Big boy; Tiny island

The Rainbow Wallet Era Debriefing, and Back in the Swing of Things

2010-02-03T01:33:00.000-08:00

I've recently made my triumphant return to the tiny island. It was snowing when I left Germany and approximately 217 degrees below zero. Two days later (after an unnecessarily long return trip through Egypt briefly and then Dubai again) I landed at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport to 80 degree weather and my lovely roommate's smiling face. I'm back on the beach. I know you are all thrilled for me.

I had quite an adventure. Let me give you the run-down. And this is going to be a long one.

I spent several currencies during my travels. They include (but are not limited to): Mauritian Rupees, UAE Dirhams, Bahraini Dinars, Euros, Albanian Leke, Macedonian Denars, Turkish Lira, and Egyptian pounds. As such, I dubbed the period of my grand adventure the 'Rainbow Wallet Era' for pretty obvious reasons. I visited (not including layovers) 8 countries. I had layovers in Bahrain, Cairo, and Dubai. I was with Tulane friends in Greece and Turkey; I was with (various parts of) my family in Dubai, Germany, and France, and I wandered aimlessly alone through Albania and Macedonia.

Let me say that when I packed for Mauritius, I didn't really think to include a lot of cold weather gear. I mean, how many mittens would one really need on the Tropic of Capricorn? And then I planned a multi-country cold-weather compound-complex vacation from the tropical island. Needless to say, I asked Chantal where I could buy sweaters that were made in Mauritius. I bought lots of them. Still, though, I only have one pair of real shoes, and they are Sperry Topsiders. And boy, have they done some walking. They've walked in snow, deserts, and on the shores of mountain lakes and monasteries. Etc.

Leg one of my grand adventure was the United Arab Emirates, specifically Dubai. My flight left Mauritius in the late evening and landed in Dubai in the early morning. People tend to be grumpy at 5am, even passport control at the airport. Dubai is interesting. In my expert (riiiight) opinion, Dubai shouldn't exist. There is no reason that a shining metropolis should exist in the middle of the desert, even if it is on the coast and there is a 'creek.' The best news from Dubai was that Jean Anne, my big (read: she's totally short now that I'm tall) sister got off of her boat and we serendipitously met at a hotel that dad picked out and paid for. Thanks Dad.

If you ever go to Dubai with a female, they will make you shop. I can't complain, as it was actually rather fun. "Miles, what do you think of this classic-style Arabic shawl?" "Well, Jean Anne, it looks like something a drunken drag queen might wear to a jazz funeral." "Perfect. How much?" Annie bought lots of things. Shawls, tablecloths, starving children, Thai food, Cuban cigars, etc. She also spent an inordinate amount of time browsing jewelry for her upcoming nuptials to Mike. Both my sister and her fiance are super heros. Their family will be a more pious version of the Incredibles. They are also two exceptionally good reasons that I have faith in American soldiers. Annie is a lieutenant in the navy, and Mike graduated from West Point and periodically blows things up. Jean Anne also bought me a coat, which terribly expensive, but that I really like a lot. She spoils me. It came in quite handy in my travels in colder places. Thank you, Jean Anne.

Jean Anne also treated me to an excursion into the desert, which was by far the most fun you can have in a Toyota Land Cruiser. Deserts have always made me a little bit uncomfortable. Something about the possibility of thirsting to death and awkwardly large day/night temperature changes. But seriously, this was fun. It was a roller coaster on rubber. There was also an evening in a Bedouin camp (read: tourist trap). Jean Anne rode a camel. She looked rather silly. There was also after-dinner entertainment. First there was a male dancer with a floppy Bedouin skirt. He called Jean Anne up onto the central stage to dance around with him. She was particularly graceful. After the male dancer finished, a female belly dance took the stage and proceeded to jiggle furiously. She called me up to dance with her. I was decidedly un-graceful, though I think I can definitely say that I also jiggled rather furiously. Not my proudest moment.

All in all, Dubai was great. I got to see my sister and wander around souks (Arab markets). I even had a Muslim woman with a British accent compare her abaya (read: black full body covering for Muslim woman) to a three-in-one robe, sunglasses, and sunscreen. Interesting experience.

I flew out of Dubai and connected through Bahrain on my way to meet Alison Lubin in Athens, Greece. I landed in Greece and immediately made friends with a Cypriot girl who showed me how to use the Metro. I also met a Rhodesian woman. White Africans are everywhere. Anyway, I met up with Alison after much wandering at Syntagma Square at the epicenter of the Greek capital.

Alison Lubin, who is by all counts one of the most fantastic people in the world, showed me around Athens. We saw tons of ancient rocks and I met lots of American college students. Thank you, College Year in Athens students, for pretty much being awesome. We went to the Parthenon museum and saw lots of olympic stadiums. I ate gyros. Athens is a beautiful and old place. At one point Alison and I were standing (in the rain) next to some ancient priceless relic. Alison, who is one of those hold outs who doesn't believe that Mauritius is real, needed some convincing. So I spotted a couple who were speaking French and struck up a conversation. I asked them if they had ever heard of Mauritius. Of course, being cultured and European, they knew all about Mauritius and provided a description to Alison that matched the one I had given her. Hah! It IS a real place.

My time in Athens was all-too short, though, as the next week Alison was back in class. So at the eleventh hour, I decided to go to Albania and Macedonia for no apparent reason, and I set about planning the trip. That was on Saturday.

On Sunday, I took off from the airport in Athens and landed at Rinas airport in Tirana, the capital and largest city of Albania.

I only spent one night in Tirana the first go-around, as I had to leave very early the next morning to take a train to Pogradec near the Macedonian border, from where I would take a taxi to the border, and then walk to Sveti Naum on the other side.

The train sounds easier than it was. First, let me give you some background. Albania was, until the fall of its long time dictator Enver Hoxha, by far the most isolated country in Europe and possibly the world. After WWII, it was briefly aligned with the Soviet bloc, and then again briefly aligned with the Communist Chinese after the fall of Stalin. After a falling out with the Chinese in the 1980's, the country was really aligned with no one. Hoxha was rather paranoid as evidenced by the pillboxes (teensy little concrete gun emplacements) that are all over the country. There are literally thousands of them. He also forbade people from entering or leaving, essentially keeping the country in its own bubble for decades. As a result, many Albanians are a bit xenophobic, and very few of them speak a language other than Albanian. Seriously, though, Albania is fascinating.

Anyway, back to the train story. So it was evening by the time I took a taxi from the airport to my hotel and asked the woman behind the desk at my hotel about train travel. She said that she had never taken a train, and that she didn't really know if they were still running. Great. But she did take out a tourist map of Tirana and showed me where the train station was on it. She said that I could either walk or take a taxi. Having nothing better to do, I struck out on foot. That was probably a mistake. I wandered for several hours and on more than one occasion found myself completely by accident in residential neighborhoods (read: clusters of creepy communist-era apartment buildings) surrounded by local children playing soccer and looking incredulously at me. Though I will say, many Albanians did just assume I was Albanian-- indeed, many Macedonians along the border also made this mistake. Apparently not a lot of Americans wander around Tirana.

Albanians also look Mediterranean, as opposed to Macedonians, who are resoundingly Slavic. I guess my dark hair and relatively dark complexion (when compared to Macedonians and when taking into account my tropical tan) made me look more Shqip than Maqedon. Oh, Albanians don't call their country Albania. They call it Shqiperia-- and the demonym for both the people and the language is Shqip (pronounced Shkeep). This I learned from Guri on the train. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

So after much wandering, I arrived at the train station, which appeared to me to be abandoned. I saw one light on in one booth, and wandered over hoping that the man being the counter spoke English. He didn't. But, I did manage to find out (using complex hand signals and various grunting noises) that the train I needed departed the following morning at 5:55 AM. I wandered back to my hotel, and requested a wake-up call for 4 AM. The girl behind the desk did not regard this as a suitable time for waking up.

The next morning I was at the train station at the appointed hour. It was still quite dark. An older man approached me and said things in Shqip. I obviously didn't understand a word, but could tell that he was being friendly. I motioned in the direction of the train station cafe, which was for some reason open at this early hour, and said 'coffee' in as many languages as I could think of. The elderly gentleman and I then proceeded to get coffee, er, some semblance of coffee as we waited for the train. There were two other men in the cafe with us. Between the teensy bit of English and/or French spoken by the three men and the much teensier bit of Shqip that I had acquired in my 13 hours in the country, I managed to tell the men that I was an American and that I liked sugar. Hey, I was doing my best.

Anyway, we finally went and sat on the train. But apparently, something had been done incorrectly with my ticket, so the evil ticket-examiner lady was yelling at me in Shqip. The aforementioned elderly gentleman, whose name, I would come to know, was Guri, took my ticket, spoke briefly to the evil ticket-examiner and then took off at a sprint that surprised me for his age. He returned two minutes later, quite winded, and with my ticket issue summarily resolved.

Guri was going home to Lin, the stop on the train directly before mine, so we had about seven hours to get properly acquainted. He had been in Tirana at a symphony concert. He had been a metal worker until he retired. He had two sons who looked like me but were twice my age. I got out the cork notebook that my Grandmom gave me for this trip and we started teaching each other our languages. Good water= Uje mir. Thank you= faliminderet. Four=Koter. All in all, a wonderful train trip. I shared my chocolate with him.

I also may have failed to mention that Albania, especially the parts of it in the mountains, are breathtakingly beautiful. Also, approximately half of the cars on the roads are Mercedes-Benzes of various but advanced ages, which pleased me immensely. Apparently it was some fluke of dictatorial policy under Hoxha that Benzes were allowed to be imported. Many of them reminded me of Diane, my first car.

Anyway, I said goodbye to Guri in Lin and then I debarked at the train terminal (read: abandoned-looking building 5km from the town that I needed to get to). There are buses that take passengers from the train terminal to the towns along the road, but they are very difficult to navigate if one doesn't speak Shqip. Fortunately, the ever-benevolent Guri knew some women on the train and told them who I was and where I was going. They took me by the hand and led me to the bus, then stopped the bus at the appropriate time and kissed me goodbye. I love Albanians.

Pogradec is the largest Albanian town on Lake Ohrid, which is itself a very old and sizable lake on the border between Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM. Sidebar: FYROM is the country's official designation due to a dispute with Greece over the use of the name Macedonia).

I spent the morning in Pogradec before going to a travel agency and asking them how to get to Macedonia. They told me to take a taxi, but that it wouldn't be able to cross the border, and so I would have to walk across the neutral zone and clear customs that way. Wonderful. I took the taxi as far as it would go along a road that was not built to ever be traveled (Hoxha REALLY didn't like the outside world), and walked across the border into Macedonia. The customs officials on the Macedonian side were a bit befuddled by me, but they let me pass nonetheless. My hotel was right on the border, or so I thought. It was probably about a kilometer down the beautiful lakeside mountain road, and I never would've found it had it not been for the helpful directions of a cadre of Macedonian soldiers who seemed to me to be very over-armed.

Ah, my hotel. Sveti Naum (St. Naum) is a thousand-year old monastery that has been converted into a hotel and resort complex. I was the only person staying there. The staff outnumbered me 20 to 1. It was the off-season and it had been a slow year, but it was still a strange experience. The place is absolutely stunning, and the restaurant is delicious. There was a waitress named Maja who was married to Boris, the man at reception. She took care of me. They recommended the most delicious things ever. All in all, a thoroughly relaxing experience. Ever had Macedonian monastic pie? Well you should try it.

One day I took a (very expensive) taxi ride from the monastery into the city of Ohrid about 40 km away. That city is the largest on Lake Ohrid. It's a very popular tourist destination and with good reason: it's stunningly beautiful. The town boasts 365 old churches, monasteries, and basilicas. I wandered around the town all day, and I climbed to its highest point- an ancient fortress. I toured several Eastern Orthodox churches and I ate more Macedonian food.

After a few days at the monastery/hotel, I decided to head back to Albania. I walked back across the border and did the trip in reverse, except this time the train wasn't running so I had to take a mini-bus across the country. It costs $6 US to take a minibus across Albania. Who knew? Anyway, I made it back to Tirana and spent the next few days exploring the capital in earnest.

I went to the National History Museum in Tirana, which is incredibly interesting because it was built by communists essentially to celebrate communism. It has a very very nationalist and revisionist slant, but some stunning stuff nonetheless, including a room full of Eastern Orthodox relics seized by the government over the decades. There was also a couple giant sculptures made entirely of guns.

I spent the majority of one day at the National Gallery of Art. Anyone who's been traveling with me knows that I have a certain affinity for modern and contemporary art museums, and this one had me drooling. I wasn't impressed because of the big-named artists or anything of international renown, it was the political nature of the art that struck me. Next to some of the paintings there would be plaques, and inscribed upon them was the political history behind the painting. "This work of art was censored for seemingly portraying a pessimistic attitude towards the future and was banned for 34 years. The artist was executed. The work was found in a back-office of the archives and redisplayed after the fall of Communism." Creepy stuff. There were entire sections devoted exclusively to Socialist Idealism in visual art. A good amount of the works were legitimately beautiful and impressive, while others were just testaments to how scary politics can be. One of the works showed a huge metal foundry in Elbasan (one of the cities in Albania). It showed it gleaming and proud and with happy workers, but I had seen that exact foundry merely days before. It was nearly destroyed, underperforming, and surrounded by despondence. Guri said that it had always been that way. Scary stuff.

The following Sunday I boarded an Albanian Airways flight to Istanbul. I'm not sure how many non-Albanians fly Albanian Airways, but I think it's safe to say that the total sum is not very many. The passport control officer at the Tirana airport studied my passport for a good long time, apparently off-put by the stamps from Macedonia. In any event, I made it through and boarded the plane to Istanbul.

Istanbul is one of the places in the world that I would recommend to anyone. Mauritius and Albania I would recommend to those people who are fine with spartan accommodations and "charming" societal quirks. Greece I would recommend to anyone who enjoys typically touristy things. But Istanbul I would recommend to anyone.

I landed at the airport, cleared customs, and took the shuttle to the Tulip Guesthouse where I would be staying with Ross Kelley, a Tulane architecture student and dear friend of mine. He had arrived the previous day and had already familiarized himself with the neighborhood. Upon greeting each other and catching up for a while, we went out in search of food. We were beckoned into a restaurant by a man whose name, we would come to know, was Fico. He was quite a character and exactly the kind of person who should have the job of getting strangers on the street to eat at a restaurant. He was Kurdish and incredibly entertaining. He also introduced Ross and I to some Swedish ladies, one of which was one of Fico's many "girlfriends." The Swedes had been working at a resort in Turkey and were headed back to Norse country. After dinner, we accompanied the Swedes to a bar. Well, they called it a bar. It was actually more like the basement from 'That Seventies Show' except that it was filled with world travelers and Dagistan, who ran the bar and also lived in it. Dagistan became one of our greatest acquaintances in Istanbul. He was funny and wonderful, as was Fico. The next day we met some Mormons from Utah who were traveling the Middle East. Sara, Stephanie, and Noah (though to be fair, Noah wasn't a Mormon he was just dating Stephanie who was Sara's sister. They kept making awkward jokes about being 'sister wives.'). We ran around Istanbul with them and visited all the fun markets and such. We drank vast quantities of tea.

Ross and I saw the Blue Mosque and the Haggia Sophia. We also went to Asia-- Ross was excited because he had never actually been to Asia. Ross and I also went to a Turkish bath, which I would describe as a spa with a lot more history. Imagine sitting in a sauna surrounded by Turks in a steam room that had been in operation for more than 500 years. We smoked hookah at relaxed cafes and met people from all over the world. All in all, Istanbul was an absolute pleasure.

The next stop on my grand journey was Frankfurt, where I was meeting my Aunt Julie and Uncle Aleck who would then take me to their house in Heidelberg for the holidays. The landing of my flight was delayed by heavy snowfall. Looking out the window of the Lufthansa flight, I was getting nervous already. Once on the ground, I met up with my charming family. My uncle drove us back to their house on the autobahn. That was certainly exciting. Heidelberg is very cute. Aunt Julie was the ideal tour guide- taking me to Christmas markets to sample Glu Wein (hot wine), etc. On Christmas, my Uncle Mike joined the party, as did my Uncle Aleck's son, Chris. Christmas was festive, and there was Turkey, and my Aunt stuffed a stalking for me.

One of the greatest things about the German leg of my trip, though, was the miniature America that I also got to visit. American military bases are in some cases proper American cities that seem to have gotten lost or sprung up in strange places. The base I visited in Germany was a perfect example. For the first time in months, I had a chicken biscuit from Popeye's. I used an ATM and it spit out American dollars. Julie and Aleck even took me to see a movie (Avatar) in English at the cinema on the base. Me, the big boy on the tiny island, got to watch an American movie in its original language in a theatre full of Americans. To say the least, I was ecstatic. The library on the base had DVD's of seasons of American television. I got to watch the West Wing. It was the perfect hybrid- I got to experience America while still being able to experience Germany.

The day after Christmas, my parents and brother arrived in Germany. The reunion was as happy as was to be expected, and they brought me Christmas presents to boot. Aunt Julie, ever the perfect tour guide, had lined up several different excursions around the country to keep us all entertained. First we went to France. Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine is a prototypically European place, and I even got to impress my family with my French skills, or rather, I got to show them exactly how much progress I have (or haven't made). For instance, the family sat down to lunch at a restaurant, only to find that the waitress did not speak English. Being the Francophone of the group, it became my job to translate the menus, place the orders, etc. It was reminiscent of my family's trip to China, during which my sister was the constant interpreter. She had much more patience than I did. She was also much more effective, because of everything that my family wanted to order, everyone ended up with something different. In short, I failed miserably. But I did manage pretty well otherwise during the day. I was delighted to find a Reunionese restaurant in Strasbourg. Reunion Island is a French possession about 120 miles away from Mauritius. The islands are pretty similar in most ways, and I was certainly pleased that I recognized most of the foods on the menu. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed for the day, otherwise I would've shown my family what I eat on a daily basis.

Moving on, though, we left Strasbourg and returned to Germany. The next trip was to Stuttgart. There we saw the Mercedes-Benz Museum. I'm sort of a Benz fanatic, so it was important to stay well hydrated for this activity. I did, after all, lose a lot of liquids when I drooled over almost every single automobile present. After Stuttgart, the next trip was to Munich, where we went to a traditional German beer house and had tons of sausage and kraut. Delicious. We then went down (or up) into the German Alps, where we visited a number of small Bavarian towns, The "New Swan Castle" (the one that Disney modeled its castles after), and Zugspitz, the highest mountain in Germany. It was a lot of touring crammed into a little amount of time.

We also visited Dachau, one of the most notorious WWII-era concentration camps in Germany. Seeing evidence of the Holocaust and hearing the stories from history firsthand is a truly humbling experience. I always said that I was one of the luckiest kids that I know, and on days like that one, it certainly feels true.

We made another visit to a medieval town and then it was time for me to fly out. I left Heidelberg and connected through Egypt and Dubai back to the Republic of Mauritius.

All in all, it was truly a grand adventure: the Rainbow Wallet Era. And I still cannot find a bank that will trade me for my Albanian Leke, so I guess I'm stuck with those as a souvenir.

Back on the island I'm readjusting to live as (un)usual. My studies are getting back on track, and I'm having to navigate the nightmarish bureaucracy of the University of Mauritius once again. I'm back to eating curries and daube, and I'm back to cavorting with Canadians and South Africans. It's tropical Summer, though, and my house is not air-conditioned. Ambient temperature in my room is hot enough to thoroughly melt even the sturdiest of German chocolates that I brought back as a souvenir. I'm sure that there will be many, many more stories to tell.

Oh, and here's one:

This past weekend was the Hindu festival of Cavadee. The holy day involves a family member carrying an idol and sometimes pulling heavy carts while walking barefoot towards a river or creek. The act of sacrifice is in homage to Lord Murugan, one of the deities that protects and ensures the welfare of the household. Cavadee was wonderful. The entire island smelled like incense. Anyway, my friend Majhegy invited me to eat the meal associated with the festival with her entire family. I accepted the invitation with glee. Sept Cari was the food (translate: seven curries). In keeping with proper etiquette at the table, I ate with my hands, much to the amusement of my hosts. I can tell you, it is much, much harder than it looks. I am also convinced that I will never be able to eat with my hands and look dignified. The others certainly looked dignified. Majhegy and her family were incredibly hospitable and they even taught me some Kreol. One quirk: the family eats in shifts. The part of the family that is not eating serves the part of the family that is. After the first shift, those that had been eating become the servers. I was in the first group to eat. Having finished eating (with my hands), I went to wash them. Majhegy came after me a few minutes later. Apparently, her father wanted me to serve him. After a short crash course in proper Tamil serving etiquette, I served her family some of the curry that they had graciously prepared. To be honest, I'm just glad that I didn't spill anything.

Sorry for the long delay, but I am now officially back in the swing of things. Also, in light of current events stateside, GEAUX SAINTS! The game will be airing at 3:30 AM Mauritius Standard Time, but believe me, I will find a way to watch. Even if it means breaking into the American Embassy. I guess I'm just part of the 'Who Dat' diaspora.

Photographic Evidence

2009-11-29T21:06:00.001-08:00

Tacky Halloween

Thanksgiving!

Veraaaaaanda

Long Overdue Sundries

2009-11-29T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well. November has been quite a month.

Highlight Reel:

1. Tacky Halloween party with Mauritians, South Africans and Canadians (yes, October, I know)

2. New and improved lodging

3. Thanksgiving with the family

4. December adventure

"Haha, you look like an American tourist!!" I love my Canadian friend Dave. He's kind of like another big brother. He told me I looked like an American tourist. I take that as an insult. The setting was the Halloween barbecue at the new house of my friend Nadia, who is Canadian, too. Rather than a traditional Halloween costume party, the theme was simple: dress tacky. I showed up in what can only be described as color and pattern vomit- purple flower short shorts, a hypnotic multicolored shirt, and a tropically floral tourist hat. I bought two of these articles at a tourist shop in Flic en Flac. I literally walked into the store and said (in French), "I need to buy short shorts and a tourist hat that are absolutely terrible and unsuitable for any occasion." The salesgirl seemed a little hurt by my remark, but showed me around the shop anyway. The shirt was sourced from aforementioned Canadian friend, Dave. I would like to say that it was part of his wardrobe, but alas, he found it for me at a standard Mauritian clothing store. It really was terrible. Pictures to follow.

Anyway, the night was pretty wonderful with all kinds of food and drink. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of candy, but as the youngest attendee by a pretty solid margin, I'm fairly certain that I'm the only guest that noticed. Before the barbecue, I had accompanied my lovely housemate Chantal to a ritzy party at the hilltop villa of her very British boss. That party was notable as another one of the very rare times when I find myself in a social gathering populated exclusively by white people. Once again, it was a rather startling feeling. After said ritzy soiree, we returned to our house (which we had moved into that very day- more to follow) and changed into tacky garb in oh, say, six minutes before thundering off in the direction of the barbecue. Chantal was wearing a pink bra over a yellow shirt and had her ponytail up pointing towards the sky. Fantastic. Party on.

Ah. My house. So I moved from an apartment in Flic en Flac to a house on the water in Tamarin. This move was motivated by: problems with the old landlord, rodential roommates, and the desire to no longer live all alone (sniffle). My good friend Chantal (read: Italian/South African beauty of solid character and of a good family) was also house hunting. She found the place, a little house on the water in a town not far from Flic en Flac, and we decided to make it our home. There's a large back porch abutting Tamarin bay which we have imperiously dubbed 'the Veraaaanda.' Also, there's a maid that comes six days a week and makes my bed and does my laundry. Once again, I never would have sought out such an employee. She works for my landlord. I will admit, it is particularly nice to live on the water. In Flic en Flac I lived quite near the water, but in Tamarin our backyard is the Indian Ocean. If you think about it, we have the largest backyard pool in the world. Unfortunately, the water is replete with sea urchins, making my swimming expeditions a bit painful. I bought Chantal one of those inflatable pool bed things for her birthday. We have good times.

Furthermore, Chantal cooks very well and very frequently. My eating out days are pretty much finished, which is saving me rupees and making me healthier. Chantal cooks aubergines (brinjals if you're South African, eggplants if you're a simple kid from Alabama like me) with pretentious cheeses. She also makes mean pasta. Wonderful. She also has most of the episodes of Ugly Betty (modern American television) which I have unavoidably begun watching. Not a terrible life, when you think about it. A frequent house guest (read: third roommate) is Chantal's significant other, Samuel. He is the reigning Mister Mauritius and a genuinely nice guy. He teaches me Kreol words and gets in trouble a lot. Chantal says that we are kind of like her children, and in some ways, I guess you could say that. It is also worth noting that I have taken a much-welcome step backwards in grown up terms, although I fear the damage had already been done. Chantal also cooked our non-turkeys for Thanksgiving.

Canadians will tell you that Thanksgiving is in October. They are obviously wrong, as Canadian Thanksgiving is a made-up thing and decidedly fake. Everyone knows that Thanksgiving is in November and that it involves turkey and pilgrims and American Indians. Have you ever heard of a Canadian pilgrim, because I certainly haven't. Anyway, no one celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving back in October because, well, why would anyone? But as American Thanksgiving approached, I got excited. My Mauritian thanksgiving did not involve turkeys, it involved pilgrims (to Mecca) and Indians (but not the American kind).

Leah, my one real American friend in Mauritius, suggested that we create a Mauritian Thanksgiving feast and Chantal, being an organizer to the core, took the bull by the horns. After a search for turkey proved fruitless (incidentally, pumpkins were notably absent from Halloween. Sigh) Chantal acquired two chickens from her mother's butcher. This past Thursday, the game was on. Leah came over armed with internet recipes for traditional American favorites and we went to the grocery store to see what kind of homestyle we could drum up. Chantal took a half-day off from work and went to her mother's house (Chantal's mother, a budding and talented visual artist, lives twenty minutes away from our house in a remote seaside subdivision referred to by us only as 'far far away') to cook chickens and concoct other, less American, but more healthy holiday dishes.

Meanwhile, Leah and I were wandering the aisles of the local grocery store with a sense of befuddlement. There are so many things that are unavailable in Mauritius that one would never think to miss until confronted with them on a Thanksgiving shopping list. For example, there were no French's fried onions for green bean casserole to be found, nor was there any stove top stuffing, nor, for that matter, was there any celery to put in our own makeshift stuffing. We made questionable substitutions. 'No celery? I bet green apples would work just fine. No fried onions? Well we can just fry those ourselves. No sweet potatoes? Ah, let's just get squash.' At the end of the shopping excursion, we somehow had managed to acquire most ingredients necessary for a resoundingly fake but still endearingly familiar Thanksgiving feast.

We returned home and began cooking. It is worth noting that neither of us have any notable culinary experience, but Leah's a girl and much smarter than me so she took the reins. Oh, and we also found salsa at the grocery story, which we were initially quite excited about. Upon tasting, though, we found that it tastes much less like salsa and much more like curry. Sad, really. Anyway, I set about chopping onions to fry. There were tears in my eyes, sentimental onion tears. And in the end we ran out of time so I just grilled with onions with some chicken bouillon and we mixed them in with the green beans. Still tasty, but certainly not traditional green bean casserole. Furthermore, the squash casserole did turn out as a pretty good substitute for sweet potato. When looking for marshmallows, though, we only found packages that contained colored and flavored puffs of delicious. We bought the packages, picked out the white ones, and gave the colored ones to Sam. It worked out well.

In the night time, the entire family (read: most of my friends in Mauritius and a few of Leah's) came to the veraaaanda for a hearty meal. I even said the blessing like my dad usually does. Ah, so sentimental. We ate. And ate. At one point I excitedly got on my computer to check American football scores, but then realized that I was ten hours in the future and the games hadn't even started yet. Oh well. Roll Tide, by the way. And Geaux Saints. Both teams are having perfect seasons (knock on wood) and I'm 10,000 miles away. Awesome.

Also, the wood I just knocked on is located in a Sheraton in Dubai. That's right, I'm on vacation from vacation. I've tearfully left the tropical island for a month to pursue a grandiose and exorbitantly expensive compound vacation in Dubai, Greece, Turkey, and Germany. The first leg is Dubai where I will be meeting my sister in a mere matter of hours. Thursday morning I board a plan bound via Bahrain for Greece, where I will meet up with Alison Lubin and company of Tulane University social and academic notoriety. After that, I will kill five days taking buses and trains and possibly boats around Southeastern Europe in whatever direction tickles my fancy and hopefully in a manner so as to conserve as many dirhams, lira, rupees, euros, dollars or other monetary units as possible. After said whimsy jaunt I will rendezvous with Ross Kelley, also of Tulane, in Istanbul for some cheesy tourism. On the 20th of December, I'll hop a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt and then a train to Heidelburg where I will meet up with my family and celebrate things. On January 5th, after flights from Frankfurt to Cairo to Dubai to Mauritius, I will be home (well, tropically speaking) once again.

I tell my father all the time, but he never seems to believe me: It is unimaginably difficult to be me. I live in tropical paradise, vacation in exotic locales, and have someone else to do my laundry. Hard life indeed.

Spotted: Hare Krishna priest staying with my neighbors. Place of birth: Nashville, Tennessee. My friends said that he talks very slow. They have absolutely no idea.

Tiny island: 1; Big boy: 0 (Or, the Taste of Defeat)

2009-10-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

There is a high probability that at this very moment, Mauritian postal workers are eating my candy, but I'll explain that a little later on.

Last weekend was Divali. It's a Hindu festival wherein families decorate their houses with lights and hand out sweets to friends, family, neighbors, and the errant curious (and hungry) American. Think of Christmas time, but the sweets are Indian and the lights generally don't include Santa Clause, although I did see one reindeer.

Furthermore, it's been Mauritian mid-term season. I've been furiously studying and have been continuously stressed. I also found out that one of my classes is a semester course- not a year course like I'd thought. That means that I have to sit for an exam in December. Normally that would not pose a problem, except that last week I bought a plane ticket to Dubai for the end of November/beginning of December so that I could meet a member of my immediate family. This trip falls directly in the middle of scheduled exams. I'm not pleased, nor am I sure of what exactly will happen. I also found out that apparently 40% is a passing grade at the University of Mauritius and that 70% is quite a good grade. I rattled off an e-mail to Tulane. Apparently my grades won't transfer at face value, but it still makes me nervous. If I don't get into graduate school because my American Literature course at the University of Mauritius kills my GPA, I may go postal. Don't worry, I'm giving it my best.

Oh, and speaking of going postal.

My mom mailed me a package full of candy about a month ago now. The exact arrival-in-Mauritius date on the package said October 9, although I am absolutely positive that the notice didn't show up in my PO box until several days after that. In any event, I found the pink slip in my PO box telling me to go and claim my package on October 15th. I was instantly elated. I walked the twenty paces from my PO box to the front counter at the Flic en Flac post office. They took my slip and handed me back another one. I was befuddled. "Yes, but where is my package?" I asked in gentle and naive French. "Ah," they told me, "You must go and collect it from Port Louis." Wonderful. I was a bit agitated, because the capital city can be a particularly hectic place, and it's a pain to get to and get out of. Anyway, I boarded a bus for Port Louis and went to the main post office, or, what I thought was the main post office. Long ago when I was trying to rent my post office box in the first place, I was sent to this post office (and indeed, back into the darkened and drippy bowels of it) to discuss my life with a man whose last human contact must have been pre-Mauritian independence, before he finally agreed to rent me the box.

Anyway, still feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited at the prospect of home things, I arrived at the post office and presented my slip. I was immediately told that I had come to the wrong post office and that I should go to the waterfront to the Postal Museum to collect my package. I set off in that direction, becoming less excited and more annoyed with every passing step. That post office turned out to also be the wrong one, and so after another set of directions, I finally arrived at the parcel center for the Mauritian Post. It was, well, a warehouse. It's where international packages go. To die. I presented my slip again, and was this time told to take a seat and wait. After 20 minutes, I was called to the counter. They had to find my package in the dark recesses of the Mauritian postal abyss. Anyway, I was taken to a counter where they opened the package in front of me. My feelings of elation returned as Skittles, home-made Halloween mix, and other assorted American delights spilled onto the counter in front of me.

My excitement died almost immediately. The man said to me in English that, as the contents were perishable, they would have to be retained by the Post and sent through an inspector who would then clear them for delivery. I think that the man mistook my look of supreme disappointment and instant melancholy for a lack of comprehension, because he immediately repeated his statement in French, thinking that maybe he had chosen the wrong language. Hearing it a second time only hurt that much more. Anyway, the man told me not to cry and that I would probably receive my package the following week and that they would be kind enough to forward it to the Post Office in Flic en Flac so that I wouldn't have to return to Port Louis. Let's do a quick tabulation: that makes four separate post offices in two different cities and no fewer than six different postal workers.

I had seen the promised candies, but was not allowed to indulge. I was glad though, that the man let me take the note that my mom had written and stuck inside the package. He told me not to worry- I would be reunited with the sweetened essence of America soon enough. All the next week I went to my PO box every day waiting for my package to arrive. Yesterday, that is, the 26th of October, I finally received word via a teensy scrap of blue paper that my package had arrived.

That the slip was teensy is particularly salient to this narrative. Maybe I haven't mentioned this before, but my PO box, either by pure coincidence or due to a mean sense of humor on the part of the postal worker who assigned it to me, is on the tallest row of PO boxes. I mean, I'm a tall guy. It's part of my identity. Anyway, even I, who tower above the average Mauritian, must reach my arms well above my head to feel inside the box. Seeing inside it would require a step ladder. So checking my mail is really much more of a tactile exercise than I had ever imagined. Anyway, it was only after desperate feeling around the box and painful arm and shoulder extending that I finally got my hands on the aforementioned teensy slip of paper. It is for that reason that I cannot state with any certainty when that teensy slip of paper arrived. Cruel fate.

Anyway, I went to claim the package, feeling falsely triumphant once again in the candy saga. The man at the counter asked me for 106 rupees. I asked why. He told me that it was customs duties. I was a bit frustrated- the man at the parcel office had estimated the value of the contents of the package at 200 rupees. Over 50% customs duty on candy? But fine. I was willing to pay it. The problem was that I didn't have 106 rupees on my person. I would have to return the next day.

The next day, October 27, was today. I showed up again, this time cautiously optimistic, with exactly 106 rupees in hand. I presented the slip to the post man. I could almost taste the America in my mouth. "381 rupees," the man said to me. "Excuse me?" I said. He repeated the sum. I instantly exploded. It's been a rough couple of weeks.

Apparently when I went to collect the package yesterday, the man hadn't noticed that it had been two weeks since the package had arrived in Mauritius. I was expected to pay a demurrage fee that accumulates according to the number of days they'd been holding my package, including days during which the Post doesn't operate. I asked to speak to someone else. I was given a phone number of a bureaucrat in some postal cavern somewhere in Port Louis. We talked for a while. The man told me that he sympathized, and that even though I had attempted to pick up the package well within two weeks' time, I was still expected to pay the fee- the fee that amounted to almost double the value of the parcel. He told me that he would waive the fine if he could, but for that I would have to talk to his boss- someone he kept calling the "Mauritian Postmaster General." I declined the phone number, by this time so frustrated that I could feel my body radiating acidic heat back at the tropical sun.

I went back to the man at the front desk. "I believe that this post office is holding a package for me. Please throw it away." I had to repeat it several times in both comprehensible languages until he understood. Yes, I accepted defeat. It does seems ludicrous that after all of that time and effort that I should be unable to collect my morsels of home. And I could have just paid the fine(s) and gotten the candy. I almost regret what I did, except that I can buy candy here. Indeed, I bought a lot of it so that I could eat my feelings surrounding the entire postal ordeal. And I'll have my whole life (probably) to eat America. It was the thought of my parents that mattered to me, and I did get their note out of the package. In the end, after talking to a slew of postal workers and failing several times to get my grubby paws on some candy corn, I just had to stop playing their game. Tropical bureaucracy, though charming, can have a seriously sour taste to it. I didn't make them destroy the package in front of me, and I know that they are aware of the contents. It is highly probable that Mauritian postmen are eating my candy. I hope they enjoy it, really. America is too delicious to waste.

Oh man, though, I do miss candy corn.

Grown-Uppery?

2009-10-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

I went swimming today with my swim goggles and my blue bathing suit that I stole from my dad the night before I left. Sorry, Dad. Anyway, at one point I just slipped under the water and tried to hold myself in place against the current. Then I noticed a small tropical fish that was electric blue, shimmery silver, and neon yellow. It was probably five or six inches long, 2 inches tall (deep?) and really skinny. Anyway, it swam right up to me and looked me in the eye. I imagine it was thinking, "My, you don't look Mauritian. Are you European?." It was obviously not thinking, "You are huge and potentially a threat to my well-being." This I know because it didn't try to swim away from me, even when I reached my hand out to it. It is possible that it was blinded by the reflection of the sun off of my still-comparatively-pasty skin. Surreal experience. I then stepped on another sea urchin. They're a serious menace. I'm alerting the American Embassy.

On a series of unrelated notes, my dad keeps calling me an adult. I really wish he would stop doing that. Also, the more that I ponder life and how it goes, the more (and less) I understand Peter Pan. Or that Toys-R-Us giraffe.

Anecdote: It was a Friday night and I was sitting on the beach with a group of my friends here in Flic en Flac. We had seen the sunset (woah!), and I was beginning to think it might be time for a short nap before the soirees of the nighttime. After all, the coconuts are ripening and delicious libations might ensue. My beautiful German friend Bettina told me that she was going home. I asked why. Confused by my confusion, she said (best read with a moderate German accent), "Well, I must go into work tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock because we have a new employee that is not capable of running the business herself yet and the only other employee qualified to supervise her has a family commitment." My response to her was almost automatic. "Oh," I said, "You real people with your real people things to do." Bettina's job title is Marketing Executive, unless I'm mistaken. I don't have a real job- much less one with a fancy and rather intimidating title.

At the time I guess I didn't think much of it, but in retrospect, I guess I've been dwelling on just what exactly constitutes 'real peopledom.' Surely I am in no way qualified for the land of grown ups, and yet I find myself surrounded by them and increasingly consumed with the drudgery (and non-drudgery) (mostly the drudgery) of 'grown-uppery.'

So what exactly is grown-uppery? Having put much thought into the matter recently when I should've been putting much thought into economics or literature, I feel that I have reached a working definition for myself. From what I can gather, grown-uppery is a two-tiered achieved status. The bottom tier and the most obvious is comprised primarily of the trappings associated with such an advanced status. These trappings include things like: cooking, cleaning, washing, and bill-paying for oneself; jobs and consequently job titles and supposedly salaries; company cars; bluetooth headsets; "benefits;" deeply committed spousal, quasi-spousal, or anti-spousal relationships; and last but perhaps most illustrative, kitchens complete with stocked spice racks. Not kidding about that one. It's important.

The other tier gets tricky. My dad used to tell me that it was his job to ensure that one day I would be 'a man.' In fact, he still tells me this. Sure he might want me to know how to change oil in cars and to be able to tile and grout (I have a little bit of experience with that one, don't I, Dad?), but what he really means is different. He wants me to know and to do 'the right thing.' I'm working on it, Dad, I promise. This is very closely related to what I consider the more complicated tier of grown-uppery. 'Real people' have responsibilities; they have deep emotional commitments; they have life-stories; they have life directions (or none, but either way, the choice is theirs); and they have cultivated tastes. Maybe those tastes lead to spice racks. I guess us adolescents can't appreciate basil or coriander. Coincidentally enough, I have a 'real person' friend here whose job title is "Export Manager" for a culinary essential oils spices and condiments company. Yeah, I don't really know what that means, either, but it's very grown-upperish, isn't it? You should see her spice rack. Real people also interact with other real people in a way that adolescents and children (quasi-people?) never could. The mutual status seems to make real people equal to each other.

We quasi-people do have some things going for us. We don't have real jobs and we don't necessarily need serious life directions. We get to move to African islands for a year and live on the beach. We get to order take out. We get Summer jobs at tea rooms and parents (and big brothers and sisters) on the other end of telephone lines to tell us what we should do when we can't figure it out ourselves. Some of us watched our older siblings turn into real people, and we're just sitting back and waiting for the verdict before we take the leap ourselves. I always did like the limbo. All in all, I like quasi-personhood. If I could keep the accouterments of the quasi people while gaining all that emotional maturity mumbo jumbo, I'd go for it.

As you can probably tell, I have a rather mystified vision of adulthood- I obviously don't even like calling it adulthood as that doesn't seem enigmatic enough. In any event, on an increasing number of days per week, my life looks a lot like grown-uppery. I have a few of the basics covered (bills, laundry, cooking, etc), and the other things are developing daily. I can't comment on my own emotional maturity, but I can say that I'm doing my best to work that out.

I had a very heated discussion with my landlord today over some things he was supposed to fix but hasn't. It was the first time in my life when I have actually stood up to a 'real person.' You could (if you're Southern) say that I gave him a 'talking to.' It was an awkward feeling, first because I don't like getting angry, but secondly because for the first time, I felt entitled to interact with a 'real person' on an equal plane. I felt guilty afterwards. Don't get me wrong, I don't think arguing with landlords is necessarily a marque of grown-uppery, but standing up to real people might be. I don't live in real peopledom, but I might just be inching (dangerously) closer. I don't have a spice rack, though. That I'll have to earn.

Also, Happy Birthday Mom and Annie. You guys are wunderbar.

Creole words of the day: Kuyon: idiot. Ti garson: little boy. [Edit: Cotomili: Coriander]

Melanin Deficiency and Tropical Miscellany

2009-09-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I've come up with a vaguely comprehensive list of 'basic necessities' unavailable in Mauritius:

1. Pandora.com

2. Hulu.com

3. iTunes (I cheat by using an American debit card)

4. nbc.com, abctv.com, etc

5. Televised American football (don't worry, I'm keeping up with the Crimson Tide and the Saints online. I'm also naturally keeping track of the Green Wave, but it gets hard to focus on my computer screen through my TEARS!) (Still though, ROLL WAVE!)

6. Barbecued Shrimp/ Pralines/ Fried Green Tomatoes

7. My parents

8. Bruff (Tulane dining hall)

9. PJ's coffee

Secondly, I've bought swim goggles and can be found any day of the week at the beach of Flic en Flac, swimming stupidly around, gazing in amazement at exotic marine life, and stepping on sea urchins. Oh, that's important. As far as I can tell, they're aren't really jelly fish in Mauritius, but the beaches are inundated with sea urchins that are little and black and hide under plants. They are absolutely no fun to step on. Dad says that they are good to eat. Does anyone know how to say, 'barbecued sea urchin' in Creole? I'm also slowly developing a tan. Woah, I know. Don't get too excited- there's only so dark you can go when you start out as white as a bleached sugar cookie. Does anyone know how to say 'melanin deficiency' in Creole?

Speaking of Creole, I've started to learn a bit of the local language (as much as I can get anyone to teach me). I've obviously started by learning the phrases that I predict I will use the most. Mo envi dormi (I want to sleep) Mo pou manze (I'm going to eat) Mo pa touriste (I'm not a tourist). etc. I also obviously know the cuss words.

And speaking of melanin deficiency, allow me to reflect about the 'study' part of my study abroad. As previously mentioned, I have four courses this semester. They are: Disadvantaged Populations and Intercultural Social Work, the Mauritian Economy I, 20th Century American Literature, and the Sociology of Migration. Each of them is defying expectations as the semester goes on. Oh, and since when is it October (well, nearly).

I'd like to discuss primarily the social work class. As I said, it is composed mainly of professionals in the field of social work: the vast majority are married, most have children, more than half are women, and none of them are white. Recent discussions about racism and sexism, therefore, have been particularly enlightening. An anecdote: last Wednesday I was headed to class by bus. It was early morning. I was cranky. I waited for my first bus, as I do every morning, on the beach. This was very nice, except that it was cold (read: it was in no way cold, but it was windy and I longed for a sweater). The first bus ride was uneventful enough, punctuated by my most recent iPod playlist and bouts of snoozing. I arrived in Quatre Bornes to change buses as per normal, and then things went horribly awry. I waited for my next bus for much longer than normal, to start with. Then, when one finally did arrive, a curious thing happened.

Mauritians don't really have a culture of lining up. They, from what I can gather, prefer to push. As a bus approaches, therefore, a huddle of people pushes its way towards the door and waits to be waved on by the controller (the ticket guy on each bus). In this particular huddle, I found myself near the back of the crowd but not last. The bus-goers from the bus got off of it, and the huddle was allowed to enter. The bus was certainly not empty, but it was by no means the fullest bust that I've ridden in Mauritius; it was probably 'standing room only,' but I've ridden buses that were 'standing-on-top-of-at-least-four-other-people-and-their-groceries room only.' In any event, it got to be my turn to board the bus, and three Mauritians were standing behind me (read, lightly shoving me) waiting to get on. At this point, much to my confusion, the controller of the bus put his arm out to restrain me and let the Mauritians on. Once they were aboard, the controller proceeded to close the door in my face. I was astounded. Nearby school children seemed to be gasping in unison (Oh, No he didn't!). Rather than belligerently banging on the side of the bus or shouting obscenities in Creole (as I am now totally capable of doing) and being extremely cranky and late by this point, I carried my wounded foreigner self to the next taxi stand and took a cab to school. Yeah, I was that guy.

I arrived in social work class to find a discussion of racism. We were separated into groups to discuss the topic in Mauritius. I always feel bad at group discussion time, because my presence forces the other members of my group to speak in English or French, rather than Creole. Anyway, my group got to talking. The general consensus was that white people, even in Mauritius, tend to be the perpetrators of most racism and the benefactors of the accompanying discrimination. Fresh off of my morning experience, though, and still quite cranky, I reminded them rather sternly about reverse racism. Let me say that I can't be certain that my race kept me off of the bus- it wasn't my gender, because the Mauritians that were let on instead of me were male. It could have been classism or anti-tourist sentiment, but both of those are related to racism anyway. It could simply have been that the controller thought I looked funny. I don't care- I was perturbed and I was very passionately calling it racism! Yes, in hindsight, I realize how a cup of coffee or possibly some candy could have easily quelled my resentment, and that my impassioned exposition was probably more the result of not enough sleep or caffeine than any great moral injustice. I had, after all, easily been able to afford the taxi (equivalent of $5.50 US) and got to school faster and with my personal space intact. Yeah, I know I sound whiney. But you would, too, if you didn't get coffee in the morning.

That being said, the concept of reverse racism had apparently never occurred to many of my classmates. I told them my morning bus story, and they were surprised and amused. When group time ended, my group told the professor that I had a story for the class. Great. A white guy who'd been held off of a bus that morning gets to recount his experience with reverse racism to a room full of non-white adult-aged full-fledged social workers. They were sympathetic, but the roomed burst into laughter more than once during my story-telling. I wasn't the least bit offended by their insensitivity- by this time I had realized that it all was really very funny. One classmate even suggested that I write an angry letter to that particular bus company.

This story is indicative of a major feeling I get in class. Most of my courses (by my own design) concern racism and race relations. Even the American Lit class is about race. It just never occurred to me that I would be studying racism as part of an oft-resented minority and surrounded by the differently-ethnic and differently-religious descendants of slaves and indentured laborers brought to this island by my 'European Brethren' to toil in the sugar cane fields. I'm also a gender minority, as my courses are filled with and taught by women. Not that I at all feel disadvantaged- in fact, I find my minority statuses to be terribly amusing to both me and my classmates/professors. I guess the difference is awareness. I said in class today, "When I'm walking down a street in the USA, it never occurs to me that I'm white. Why would it? But I find that in Mauritius, I'm almost always conscious of it." I'm not claiming to know how American minorities feel at all, it's just a different thing to notice.

Spotted: Mauritians on my bus this afternoon opening windows even though it was 'cold' and raining. I looked around for the reason why: a woman was changing her baby's diaper on the bus. I opened my window.

PS- I've started receiving America mail. Remember how I rented a post office box? Well, mail addressed to my PO box has been mysteriously and regularly delivered to my door. In order for this to occur, the Mauritian post man must look up in his paper work my home address and walk all the way to deliver (read: stick it in my front gate) the letter. It seems like it'd be much easier just to drop it in the slot. Right?

Sweet Home Tropical Paradise

2009-09-23T02:51:00.001-07:00

Beach in Flic en Flac- Le Morne in the background

20 Meters from my front porch

Island near Mahebourg

Waterfront View in Mahebourg

Water Altar at Grand Port

More Photos

2009-09-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Sunrise: Flic en Flac, from my Back Terrace

Majhegy and Maxine: Whimsy Mauritians

Emma: English, Saucy, Swine Flu-Free

Tourist Life and Intercontinental Communication Foibles

2009-09-14T14:03:00.001-07:00

I don't usually consider myself a tourist. I realize that this is probably not accurate and that students abroad are in many ways just glorified long-term tourists, but nonetheless, I prefer to think that I'm special. Sometimes, however, I suspend that judgement on myself and pursue the most touristy things that I can think of- I do, after all, live(ish) in a tropical island paradise.

For example, recently I went to Club Med. I'm pretty sure most people are familiar with the institution, but for those that aren't, Club Med is an all-inclusive resort company that operates all over the world. They have two resorts in Mauritius. The company has been accused of providing people with insular bubbles in troubled places, so that visitors are surrounded by touristy poshness and cannot see the real and in some cases horrific conditions in some of these locales. Bah, I say. Bring on the drinks with the umbrellas.

My friend Emma and I bought day-passes. This way you can enjoy all of the included food, beverage, and fun you want from the hours of 11am-6pm without actually having to fork out the gagillions of roupies to stay there overnight (or having to sully your socially-aware conscience quite as much). I won't tell you how much day passes costed us, but it was enough so that Emma insisted we "get our money's worth." This obviously involved gorging ourselves on the delicious buffet. I started with pizza and french fries, moved on to chopped suey, consumed some creole-style eggs, and then had a giant salad. I actually ate much more than this, but it could get embarrassing for me if I listed everything. Oh, and Emma and I split a giant ice cream sundae. Seriously giant. People assumed that we were on honeymoon. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that was the common perception.

Anyway, after lunch we kayaked out into the bay to the catamaran on which Emma works. This was probably not the best idea after having consumed enough food for, well, the entire island. But we made it just as the catamaran was about to leave its anchorage. We were planning to spend some time with the boat crew, but they just said hello and left. I obviously splashed Emma with my paddle as punishment. We headed back to shore and set out drinking beachy things with those obnoxious umbrellas and snacking for the remainder of the day. I will say, there's some truth to the criticisms about Club Med. There's so much to do at the resort that some of the people that stay there probably hardly leave the complex. They'll return home to Europe thinking that they've been to Mauritius, and maybe they have. All I know is that the Mauritius I live(ish) in and the Mauritius they visited are two very different places. I guess if I consider myself a tourist, I consider myself to be more thorough. Nah, let's be honest. I'm totally morally superior. (Kidding) (ish)

Also on my recent list tourist checklist, I went to the Museum of Natural History today in Port Louis. Normally I would not have been drawn in by a museum of this type, preferring the modern and contemporary art museums that contain works that some people don't consider art at all, but rather enlightened splattering or heaps of needlessly expensive junk. The only reason I went to this museum is because it has an actual dodo bird that has been "carefully preserved." The bird has been extinct for hundreds of years, so as much as I've been looking around my apartment for a live one, I know I'll have to settle for this bit of cultural taxidermy. So, I went into the building, completely bypassing the local fish and lizards, skirting thoughtlessly the indigenous insect life, ignoring fossilized everythings until I found the dodo. Ok, it was exactly what I thought it would be like. By far the biggest bird (living or dead) I've ever seen in person, the dodo looks like it could cause some damage if it stepped on your toes. Also, "carefully preserved" is probably not the most accurate description. The feathers were a bit dirty and both the face and legs were made of cheaply painted wood. But the body was real. I'm told. I suppose I should just be impressed that anyone has managed to maintain a dead creature in any kind of condition for that long, especially a specimen of an extinct genus. They wouldn't allow photography in the museum. I was bummed.

Also, much to my amusement, the dodo gallery at the museum received a lot of support, financially, scientifically, technologically, from various Dutch universities and institutions. This is amusing because it was the Dutch who hunted the bird into extinction in the 17th Century. Guilty conscience perhaps?

So. As aforementioned, I have a Mauritian PO Box, as my beach apartment has no mailbox. I have yet to receive any America mail at all, though my mother told me she already mailed my 'save the date' card for my sister's wedding. I was excited to receive it, because it apparently has a series of nauseatingly cute photos of my superhuman sister Jean Anne and Mike, her superhuman fiance. The card hasn't come. It's been a long time. Let me say though, that I really don't need to 'save the date.' I've already been measured for a tuxedo and my dad is arranging for my flights home for the ceremony in March. I mentioned this to a friend, who broke into several stories about Mauritius and postal problems. The one I remember best is that my friend, a Mauritian, once ordered several thousand dollars worth of equipment for a car that he was working on. He very insistently instructed the (American) company that he was ordering from to make sure that they put "Island of Mauritius" on the address. They rebuffed him saying that they were professionals and could surely handle a simple international delivery. After three months, the guy had still not received him package. He called the company, they said it had been shipped and should probably have already arrived. Eventually, the products arrived. The package had been addressed to the man, but instead of Mauritius, the address label said, "Mauritania," stamped as clear as day. Mauritania is a primarily desert country found in Northwest Africa. It's thousands of miles away from Mauritius.

I've recently learned that I can send text messages to America for relatively little money. I also recently learned that sometimes these text messages don't go to the person in America who I would've liked. I tried to send Sam, whose area code is 816 for Kansas City, a text message last night. I entered the number correctly- I've checked several times since then. A couple minutes after I hit send, I receive a reply: "i love you too, but i dont know who you are." The text message came from an American number with the area code, 765. After googling, I find that my text message had evidently been delivered to someone in Indianapolis. I replied back to them, "Sorry, that was meant for someone else. Guess the wires can get crossed when you're texting across 2 oceans. Also, probably best not to reply. I bet texting Mauritius is pretty expensive." Needless to say, they didn't reply.

Purchased: Rebel flag hat at Port Louis market. It says, "Good Ole Boy, Southern Born and Bred." I chose it over a selection of pink Auburn University hats and a few from Mizzou. It cost me less than $2 US. I explained to the man who was selling these hats what they meant. He seemed excited that they were universities and not counterfeit clothing brands.

End of Flucation, and the Prettiest Place on the Planet

2009-09-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

So let me explain. I've recently been afflicted by an internet brownout, caused by my not having paid the bill. I would like the know, however, how I was already late in paying the bill seeing as though it never arrived. I shall get to the bottom of this conundrum, although it is not pressing, now that I have found a kiosk on the way to the university where I pay off my bill as often as I'd like. Once again, I hemorrhage roupies. I will tell you that during said brownout, I read my last book, so now I will have to buy more. For which I will hemorrhage roupies.

So school has resumed, and after much bureaucratic finagling, I finally have a complete schedule for the semester. My courses are: 20th Century American Literature (completely an accident, honestly), the Sociology of Migration, the Mauritian Economy, and Disadvantaged Populations/ Intercultural Social Work. The American Lit. class is actually proving to be more pertinent than I had previously anticipated, because the theme of the literature we are studying is race. To inform the literary discussion, the class is comparing and contrasting racial situations and demography in Mauritius and the United States, which is actually giving me a great frame of reference for my own understanding of race in Mauritius. As my independent research here centers around demography and ethnic relations, this class is actually proving to be perfect. Similarly, the social work class is food for my intellectual curiosity, as is the sociology. The economics course is serving two purposes: first to give me a better understanding of exactly how Mauritius got to be the way it is economically, and secondly to remind me why I could never be an econ. major. Ever. There were derivatives on the white board, and while I understood them well enough (read: I had them explained to me at length by a benevolent student after class), they harkened back to my days of calculus. I feel the same way about calculus that my sister does about Naval Officer Candidacy School: I'm glad I went through it, but I never would again. (I really did love calculus, as much as I had to work to understand it. That math stretched my brain in the weirdest ways. Someone find out how Ms. Andrada is for me. I miss her.)

Back to my sister; she is also blogging about adventures abroad. Hers, though are aboard the immensely intimidating USS Nimitz as it makes its grand tour of places she can't disclose for reasons of national security. JABatsea.blogspot.com. She really is spectacular.

It is worth noting that I do not have swine flu. I did, though, manage to give myself food poisoning the weekend before classes resumed. I am certainly no culinary master, as Sam, Mullins, my mother, or anyone else can verify. In fact, I can barely cook at all, though I am forcing myself to learn. The culprit for my food poisoning was chicken, as far as I can tell. I must have gotten some raw chicken juice on something that later entered my mouth. Or, it is certainly possible that I just undercooked the meat. Yes, I am a genius, I know.

Also concerning my schedule, in true Miles-form, I have managed to avoid having classes on Mondays and Fridays. This leaves me two extra days every weekend. I've started the Monday tradition of going to some part of the island where I have absolutely no reason to go, except that I have never been. This Monday, I went to Mahebourg on the Southeastern Coast of the island (woah. Flickr it). After a serious of buses took me to the old capital district of Mauritius, I wandered around looking for the ocean. Mahebourg has a lovely seafront promenade completed in the past ten years that borders 'Blue Bay.' It is named this because the reef here protects a relatively large part of the bay from the ocean itself, thus keeping it shallower and for some reason, the most brilliant color of water I have ever seen. The mountains on the opposite side of the bay slope down directly into the water. I consider myself moderately well-traveled, due to the endless generosity of my long-suffering dad, but I can honestly say, not even the view from the London Eye or the Great Wall of China can beat this panorama. I didn't bring my camera on Monday, but I will definitely be returning to the area, and I will provide photographic evidence.

It's also worth noting that I took the longest bus route on the island (Route 198 from Port Louis to Mahebourg) on Monday. The total cost for the journey, of well over 50 km, was 28 roupies. This is well under $1 US. Buses can be pretty economical over long distances. They can also provide you with access to the Mahebourg waterfront, and the Shoprite center outside of Quatre Bornes, if you're so inclined. I hear there's a bookstore at the Shoprite, and who knows? They might even have the covered trash-can for which I've been searching such a long time. I'm not getting my hopes up.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to list a few things about Mauritius that have made it relevant(ish) to the modern world. I'd venture to say that most Americans have never heard of Mauritius, and that certainly is a shame. So here are some fun facts for you.

1) As aforementioned, Mauritius was the only home of the Dodo bird, before European settlers hunted it to extinction.

2) The Aapravasi Ghat, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Port Louis, is the birthplace of the worldwide indentured labor trade.

3) The 'Mauritian Post' stamps, a rare series from the mid-19th Century, are among the most famous and most prized stamps in the world by philatelists. They have been known to fetch around $1 million US at auction. Yes, I also like the word philatelist.

4) The naval battle at Grand Port (near Mahebourg) was one of the last (and only) times that a Napoleonic naval detachment defeated a British naval force in a major engagement. There is a monument on the promenade honoring it.

5) The old theatre in Port Louis was the first operational theatre in the Southern Hemisphere. It only houses performance sporadically, now.

6) Mauritius is one of the world's leading exporters of clothing, due to some ingenious economic policies since independence in 1968. Check your labels, you might just find "Made in Mauritius."

So, next time you call someone a dodo (or, more likely, you hear a 4 year old call someone a dodo), defeat a British naval armada, or spend your life's savings on a collectible postage stamp, think about Mauritius. I do it everyday.

Swine Flucation (Like Hurrication, only Viral)

2009-08-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

Ah. So remember when I said that swine flu had come to Mauritius? Well, indeed it has. As a precaution, the government of Mauritius has shut down every school in the country until August 31, at the earliest. This 'Swine Flucation' began this past Friday. My dad remarked when we talked last that I always manage to get some 'disaster break' each year. Last year, all Tulane students were treated to 'Hurrication' because of the dangerous path of Hurricane Gustav. Hurrication for me was characterized by exciting times in Tuscaloosa and Sylacauga, and culminated in the Alabama vs. Tulane football game, which we lost- but not badly. Swine flucation has proven to be about as leisurely. While I don't revel in catastrophes, I don't mind a few days off from school because of them. I'm using this break to: clean, launder, socialize, eat, and socialize some more. Also, in observation, my English friend Emma, who says 'banana' amusingly and with alarming frequency, and I went out this weekend. At the end of the night, we stopped to get food at this stand near my apartment. They make the best hot dog I've ever had in my life- no lie. There's some kind of Mauritian relish that makes it irresistible, and I don't even like relish. But anyway, the workers at the stand were wearing latex gloves and sanitary masks. Let me say that protective gloves are generally not sported by people who make other people's food here in Mauritius. I would be interested to read the Mauritian health code-or maybe afraid. In any event, Emma asked in English (very British English) if she might have a mask and some gloves. They gave them to her. She wore them for the rest of the night, much to my delight.

Also, it is worth noting that this past Monday, while part of my swine flucation, was a national holiday in and of itself. A couple weeks ago, I noticed that a banner had been placed at a prominent street corner in one of the towns that the buses drive through on their way to the university. It read, "the Black River District Council wishes you a comfortable and pious holiday." I'd been wondering what I was supposed to be so pious about. Turns out it is a Hindu holy day. I wouldn't have had classes on Monday even if there was no flu to be found, and this is in honor of the birthday of a Hindu deity. I say birthday, though I'm fairly certain the actual religious meaning is more complicated. Someone told me that it was the god's day of ascension. The deity-of-honor is Ganesha. He is the god of fortune and the son of Shiva. I know him only as the god that has the head of an elephant. In any event, I went to go and watch some of the festivities.

The weather was a bit cloudy as we made our way down to the beach in Flic en Flac. There was a crowd gathered and the smell of incense was everywhere. This particular holiday involves the release of the icons of the deity into the sea. There were several renderings of Ganesha, all very ornate. Each elephant-headed statue was beautiful and I'm sure required a great deal of work to construct and decorate. Each group of the faithful took their Ganesha down to the water. Some just took him down to the water, others put him into it. The largest one I saw, though, was brought down to the water's edge and carefully loaded into a speed boat. I asked someone about this: apparently Hindu dogma stipulates that Ganesha must be released in open water, and the beach at Flic on Flac is insulated by a clearly distinguishable coral reef. The boat (escorted by a dinghy from the Mauritian coast guard) was taking the god outside the coral reef to be released. The festival was marked with henna tattooing and much celebration. A man came by and offered us some sweetened coconut.

The entire time I was struck by the tourists, of which I include myself for this situation. I was embarrassed to be a foreigner in the midst of such disrespect from other foreigners. Although some tourists were being rude and still wearing their (scant) bathing suits as they walked through the crowd taking pictures, the religious observers did not seem at all hostile. I know that if someone had come to my baptism wearing a speedo, smoking a cigarette, and taking photos for their holiday album, I would be quite displeased. I tried to be as respectful as possible, and fear not, I was fully clothed.

Otherwise, my swine flucation has been uneventful. I've eaten a good deal, and I even cooked myself dinner one night. I made rice and fried okra, both seasoned with local chili paste. I also planned on cooking a chicken breast, but I forgot to get the meat out to thaw. Anyway, it was quite delicious and it possibly put my days of perpetual take-away in the past. I've also discovered several fruit juices that have supplanted my Coca-Cola addiction. My personal favorite is a litchi fruit blend that comes from South Africa. Unfortunately, I consumed the entire liter of it that I bought because I went a little too heavy on the chili paste. Maybe I should buy myself some garlic or salt. I'm getting better at playing house, I think. I've even begun ironing my clothes. Woah.

My downstairs neighbors also showed me how to operate my television. I have around 15 channels of French soap operas, Indian dramas, pretentious British news, and American television programs that are frustratingly dubbed in French. Also, I have one channel called, 'The Voice of America.' From what I gather, the 'voice of America' involves several five-minute snippits about the state of affairs in Hollywood and the goings on in the American music scene. They played a music video by, 'Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin.' It's a band. I don't watch a tremendous amount of television though. I do, however, read a good deal. I've read: a Forster novel, the book Uncle Kerry sent me to bring on this trip, an Alice Munro collection of short stories, a trash novel I bought at the supermarket, and an English-language novel by an Indian novelist. I'm also doing reading for school. It's not as interesting, and it consists of about a billion photocopies.

Attained: Mailing address. Miles Christian Babin/ Post Office Box #3/ Flic en Flac, Black River District, Mauritius. By all means, mail me America.

Adventures in Domesticity (read: Take-Away) and "Sweet Home Alabama." Twice.

2009-08-18T08:27:00.001-07:00

It persistently amazes me how many things one has to buy in order to set up a home. I made a list as soon as I moved in to my apartment, which is "furnished." Included in my monthly rent are: the furniture in the apartment, water, electricity, and a 'femme de menage' who comes twice a week. To me, that sounded like I wouldn't need to purchase many things in order to consider this apartment home. I was very wrong.

I find myself walking to the store (read: supermarket. It's called 'Spar.' Thus I frequently tell my neighbor that I am going 'Chez Spar' and it's grammatically correct) almost daily whenever I've discovered some other little domestic necessity whose heretofore presence in my life I'd taken for granted. For instance, I've been scouring supermarkets and stores across the island looking for a normal-sized household trash can with lid. I've also had to buy detergents for everything from my clothes to my dishes. I've purchased a giant squeegee on a pole so that I can push the standing water off of my back porch after heavy rains. How I've been able to find a giant squeegee and not a common trash can escapes me. I've also purchased various insecticides so that I might exact revenge on the little things that live in my kitchen and bathroom. The porches and my bedroom seem to be kept mostly insect-free due to the ever-watchful (and hungry) lizards. I named the latest one 'Reptar.'

I also have yet to purchase food for the apartment. One might think that this would be first on my list of things to buy, but I've been hindered by the dubious condition of the cooking utensils that came with the furnishings, as well as by unsettling noises that may suggest that I'm sharing the apartment with another nasty (more rodent-like) household pet. Indira, la femme de menage, seems to have the same suspicions. I hope to have greater peace of mind (and less bumping and scratching in the bathroom/kitchen walls at night) once I get in touch with my landlord and sternly explain the situation. I might be disgusted, but hey, it's the tropics. You might have guessed by now that 'femme de menage' means 'cleaning lady' in English. Indira comes on Monday and Friday mornings, when/if I remember to leave her the keys. Let me say that I would never have actively sought out such a femme. She seems to be professionally attached to the apartment building, and she seems very cheerful. I hope that we can become friends.

The aforementioned lack of food in the apartment has led me to delightfully desperate measures. I asked Lucia, my neighbor, if one could go to restaurants in Mauritius and ask for something to purchase and take home. I said all of this in French, of course. Lucia, being always helpful, replied that this was indeed a possibility and that I need only enter the restaurant and say, "J'ai envie de faire un take-away." It seems that occasionally the creolization has gone in my (Anglophone) favor. It is worth mentioning, though, that in order to be properly understood, one must pronounce 'take-away' in a French accent. I probably sound very silly, but it seems to get the job done. One might also think that ordering take out from some of the best restaurants in Flic en Flac could get expensive, and it does- but only in a relative sense. I veritably hemorrhage roupies. But, for instance, in equivalent terms, the spaghetti carbonara with curry rice I had for dinner cost me about Rs 120 (read: approximately $4). Said spaghetti came from Chez Pepe, the Italian restaurant down the street. There are also two Chinese restaurants, three snack stands, two seafood restaurants, and one Indian restaurant within easy walking distance of my residence. Let my also clarify that these designations are very fluid: Friday night I had Peking Duck, curried lamb, and 'Sicilian Fish' at the buffet at one of the Chinese restaurants. Also, every single restaurant I've entered has some kind of curry dish on the menu. Some of them are pretty innovative. Chez Pepe, for instance, offers a dish whose translated name is Indiana Shrimp. I don't know why Pepe seems to think that Indiana is a great shrimp producer, nor do I pretend to know why the dish consists of curried shrimp in some kind of pasta, but it's his place so he's the boss.

Lucia also feeds me on occasion. This weekend was the festival of the Assumption. Being a non-Creole-comprehending Methodist, however, I still don't quite understand the customs associated with the holiday here in Mauritius. I do know that Lucia and her entire family gathered for a barbecue to which I was graciously extended an invitation. I stayed for a bit, but found that Lucia's family was trying to accommodate me by speaking French (slowly) or what English they knew. While this made everything understandable for me, I could tell that I was interrupting the spirited pace of the family gathering by obliging them to speak in their second or third languages. I asked them to speak normally, and I would pick up what I could, but they persisted. I bowed out before dinner so that they could enjoy their holiday as a family, but they were still there the next night when I stayed for dinner. They gave me wonderful food and some cake. The food was served with a homemade paste of piments (chilis). I told them that I was afraid of hot chili peppers, but I tasted them anyway out of curiosity. I realized that my fears had been justified as I turned bright red while my eyes watered and my mouth burned like something out of the book of Revelations. While uncomfortable for me, I think the family was greatly amused.

Anyway, after leaving the family barbecue early, I went out to a club with a couple of my newfound friends- one Canadian and one English. Both of them are lovely girls. Anyway, we headed to a club in Tamarin, which is another coastal town a few kilometers (I'm getting used to the metric conversions for distance, but don't ask me about weight or temperature. Yet.) down the coast from Flic en Flac. The club was owned by a delightful South African man named Willie, and its clientele seemed to be much more Franco-Mauritian than any other place I've been so far. For possibly the first time since my arrival in Mauritius, I was not in a visible racial minority. Oddly enough, I found this rather jolting. After acclimating, I found that many of the people at the club were Franco-Mauritians who were a couple of years younger than me. I saw one of them passing around an American drivers' license while standing next to me. I couldn't help but inquire. Turns out, the fellow is half-American and half-Mauritian, but he lives with his mother in Houston, Texas. I was delighted at having met him and so we started talking. Our conversation, however, was interrupted by a familiar tune from the DJ. "Sweet Home Alabama" began pulsating through the club, and everyone seemed to be pleased with the choice. I quickly left the Texo-Mauritian and took to the dance floor with my friends. Let me say that I know many of the songs that are played here in Mauritius, but only one will make me sing along as loud as I can.

My Canadian friend went up to the DJ and informed him that there was a native Alabamian in the club, which the DJ then announced to everyone. I didn't notice this at the time, though, because I was too enveloped in my own homeland bliss. The DJ followed the Southern rock song with "Africa" by Toto. My two geographies had been presented musically back-to-back completely by chance. If he'd played Louis Armstrong next, I might've begun crying. After the song, my friends and I went outside for some air and sat at a table. About an hour later, the DJ announced that he was going to play a song again for the young American. For the second time in one night, Lynyrd Skynyrd lit up the dance floor. Willie, the owner, gave my friends and I libations on the house. This time, the DJ followed with a string of American rock songs, including "Sweet Child of Mine" by Guns N'Roses. I wonder if Axl Rose has ever heard of Mauritius.

On the school front, my schedule at the university seems to be hammering out, thanks in large part to the benevolence of a lecturer who I probably will not even have. Turns out, three out of my five modules were scheduled for the same Tuesday-morning time slot. I've had to pick alternatives. And, as it happens, I will be studying 20th Century American literature at the University of Mauritius in a class taught by Dr. Wong. I was given some course material to photocopy by other members of the class. They also had photocopies, not originals. It occurred to me that the university is (allegedly) violating scores of international copyright laws, but they cannot afford the books for everyone. Not wanting to (allegedly) violate copyrights myself, I asked if any of the books were available for purchase. I would have to order them online. I would pay three times the cost of the books in postage from the US, and the books would likely arrive by mid-November. In the interest of not failing the course, I made the photocopies. All 167 pages. For the first two weeks. I'll probably still order the books. I also may or may not have joined a student group affiliated with an extremely liberal international non-governmental organization (I won't name it. But its initials are AI) for the express purpose of becoming friends with a couple people who work with it. Due to this, I will officially never be able to successfully seek political office in Alabama or Louisiana. I will also say that joining the Mauritius section is far cheaper than joining an American section. I know this because once, in high school, in a fit of rebellion, I considered joining. I didn't. Being 15, I would have had to mow the grass four times to raise the necessary $20. In any event, it costs about Rs 150 (about $5) to join here. Once again, I hemorrhage roupies. This time in the name of a human rights t-shirt and some Congolese political prisoners. I will say that it almost always pleases me to take part in things like this if only just to aggravate my father. I love you, Dad.

Update: Swine flu has finally come to Mauritius. I was told today that normal flu is generally not a huge concern due to the nation's tropical locality and relative isolation. People are going a bit crazy. There are masks. And students' parents are keeping them home from school. Even university. Being a non-residential campus, most UoM students, I've been told, still reside with their parents. It's an interesting 'campus culture.' More to follow. And if someone could mail me some Tamiflu, just in case, that'd be awesome.

Pictures (Front porch then Back porch views)

2009-08-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Neighborhood, and the Tribulations of Tropical Bureaucracy

2009-08-12T06:17:00.000-07:00

Ah. So much to tell.

First off, I've signed a lease, and I've moved in to an apartment very near the beach at Flic en Flac. It's a one-bedroom third floor apartment with two terraces- from the front one I can see the beach, and from the back one I can see the mountains. I am, however, not alone in my house. I've found that (in addition to tons of ants), I share the house with a few lizards. I've started naming them after notable lizards in zoology, paleontology, and pop culture. So far I have Godzilla, T-Rex, Komodo, and Geico. I'll probably have more to name, so if you've got good lizard names, I'm all ears. Lizards, I've been told, are the least evil of the household pests in Mauritius because they eat mosquitoes, ants, other lesser animals. They also aren't grotesque to look at like roaches, of which I've killed exactly one. It was New Orleans-sized, but hey, this is the tropics.

In addition, I've found that I really like the neighborhood. There are a few good restaurants and an ice cream store. Oh, and the Indian Ocean. I've also found out that the other international students are renting a house very close to my apartment. Next, please let me correct some misinformation I'd passed along. There are eight international students this semester at UoM- five Germans, a Czech, a Finn, and me. I've met one German and the Czech. They seem like wonderful and interesting people. I constantly feel surrounded by wonderful and interesting people. And the Indian Ocean. In addition to the international kids, my real estate agent also lives in my neighborhood. She's French and terribly suave (note: this is not the first French lady realtor I met with in Flic en Flac who showed me properties that I wasn't interested in. This is the second, who negotiated the lease that I signed). She lives with her brother and they work together. She also introduced me to her Canadian friend, who works in exports. The Canadian friend in turn put me in touch with a man from a communications company here, who then set me up with an internet connection. Also, my downstairs neighbor, Lucia, has proven to be incredibly charming and patient with my French.

You would think that having signed a lease on an apartment, my banking woes would cease. This has proven to not be the case. After signing my lease agreement, I took a copy of it to my bank in Port Louis. My banker, the aforementioned and lovely Priyam, informed me that this was good, but that I also needed a recent utility bill. I told her that the utilities were included in the rent and that I wouldn't be getting one. To this, she responded that I would need a utility bill for the apartment in the name of my landlord. Having received this news, I called my landlord (read: Priyam called my landlord for me and explained in Creole exactly what I needed). Turns out, my landlord only recently purchased the small apartment complex where I live. Thus, he does not have a utility bill for my address. Perhaps you can imagine my exasperation. Priyam, though, was very clear that I needed something else in addition to the lease, or the omnipresent and ever-evil compliance department would close my bank account. Priyam then had an idea. I would get a telephone line. "But Priyam," I said, "There is already a line in the apartment and I don't think the landlord would see fit to letting me install another, and we've established that he doesn't have a bill for the one that's already there."

She told me that she realized that, and she then tried to explain to me exactly what she meant. Being extremely fatigued and emotionally bankrupt at this point, though, I didn't even try to understand what she was saying, I just decided to trust her. She took me out of the bank on her lunch break to another telecom company in Port Louis. There, she explained to the manager that I needed a fixed telephone line for my apartment. I was still unclear as to what exactly was going on, but Priyam knew best. Eventually, the manager took my documents and made photocopies. I then paid him some comparatively negligible quantity of rupees. He handed me a land-line style telephone, but it didn't have a wire. I had just acquired "un ligne fixe sans fil" (read: a wireless fixed line). It cost me next to nothing and I will now have a receipt and a bill that Priyam can photocopy to stave off the malicious advances of the compliance department. I will admit, I don't really see the utility in having a fixed-line wireless telephone. If someone wanted a wireless fixed line, couldn't they just buy a cell phone? I will also say that, having been here just over two weeks, I now have agreements and services from three different Mauritian telecommunications companies. My cell phone is one company, my internet another, and the phone-I-only-need-for-address-proving-purposes is a third. (note: my cell phone bill might have worked, but I had arranged for a pre-paid plan because ironically, I thought it would make my life easier)

Also, classes started this week. I, finding myself once again in a crack in the infrastructure, have not yet received my full schedule of classes. I got the partial schedule from someone in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities just as, it turns out, my first scheduled class of the week was ending, unbeknownst to me. I have been all over that university trying to figure everything out, but I have yet to be able to get it settled. I've found that administrative functions here take a great deal longer and are arguably less reliable than those at home. I know my father, for one, thinks that the Tulane bureaucracy is difficult to deal with. He would invariably be astounded at some of the stuff I've been asked or told to do here in Mauritius. I wait for vast quantities of time. I speak in muddled French and receive replies in muddled English. All in all, it's a pretty standard bureaucracy with a couple tropical twists.

I do miss Tulane, though. Roll Wave! I would reference here the mascot of the University of Mauritius, but given its remote location, it really lacks peer institutions. Maybe that's why, as far as I can tell, it has no mascot. I would say, though, that if a mascot does exist, it is probably the dodo bird. The island of Mauritius was the only home of the now-extinct dodo bird. In fact, that might be the most famous thing about it. GoGo DoDo?

I did, though, manage to attend a class today. It's called, "Socially disadvantaged populations and intercultural social work." Obviously, this is exactly the kind of thing that interests me most and simultaneously the sort of thing my father considers silly. I arrived at the classroom at 8:45 AM before class was supposed to start at 9 AM. There was no one in the room. I waited for a few minutes, and then concluded that I must have been given the wrong room number. I set out frantically in search of a staff member who could tell me where my class was so that I wouldn't be late. I was told, eventually, that the room number I'd been given was correct, and that I should return to class and wait. It was now 9:20 AM. I went back, expecting to find an empty room. I didn't. Though the professor had yet to arrive, many of the students finally had. Apparently, punctuality is not a tradition at UoM. Anyway, the social work program here is made up mostly of practicing professionals. Thus, I was one of the only people in my class today who looked like a college student. I also found that these people have every single class together, and thus they know each other very well. In spite of these things, I found them to be very accepting and congenial. One might expect that from social workers, though, right? I also found that the professor taught in English. You cannot possibly imagine how relieved I was.

I've been getting especially frustrated, but I've also been cooling off pretty quickly. In the Indian Ocean.

Spotted: Alabama hat on a Mauritian. I said 'Roll Tide.' He stared blankly.

Consumed: All manner of cooked foods. To be honest, I usually have no idea what I'm eating. Ah. Adventure.

The 22nd Best University in Africa, and the Mobilization of a Barmy.

2009-08-05T06:12:00.000-07:00

Various services rank American universities. US News, the Princeton Review, Fiske's, etc. What had never occurred to me before last semester was that other organizations rank world universities. One day in New Orleans while sitting at a shiny new iMac at the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library (Howie T, I miss you some), I decided to look and see where the University of Mauritius was ranked globally. The global rankings, however, didn't seem reputable. Anyway, as a means of coming up with a somewhat valid rank for UoM (it's called UoM, not UM. Not sure why), I found all of the rankings on African universities that I could find and looked up where exactly my future collegiate home fell. As far as any rankings have told me, the University of Mauritius is the 22nd best university in Africa- and number two or three of African schools outside of Egypt and South Africa. I had mixed feelings.

So, let me describe my experiences thus far with the 22nd best university in the continent. By the way, Mauritius feels absolutely nothing like how I imagine 'real' Africa is. In fact, it doesn't generally occur to me that I'm in Africa at all. Anyway, I arrived at the University of Mauritius at 9 AM Monday morning for orientation (as there is no international student orientation, I was told to attend freshman orientation). First off, I counted four white people. I assumed that they were other international students, but my contacts at the university confirmed for me later that I am indeed the only American this semester. The rest, they said (all three of them), are German girls. Wunderbar.

The entire freshman class in the 'Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities' at UoM was gathered outside an auditorium at the front of campus. By front of campus, I mean it abuts the bus stop. It started to rain at about 9:05, and so they decided to let everyone in. We all huddled into the "auditorium." This is a giant room with plastic non-permanent chairs, something of a stage, and a giant screen. Everyone sat down. Shortly thereafter, a strong-minded woman with some official title yelled at everyone (in Creole) to exit the auditorium. Not having understood the woman, I simply did as I saw everyone else doing. So now, all of us (probably around 750 people) were gathered in a hallway. They probably never calculated the maximum safe occupancy level of this hallway (because it's a hallway, not a room, and because I doubt they do that anyway in Mauritius), but if they had, I'm sure we were easily tripling it. The same woman then (after 20 minutes) began calling students in according to their department. I, actually, don't have a department. Nor am I a freshman (freshers, they are called here). I am taking five classes this semester, and they are all under different departments. I am also in my third year of college. Anyway, I went in with the sociology students and was given a fancy packet. It was not nearly as fancy as said packet would have been at Tulane, but it did include a compact disk that contains the academic code of conduct. Each CD had been burned by the university, and the words "Academic Code of Honour" had been hand-written on each one. I pity the people responsible for the creation of these disks, as that must have been incredibly tedious.

Anyway, I sat through a total of five live speeches (4 in 'English,' one in French). I also saw two pre-recorded videos that were shown on Windows Media Player across about 1/30th the area of the aforementioned giant screen. They tried to make it bigger. These were words from the chancellor and vice-chancellor. One man (both of them were Indians and spoke with very strong accents. both were also very clearly reading off of cue cards) told the class that 'to be your own boss is the best thing in the world.' The other said that we should become involved in many extracurricular activities. I don't know why, but the word 'extracurricular' is incredibly difficult to pronounce for Indians speaking English. Most of the speakers used the word at least once, and the president of the student union actually attempted to say the word for a full thirty seconds before he finally got it out. Try saying it while inverting the r's. Anyway, after this tedious session (it was 'convocation.' my Tulane convocation had a jazz band), I bolted from the group of freshers and ran to find my contacts at the university. I found them. They are wonderful. Their offices lie in the tallest office in the tallest building that is actually called the 'Tower Complex.' It's rather stifling up there. I imagine that my contacts (both women) are growing their hair out so that some Mauritian knight will climb up and save them.

Anyway, I continued on to a couple other offices in order to make the leap from accepted student to enrolled student. I got a University of Mauritius e-mail address. This I plan on using only to join the University of Mauritius Facebook network.

That pretty much wraps up the university story. Now onto the barmy. When I use the word 'barmy,' I don't mean foamy. It is simply a convenient contraction of two other words: bar and army. This story begins where another one ended. I lost the apartment in Ebene due to banking difficulties, as I said. As a consequence, I decided to seek out another apartment. I went to Flic en Flac, because in spite of its comparatively remote location from campus, it's my favorite town in Mauritius. It's also a beach town on the Indian Ocean renowned for sunsets (Flickr it). Anyway, the day after my experience at UoM, I went to Flic en Flac to meet with a realtor. She was French and didn't speak any English at all. She also insisted on (rather rudely) correcting my French, which was less than professional. She also did not show me any properties that I liked, and all were overpriced.

Anyway, I went to a local hotel bar after quitting the real estate agent. There I ordered a croque monsieur and an orange soda for lunch. I also met a 57 year-old Englishman who was a freelance journalist by trade but a golfer (and a serious alcoholic) otherwise. He was drunk. Very drunk. It was 11:30 AM. He told me all sorts of depressing and despondent things about the state of affairs. He also told me that when Mauritians see white people, all they see are dollar signs. This may or may not be true, but they are also (as I've found) very congenial people, and I like them. Love them. The man's name was Tony and he told me a lengthy tale about how he'd been arrested the day before. He also told me that a man is as close to God as one could ever be while golfing. I told him that I (respectfully) disagreed.

Anyway, Tony became too drunk to stand, and he stumbled away. At that point, a Chinese Mauritian man began talking to me. He, turns out, was part of a family clan that owned a hotel (the one whose bar I was currently in), a restaurant, and a shop or two in Flic en Flac. He introduced me to his nephew, Vincent. I would have placed Vincent's age at 18. He was 27. He volunteered that he had guessed my age at 30. Maybe it's the stubble. He's not the first one to think this, either. People assume that I'm 30 and French. Priyam, my aforementioned banker, giggled when she opened my passport. "You only have twenty years," she exclaimed. Yes. Anyway, I described to Vincent, his uncle, and a couple of the staff members about my experiences with real estate in Mauritius. Within minutes of me finishing the story, the entire staff of the hotel restaurant and bar was busy trying to help me find a place to live. It was a slow day at the hotel. The barmy had been mobilized.

Anyway, the first Chinese man brought me a newspaper, someone else brought me a phone book. Waitresses were calling their boyfriends or brothers who had connections in real estate. Vincent went off and started asking around. In less than an hour I had three appointments to look at other places. They were nicer and less expensive. The barmy pretty much saved me. I decided to rent one of the apartments that I was shown. The person offering it is a realtor. A waitress at the hotel called her cousin who worked for the realtor's husband. I have been so blessed by the kindness of strangers and fortuitous social networking. I won't describe the place until I move in due to the events of the recent past pertaining to my (would-have-been) apartment in Ebene.

It was a very good day. And it ended with me sitting in the apartment of who will become my neighbors waiting on cab that they called for me. They were related to the driver. The neighbors are a couple, he a Hindu, she a Muslim. She is also of mixed ethnic heritage. I talked to them for a couple hours about racism and the ethnic situation in Mauritius. I also had discussed this with Vincent and his uncle. Everyone has interesting ideas about the subject here, and that is exactly what I came here to study: people.

Anyway, Tony was having a bad day, and maybe that's why he was so displeased with Mauritians. What Mauritians gave me that day was invaluable help with almost everything. They also make a damn good sandwich.

Consumed (in one meal from one restaurant): Beef stroganoff served over basmati rice with French bread covered in chili paste from Rodrigues. Oh, globalization.

Also Consumed: the last of my American candy. As soon as I have a mailing address, I want pralines. And Baby Ruths. And those Hershey's Cookies and Cream bars.

The Ship I Never Found, and the Beach I Finally Did

2009-08-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

I was excited about yesterday when I woke up. I was on a list of people that was supposed to tour an American naval vessel in Port Louis harbor. I was told to arrive on Saturday no later than 12:50 PM at Quay A. My hotel is very centrally located in Port Louis, in fact I have walked to the waterfront nearly every day since I've been here. Thus, I decided to walk. This was a mistake.

What I didn't realize is that most of the port facilities are located several kilometers (I know. Metric. I'm forcing myself to convert) from the downtown waterfront. At about 11:15 AM, I asked a kindly harbor policeman where I might find Quay A. He pointed up the coastal highway and didn't really say anything. He muttered something about a gas station. At this juncture I probably should have sought out more precise directions. Had I ascertained at that moment the exact location of Quay A, I likely would have immediately found a taxi. A nice, air-conditioned taxi. It was hot, and I was consuming liters of water in an effort to replace what I was sweating off. I also purchased some vegetable samousas. Mmm.

I began walking in the direction the officer had pointed. I passed many things- most of Port Louis, an(other) open-air market, a large bus station, a UNESCO World Heritage Site (the Aapravasi Ghat) (the birthplace of the world indentured labor trade), and a Shell gas station. Still no Quay A. I would have assumed that I'd gone too far or in the wrong direction, except that along the way I passed a trio of American sailors. One was wearing an Alabama hat. Roll Tides were exchanged. In retrospect, I probably could have asked the sailors where Quay A was. This did not occur to me at the time- I was too pleased by the homeland paraphernalia.

I finally saw a sign that said "Terminal I: Quays A, B, C, and D." Ah. I followed its arrow. The only quay I found was D. This is unlucky, because I continued walking hoping to eventually reach the other three. I never found them. I did, however, find a fish terminal. I know this because it smelled like stank. The next sign of note along my journey read: "Beinvenue en Pamplemousses." I had walked into another district entirely. That district is named Pamplemousses and lies just north of Port Louis. Its name means 'grapefruits' in French. I think that's silly.

Anyway, by this time I had missed the ship tour, which disappointed me immensely. I sincerely wanted to tour the ship, but even more, I wanted to meet other Americans. Not counting the sailors, I have met exactly one other American in Mauritius, and he works at the American embassy, which is where I met him. There are plenty of Europeans though. As a consequence, Mauritians often assume that I am European. This is beginning to agitate me. "Non, je ne suis pas francais. Je suis americain." I did feel bad for the Spaniard I met last night. Not a lot of people on this island speak Spanish, and he does not speak French. As a consequence, he communicates with Mauritians in broken English, while they respond in broken English. I can only imagine what's been lost in translation.

Anyway, after giving up on the quays, I retreated to the bus station near my hotel. I then boarded a bus, hoping to make it to somewhere on the eastern coast of the island. I took the bus to a rather lackluster inland town named St. Pierre, where I hoped to catch a connection somewhere else. After St. Pierre, I found myself in Flacq. From there I took a bus whose route was supposed to go to a coastal town, but apparently only the A, B, and D buses on this line went to that town, and I had accidentally boarded C. As a consequence, I ended up taking the bus to the end of its route to a place called Goodlands. This town is located in the North of the island, very close to any number of very popular beach resorts. Goodlands itself though, seemed pretty dismal, especially now that the sun had set.

By this time, it was nearly 19:00 and knew I needed to get back to Port Louis. I waited for a bus. None came. A young Indo-Mauritian introduced himself and asked me where I was going. He informed me that I had missed the last bus into Port Louis, and that I was trapped. I immediately hailed a taxi. My new friend translated my French into French Creole, and within a minute I was on my (expensive) way back to Port Louis. The taxi driver did teach me my first Creole word, though. Zou (pronounced 'zoo'). It is an evolution of the French word 'jour,' which means 'day' in English. I'm making strides. Teensie weensie strides.

The bus station is saw while trekking to nowhere did help me, though. Today I went to it, just to see where its buses were going. I boarded a bus hoping to go to the beach, and finally, I made it. Flic en Flac (flickr it) is beautiful, and I still have a little bit of sand in between my toes.

Spotted: Muslim women swimming in the Indian Ocean in burkhas (not really humorous, just culturally relevant); also, chickens roaming free on the streets of Flic en Flac.

Smelled: Stank (from the fish pier, from other people on buses, and from manure used to fertilize sugar cane fields); also good aromas (from Indian perfume, from a couple tropical flowers, and from food vendors on the street).

Two steps forward, Three steps back (and why it's all ok)

2009-07-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

What a day. At 17:00, I was despondent.

I woke up this morning knowing that I had to arrange for a large quantity of money to be transferred from America into the purse of a nice Sino-Mauritian woman so that I could secure my (hopefully) apartment. Well, it quickly became evident that this would not be possible.

As soon as I woke, I showered and went to see Priyam, my Mauritian banker. She is absolutely wonderful and is, without a doubt, my favorite Mauritian. In any event, in spite of all of her scheming, I was still unable to transfer funds from my American bank to my Mauritian bank. I needed this money in order to secure my aforementioned (hopefully) permanent address. The irony of this situation is that the bank is demanding a local permanent address from me to activate my account. I need an activated local bank account in order to secure a local permanent address. I'm sure you can see my dilemma. In any event, Priyam told me that she would do her best to argue my case. She had me write a letter to the bank manager (read: Priyam wrote a letter to the bank manager which I then transcribed into my own handwriting and signed). Anyway, my un-activated Mauritian bank account is in danger of complete cancellation should I not acquire a permanent address before Monday. This has thus far proven to be a major roadblock, but Priyam and I are working feverishly.

I was feeling defeated after my morning, and I needed to see something wonderful and touristy to raise my spirits. I decided to go to Flic-en-Flac, a beach town on the West coast of the island. Also, in light of my newfound appreciation for Mauritian buses, I opted to attempt to reach my destination via bus. I found out, much too late, that buses don't go to beaches; tourists go to beaches.

I was unable to find a direct bus from Port Louis to Flic-en-Flac, so I decided instead to take a bus to another major town inland and make a connection. The town is known as Curepipe (you can flickr it, but in my experience, it's not worth it). I arrived at Curepipe almost an hour after having departed Port Louis, even though I boarded the "Express" bus. Let me say that "express" here does not necessarily mean less stops along the route. From what I can gather, it instead means that drivers accelerate to (even more) perilous velocities in between stops, and then heartily apply (questionable) brakes at each stop.

Upon arriving at Curepipe, I managed to find the stand where the buses for Flic-en-Flac should depart. I waited over an hour. None arrived. Discouraged, I went into a supermarket to buy myself a bottle of Coca-Cola. Concerning supermarkets, let me say that most Westerners in Mauritius prefer them. I say this because every time I enter one, I am greeted with the knowing glances of other Westerners. These glances, from what I can gather, are meant to mean, "I know we should be shopping at the open-air local market yards (or meters) away, but this is so easy and convenient and there's no haggling and- look!- a chocolate bar!" Anyway, I bought the Coke, returned to the bus station, and defeatedly waited on a bus back to Port Louis. While I was waiting, an interesting young fellow approached me. He stood next to me for some time. His hand then drifted to my back pocket which was, lucky for me, sealed shut with velcro. As soon as I felt his hand try to unseal said velcro, I shot him a death glance, swatted his hand away, and looked around for any of the numerous security officers at the bus stop. In two seconds, the man had gone. Man is generous- he was probably between the ages of 11 and 14.

Anyway, I boarded the bus back to Port Louis. Some hours later, and after a conversation with my father, I went down to the hotel bar for a drink. Little did I know that Friday nights in Mauritius generally mean karaoke. I considered leaving the bar immediately as soon as this was brought to my attention. My open beer bottle kept me in the bar just long enough for me to catch the eye of a 64-year-old French diplomat. I know his exact age because he did not look 64, and I made him show me his (diplomatic) passport. We discussed world affairs for almost two hours. He doesn't hate America, he claims, but he does hate recent American foreign policy. I took pot shots at France. Remember WWII and Vichy? How about WWI? Vietnam? Vietnam was probably not the best topic of conversation, for, as I learned later, this monsieur had been in the service of France and in Saigon when the USA airlifted its people out at the conclusion of the conflict. He was a very smart man. We spoke exclusively in French, so he was obviously at an advantage, but he did tell me that my French was good and destined to improve living in Mauritius. He bought me a few drinks.

Right as he was leaving, the karaoke began. This first song played was "Sweet Home Alabama." I was obviously ecstatic. I took out my Alabama driver's license and showed it to anyone who would look. Apparently, the rest of the world thinks that Alabama is a name, not one of the United States. I naturally corrected them.

While on the subject of names, the Mauritians (and the French) call me 'Christian,' because Miles is too difficult for them to pronounce (Christian being my middle name, and a very good one at that). They, of course, pronounce it krees-tee- (nasal)ahn. Anyway, I like my name(s) and my experiences at the hotel bar reaffirmed my faith in myself and in Mauritius. This is all going to work out- I'm determined.

Spotted: Mauritian man selling (and wearing) camouflage Confederate flag hats. Also, a swastika being used by a Hindu man as an honest Hindu symbol.

[Note: I'll post pictures as soon as I manage to find a voltage converter for my camera. It's dead. And plugging it in with only an adaptor would fry it. This could take some time, as I have much more pressing matters to deal with. I appreciate your patience]

Further Ruminations Concerning Buses

2009-07-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well. As aforementioned, today I looked at a few apartments. In doing so, not only did I (hopefully) secure a permanent residence, I also gained more exposure to public transportation. And seemingly benevolent Sino-Mauritian women.

First off, it is relevant to explain that Mauritian buses are not operated by a single government entity. They are, rather, operated by numerous companies and corporations- some of which are partially government supported. Furthermore, one might also think a great deal about the origins of buses currently in use when faced with the prospect of boarding one. Today, when en route from Port Louis (the capital) (flickr it) to Ebene (what will be [hopefully] my permanent residence) I rode a bus that was painted a bright blue color with multicolored striping. Across its side it bore the words "Soviet Airways." Hmm. Other buses are different colors and bear different inscriptions. Some say, "Beautiful." Others say, "Blue Bird" (in French). Some more have the words, "Paradise Island Tours," plastered across them. Most are decorated by beads and/or Christmas lights on the inside by the driver's cabin. ALL spew terrible black smoke. Apparently, the Mauritian infrastructure has yet to evolve to the level of Boston, MA and other American cities I've visited who have air-conditioned buses that run on clean-burning cooking oil. Ah. Speaking of- air-conditioning is a fairly new phenomenon in Mauritian mass transit. I would estimate that one out of every six buses on the island is air-conditioned, and for that luxury, riders pay a fee. I will say, I generally prefer the ones that are not air-conditioned. Let me explain. It's a tropical island. Surely I would prefer riding in air-conditioned comfort to riding sweaty. Right?

Because air-conditioning is so new, or perhaps because Mauritius is so tropical, the air-conditioned buses tend to maintain an interior temperature of approximately, eh, 40 degrees fahrenheit. I would tell you the temperature in degrees celsius, but, like Creole, it is a language I have yet to master.

I also discovered a lucrative phenomenon today. Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, is probably the most popular place on the island for residents to work. Many of them live elsewhere on the island. Thus, as I discovered today, oodles of buses leave Port Louis between 15:30 and 18:00 (read: 3:30 PM and 6:00 PM) (the entire Francophone world is on military time). As a consequence, very few buses leave other destinations bound for Port Louis at that time. Today, I found myself in Ebene at 16:00 (read 4:00 PM) and needed a bus back to Port Louis where I am staying for the time being. I found these buses to arrive every, eh, hour and a half. To compensate, however, many private contractors (read: geniuses with vans) would drive along the bus stops towards Port Louis while most of the buses were headed in the other direction. While the number of people in the daily mass exodus from the capital was still greater, the influx from people who work other places on the island going into Port Louis at quitting time was more than enough to fill (read: cram. 20 people to a vehicle meant for 7) every van that I saw. Interesting local economy.

Spotted: the Indian Ocean from my (hopefully) apartment.

Heard: Feist and the Red Hot Chili Peppers in the lobby of my hotel.

Pictures to follow

A Sunburn. While waiting for the bus. In the 'dead of winter.'

2009-07-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying that I'm feeling rather empowered right now. I've completed everything on my to-do list save the big one (find a permanent residence) but I have an appointment to see an apartment later this afternoon and several more prospects. All in all, I'm feeling good.

Yesterday I trekked to the University of Mauritius campus for the first time. Hm. Well, parts of it are lovely. Parts of it look like what I imagine old KGB buildings look like. Either way, I hope there's some good learning to be done there. I feel like there will be. I met a few students. All were very nice. I also, just for fun, went walking down a random road on the edge of campus. It dead-ended abruptly into a field of sugar cane that workers were busy burning. My dad could probably explain the agricultural value of such activities, and I'm sure that if I had asked the workers would have explained it (in Creole). I just abruptly turned around and hoped that they hadn't noticed me.

The real story from the University, though, was learning buses. Up until then I had been moving around mostly on foot and rarely by taxi. But I needed to get somewhere that I couldn't walk, and there wasn't a taxi in sight. I needed to learn buses anyway. I asked four separate people how the buses worked. The first was a man employed by one of the bus companies. While he meant well, the only ingots of information I could salvage from his kindly onslaught of French Creole were that I didn't have to pay before I got on, and that to get where I was going I should take the number 73 bus to St. Pierre. Wonderful. I waited for an hour. There was no number 73 bus. Overheated, I walked to the school cafeteria (read: old red bus converted into a lunch stand). There I purchased a Pepsi and asked the woman working the counter if she could enlighten me. She happily explained the buses to me, I assume, but once again, her kindly diatribe was in French Creole. She then did me a great service. She asked a nearby student if he could help me. He spoke perfect English (although we still communicated more in French).

Let me say that I have come to regard English speakers as a luxury. I could go about my day completely in French (NOT French Creole. Yet.) if it was a necessity. It is nice, though, to be able to communicate in my native tongue. I'm much more eloquent in English, and there's also a sense of symbiosis with "English speakers." They all naturally wish to improve their English skills. A conversation with me about, say, how I-desperately-need-help-with-buses-or-I-may-cry has got to be good practice. So they get practice and I get total comprehension. It works out wonderfully. In any event, he helped me a great deal and even congratulated me later as he saw me boarding the correct bus. He also offered to pay for my fare. I declined. I then bought his lunch.

He was not the only one to offer to pay my way. While waiting for the right bus (any number bus in the direction of Vacoas or Curepipe), I met a little woman. She was an "English speaker" whose opening line was "Good morning my son." It was currently nearing 3 pm. In any event, we continued talking and boarded the same bus. Thirty minutes later, she had paid for my bus ticket. She also bought me an Atlanta Braves hat, a bottle of soy sauce, a questionable bag of edibles called "baguettes aux fromage" (NOT what you're probably visualizing) and a bag of jasmine rice. I'm not exactly sure why she purchased me any of these articles. She kept saying, "a present for your father." (read: uhpresentpouryofatta). Anyway, I bought her some shorts and a blouse that she picked out as repayment. Don't worry, I spent more money on her than she did on me. She was incredibly pleasant, although we did get some silly looks from passersby. I am, as I said, about 6 feet 2 inches tall. She was perhaps 4 feet 6 inches tall, and the entire time she was standing on tip-toe to speak to me while I bent nearly in half so that I could speak into her ear. What a day.

Spotted in Port Louis: Overweight Mauritian wearing Texas Longhorns shirt. Also, Small Mauritian Woman wearing LSU baseball hat. I asked her about it. She said it was a university in South Africa.

Introductions (or, relevant size considerations)

2009-07-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

Allow me to briefly ruminate about size.

Madison county, Alabama (my home)(God's country) is roughly 805 sq miles in area. The island nation of Mauritius is roughly 720 sq miles in area. The total distance of my journey was just over 17,000 miles in length. My name is Miles. I just moved to Mauritius. I'm also roughly 6 feet 2 inches in height. I would tell you how tall Mauritians are, but every time that I ask they answer me in a foreign language, and by foreign language I obviously mean the metric system. I'm here to study at the University of Mauritius. I'll study things that I find fascinating and that my father finds irrelevant, but isn't that what college is supposed to be like anyway?

My first flight departed from the Huntsville International Airport at 1 pm on July 25. It was supposed to leave an hour earlier. From there I went to Houston, where Amy came and made me buy her pizza. Then I got on another plane and didn't get off for what seemed like a geological era. I was, quite frankly, surprised to find that when I landed in Dubai my passport hadn't expired. I was up in the air for a seriously long time. The Dubai airport is huge. In my over-educated opinion, I would probably say that if it were moved to the island of Mauritius, the island would sink into the Indian Ocean. Also huge was my plane. A Boeing 777. I spent eight hours in the airport in Dubai. In these eight hours I heard the Muslim call to prayer twice. I also heard "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus over two separate sets of airport loudspeakers. These two things must be cosmically linked.

I boarded my plane to Mauritius at 3 am Dubai/Mauritius time. The two are in the same time zone, but do not be fooled. Though the two places have a similar longitude, their latitudes are quite different, another-seven-hours-on-a-plane different. And then I spent another two waiting in lines at customs. I can appreciate the slower pace of life. I cannot appreciate the slower pace of lines. My taxi driver met me outside the airport. I felt incredibly important, as he was holding a sign with my name. I felt less important when he could not even begin to pronounce it. For what it's worth, I couldn't pronounce his either. In any event, we struck off from the airport to Port Louis on the absolute other end of the island. Total travel time: 35 minutes. With traffic. Before arriving at my hotel, he stopped twice. Once to buy me a beer for the road- much appreciated. The other time we stopped so that he could show me a furnished apartment that his uncle owned. It was nice, but too far from campus. I also met his cousin, whose name I could not pronounce.

Of my giant first week checklist I've managed to accomplish two things. One: register with American embassy. Two: Open a bank account (with extreme difficulty). Next I have to acquire a cell phone and a permanent residence.

Also, in case I hadn't mentioned it before, this place is absolutely beautiful and exactly what I was hoping it would be. Furthermore, I would like to thank two people who will likely never see this: Priyam, my lovely banker woman who bent more than one rule to accommodate me, and the cleaning lady at my hotel who smiled at me this morning. Merci.