Mauritius

March 9 @ 8:00 am

This is my second try to publish.

Yes, I was in the tropical island of Mauritius March 1 - 4th; I just haven't been able to sign into my blog. The Indian Ocean is not a good place to be accessing the Internet.

Yesterday is a 'no class' day and the students organized the Sea Olympics. Personally, I had a half-day off, so I slept in. We are sailing toward India, will cross the equator tonight, and will arrive in Chennai, India Tuesday morning ~ 8:00 am. We've had almost a week at sea between ports and it is going very quickly.

I had mixed experiences in Mauritius. The Blue Safari that I looked forward to with high expectations fell short. We did get in a submarine-like cabin and descended to the bottom. The coral was mostly gray and uninteresting and there were not many colorful fish. We only stayed a short time (which was o.k. because there was nothing much to see), but it was quite different than the glowing description. My second trip was for the Multi-Cultural Evening which also fell short of the described trip. We had a nice dinner and saw professional dancers perform Indian, Chinese, Oriental and Creole dances. The local Mauritians have a dance called Sega which the dancers left to the last which we enjoyed. We were supposed to visit an old sugar mill, a spice garden, and a rum distillery which we didn't do. The last trip that I did was Mauritian Fine Arts, which was not as advertised, but turned out to be my favorite. We visited the School of Design, where we saw some of the student projects; visited the Mauritius Glass Gallery, which has a non-profit associated with it that gives some of the profits to the poor; and then went to the Fine Arts section of Mahatma Gandhi Institute where we met one of the professors. He was an amazing source of information and had written a book which I (and several others) bought. So talking with him about art history and the history of art in Mauritius was the highlight for me. When I asked about art in the schools, he said they are re-instituting art programs at earlier ages in the grammar and high schools because they had learned that it was advantageous on many levels! He said they had experimented with cutting out art programs, but are now putting them back in. Perhaps we can learn from the Mauritians!

Mauritius is a beautiful island with great beaches; it is the European "Hawaii." Many of the students rented "villas" while we were there to get off the ship for awhile (and some to drink as much as they wanted.) They had some unfortunate situations; one of the boys in my extended family got robbed and there were stories of others who were the victims of pick-pockets, etc. One girl got hit by a bus while on a bicycle and got only scraps and bruises (she was lucky); the traffic was crazy!

If it weren't so far away, I would consider going back, but I don't think my schedule will include Mauritius in the foreseeable future. The biggest surprise for me was the large East Indian population. Almost all the markets (craft, clothes, food) were East Indian. They are called a 'rainbow nation' because of the many nationalities, and we were told they all get along well.

We were fortunate to witness a pilgrimage of Hindi people who were celebrating Shiva. Many, many of them walked very long distances and carried very elaborate decorations to honor Shiva. Some of the students were able to go to the gathering place, which was a Sacred Lake. They were treated with honor and had a great experience.

I'll sign off for now; I don't know when I'll be able to access the blog -- perhaps in India.

till later. . .