poor from the prospering? But I could see that some families lived in comfortable dwellings — abundant space, manicured gardens, well-maintained stately homes — while others had assembled homes from what appeared to be bits of scrap wood and corrugated iron, one shack abutting another. There were no lawns here, only yards of dirt that grew muddy during torrential downpours. I thought about Anahita with its sprawling golf-course, one of the wealthiest beach-side neighbourhoods of Mauritius, and wondered whether the wealthy would drive through the dusty, debris-lined inland roads to reach it, or whether they would simply fly in on private seaplanes. Closer to home, and more difficult to acknowledge, is the fact that Oli and I are part of this divide standing, perhaps, on the wrong side, as owners of a piece of land in a ‘luxury resort village’ (that’s a quote from its ad) in what was once an undisturbed corner of the country. It’s still sleepy, but that’s the allure for land developers. Just as in many other developing nations, the gulf between the wealthy and the materially poor is there, and widening.

I wondered, too, how the flimsy-looking homes withstood the many cyclones that bombarded the island each year during the summer months. Like a whiplash, we caught the tail-end of a cyclone during our visit. It came in gradually and on the very day we were driving to Blue Bay to snorkel the radio DJ began sending hourly updates on the condition of the approaching storm. At this point it was a class one (of four) cyclone. Two days later, the cyclone was upgraded to a class two and that’s about as strong as we would experience it this time around. Still, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d witnessed such a deluge — perhaps never — and its accompanying gale. The locals were undeterred: that day we made the hour-long journey north to enjoy lunch out with some relatives. With uncle Jean-Herve at the helm, aunt Guylaine beside him, and Oli and I clutching one another in the backseat (ok, I clutched Oli), we crawled along through thick fog and sheets of rain. Every now and then we swerved to avoid fallen branches or stranded trucks. Unsurprisingly, many of the restaurants had shut their doors to business that day but eventually we found one that would take us in.

So Mauritius provided some thrilling moments. There were also some not-so-thrilling moments, like when Oli and I upset one another and we would spend an hour or two, or perhaps a whole day, in moody silence. Often these gloomy episodes were triggered by the trivial — restlessness, boredom, inadequate sleep, caffeine deprivation. Ok, not that trivial, but hardly earth-shattering. But much worse, periodically I’d be defeated by feelings of inadequacy and acute loneliness. I’d complain to Oli — “I don’t fit into this family”, “What if they don’t like me?”, “Am I too needy? Too demanding?” — but reject his reassurances. Frustrated by my resistance, Oli would leave me to wallow and I would take this as an affirmation of my concerns. More than once I had dragged Oli away from a late-night party, exhausted with having to meet yet more new faces and keep up a cheerful appearance. The truth is, I didn’t care much for the parties. I was happiest when I was floating on an ocean wave, or exploring the bazaars, or studying up on Mauritian history. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to have met so many of Oli’s family members and they are truly, sincerely wonderful individuals. But insecurity followed me around like a bad smell whenever I made a new acquaintance and it grew burdensome.

Embarrassed as I am to admit this, I was also deeply envious of my sister-in-law’s relationship with Oli’s parents, my own in-laws. She calls them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ and there’s an ease and familiarity in their relationship that simply doesn’t exist in my own relationship with them. Granted, she’s known them for quite a while longer, and Oli tells me its a Chinese-Singaporean thing. All elders are ‘aunty’ or ‘uncle’ or some other term of respect and endearment. I wondered if I should be calling them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’, but it sounded odd to me and doesn’t come naturally. I reflected on other examples, like my own brother’s wife and her relationship to my parents. Does she call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’? I don’t think so. Does it really matter? Well, it seemed to me to signal something quite significant — emotional closeness, for one. I’m navigating my way through this foreign relationship. I’ve never been a daughter-in-law before.

So, friends, that was a glimpse of my two weeks in Mauritius. The tales are too numerous to recount, but I have tried. The spectrum of emotions experienced broad, and that too I have attempted to encapsulate. I swung from awe, to joy, to fear, to misery, to self-doubt, and back to awe, and joy, and finally gratitude. No wonder Oli and I fell so ill immediately upon our return to the States — stomach bugs, flu — you name, we got it. And just ten days later I was on yet another long-distance flight, this time to New Zealand, to await indefinitely the fate of my visa. But that’s another story for another time.