Mauritius!!

So I will be in India on Wednesday. Do you even realize how excited I am? Between the two-day homestay and the overnight visit I have at a Dalit village, my days should be pretty awesome.

We’re back at sea but I spent Sunday through Tuesday on the island of Mauritius. I once again crawled out of bed to see the sun rise as we arrived into port. It was probably one of the most beautiful sun rises I have ever seen, which isn’t as amazing as it sounds, since I have seen very few…but all the same, very beautiful. I spent my first day doing an SAS trip. There were about forty of us that visited this SOS village on the island. Standing for “Save Our Souls”, the purpose of SOS is to provide a normal home-environment for orphaned children. There are SOS villages all over the world. There were forty-two children at the this particular one, and they were divided into groups of six. The children live in a home on the property with their “siblings”, and a woman who looks after them and is referred to as their mother. The set-up was much nicer than I had expected. Concrete square homes with flat roofs lined a short sidewalk and a fence ran around the entire settlement. The children ran around, excited to show us their homes. As a group of us received a tour of one of the houses, three young boys stood in their bedroom, proud to show us where they lived. The bedrooms were filled with bunk-beds and shelves with neatly folded clothing.
Outside, some boys sat on a skateboard and pushed each other down the sloped sidewalk, and children brought out their toys to play with us. We hung around for about an hour after our tour. Everyone, including the children, gathered in one of the main buildings and we handed out the coloring books, crayons, stickers, and other gifts that had been donated by Semester at Sea kids. I sat on the floor for quite some time with this adorable little Indian girl who was about 7-years-old. Her dark black hair was in a bowl cut, much like her older sisters, who looked exactly like her. I had handed her a coloring book and some crayons and although there was a definite language barrier, all the children speak Creole and French, we were able to color together. She actually knew how to say some of the colors in English, I was impressed.
At noon it was time to head out so we said our goodbyes and boarded our buses. The little girl I had colored with was standing outside, in her red T-shirt and denim skirt, and when her eyes fell on me they lit up and she waved. I blew her a kiss and soon our buses were rolling towards our next destination.

We drove to Casela Nature Park for lunch and to spend a couple hours. Apparently Casela used to be an exotic bird-sanctuary and, in my opinion, it still looked like one. Cages upon cages of birds were lined up among the thick trees, underneath the shade. I find it hard to look at birds for a long period of time and was quickly bored by them, but overall the park was still pretty awesome. It reminded me of a large petting zoo. One fenced in area had rooster, deer, a hog, ducks, and even an albino wallaby, walking around. I tip-toed around the massive amounts of pellets laying on the grass. One SAS boy had told us as we entered, “Hope you like stepping in shit!” In a shed along-side the petting area a huge white bird was whistling a familiar tune. I got a kick out of it and roamed over. Before I knew it the bird was leaning towards me, waiting to be petted (mom would it be pet or petted?), and soon enough he was on my arm, digging his large claws into my bare skin. My favorite part of the park was, without a doubt, the monkey cage. About a dozen tiny monkeys were swinging around, picking up small pieces of food from the ground, and grooming one another. I love monkeys, so they totally rocked my world.
When it was time to leave the park I was ready. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before and needed a nap badly. Back at the ship I crashed instantly and woke up an hour and a half later to go out to dinner. We ate at a local Indian restaurant that further assisted in my loving of Indian food.

On day two I once again did an SAS trip. Anna and I had signed up for the Multi-cultural tour together and as Anna put it “I just assumed because we were doing it that everyone would be doing it because we’re that cool,” but instead, only three other students besides the two of us signed up for the tour. Fifteen teachers and adult passengers joined us, however. I was actually really happy about it. It made the trip that much quieter, I had a chance to meet other teachers on the ship, and Dean Beverly was impressed with our signing up for an educational tour while everyone else was at the beach. A lot of SASers did the beach all three days they were in Mauritius and never saw the rest of the island or learned anything about the unique blend of cultures that exists. I figured that since I was on this random island I know nothing about, I should take the opportunity to learn as much as I can.
So anyway, as we were boarding our bus that morning I noticed that same woman as yesterday ushering us onto the vehicle. We had the same tour guide as the day before. I couldn’t help but laugh. She had nearly given me a migraine the day before as her voice blared over the bus speakers and in her monotone voice she explained all nine regions of the island one at a time. So when she picked up the same map of the island on Monday and began her schpeal I had to close my eyes to get ready. Anna nudged me with a grin, she too had experience our guide the day before.
During the day tour we went to a variety of places. We visited Kalysson, a Hindu temple; drove up to this awesome look-out point above Port Louis and through China town; visited a Chinese pagoda; and received a tour of some old colonial home. I actually had no idea what was going on at the colonial house, as far as the story behind it went. I fell into a deep sleep between the Chinese pagoda and the colonial home and woke up just as we arrived to our destination. I was so out of it that I climbed out of the bus and followed our group around the area for a good ten minutes before I turned to Anna and asked, “Where are we?”
We ate lunch at the colonial house and as most meals on SAS trips are, it was amazing. The afternoon was then spent at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute. The institute is essentially a secondary school that focuses on Indian culture. Classes include Indian languages and dance, music, and art related to the culture. Fifty percent of Mauritius is Indian, by the way, so Indian culture is a pretty big part of society.
After the head of the school stood before us and answered multiple questions that the teachers had about the institution, we were given a tour of the facilities. On one floor, there were four different rooms at the top of the stairs, and in each room music or dance was being both taught and practiced. I removed my shoes before entering the first room. Inside five people sat cross-legged on a rug looking up at a dry erase board that had lyrics to a song, “Ma pa ga di re sa” it said and so on. The teacher, who sat on the floor as well, had a sitar across his lap and was working on teaching specific rhythms to his students. He invited us to join them in their song. So we sat along side them and attempted to figure out the tune as the sitar played underneath our voices. It was really cool.
In the next room five college-aged students sat on the ground with music sitting in front of them. They sang a beautiful Indian song while one student strummed a sitar and two men rolled their fingers over small drums. I watched them for quite some time and the song is still stuck in my head. I visited one more classroom before we moved on to see some more of the institute. In the last classroom were two teenage girls dressed in saris holding their shoulders back as they worked on the basics of Indian dance. An older woman sat on the ground, tapping a wooden box loudly as she instructed them on their moves.
The rest of the institution was interesting, but we mainly walked through an agricultural museum that was extremely similar to something you’d see in the U.S…nothing too interesting.

Wednesday morning I woke up and wished so badly I could sleep for just a couple more hours, but once I remembered that it was a beach day I was able to pull myself out of bed. Carrie, Kathryn, Anna, Janelle and I took a city bus, or I guess island bus, to Flick en Flack beach, on the south side of the island. The ride there was interesting. Our driver sped along, passing vehicles as oncoming traffic approached. I eventually stopped watching the road and the ride was much more enjoyable. A man who was getting off the bus felt my hair and smiled at me as he passed. Hmm.
So we got to the beach and walked for quite some time before finally picking a spot to lay out our towels. Other SASers who had stayed at one of the beach resorts were drunk about a quarter of a mile down the beach from us and we made a strong attempt to stay at a distance from their obtrusive yelling. I get really bothered when other SASers are belligerent in public when we’re in these foreign countries, it totally misrepresents the ship and our country. On the way home that day we took the bus again and about seven other students sat in the back of the bus, still drunk and talking loudly so that their conversations were above everyone elses. As we passed a bus station one boy said loudly, “Oooo can we stop and get some beer?”
But anyway, the beach day was nice. It was beautiful outside, the skies were blue and a slight breeze kept us from melting in the hot sun. I tried reading some of my assignments when we first got there but decided I should relax for once and enjoy my time at the beach. Anna, Janelle, and I left at 3:00, an hour earlier than Carrie and Kathryn. On the way out we bought some pineapples from a street vendor. They were prepeeled, of however they do that, and flipped upside down so you ate the small pineapple like an icecream bar. Oh my gosh it was amazing. I shouldn’t have eaten fruit that I didn’t peel myself and I should be eating food from street vendors, but I couldn’t resist and the worse I’ll get is traveler’s diarrhea. Been there, done that…it’s worth it.
Anna, Janelle, and I shopped around the waterfront area when we got back. We eventually decided to sit down for dinner and ended up at an outdoor café, eating pizza with pineapple and green peppers on it, not as bad as it sounds. We hopped back on the water taxi and made it made to the ship with plenty of time to spare before dock time became an issue. Oh yeah, did I mention that we took water taxis like a million times while in Mauritius? To get to the waterfront, where all the restaurants, shops, and buses are, from the ship, we had to ride a small motor boat for about three minutes across the harbour. It was convenient, cost a dollar, and was sort of fun, in my opinion.


All is well here. We had our second global studies exam last week and I got 49 out of 50 right…I’m pretty proud. I’ve been working on three different papers and I have a Japan midterm in two days, so I’ve been, and will continue to, stay busy with homework until we reach India. Sometimes I feel like I’m constantly doing homework on this ship. Last night I worked for four straight hours on a paper about earthquakes…it was torture. Luckily, Sea Olympics are Sunday and we have no classes for the day…I’m participating in the Pictionary event: ) Wish me luck.