So Mauritius, So Delicious

Day One: What the hell is there to do here?

I did not wake up early in the morning to view arrival into this port because….we didn’t pull into the port until later in the day! We were scheduled to arrive at our usual 0800, but the previous night we were warned that we might not pull into port until close to 1600. However, we arrived at a happy medium of 1200 but all of the field office activities for the day were cancelled and refunded. When we disembarked the ship, our first task was to find where the water taxis were located to take us over to the main part of Port Louis. We were told at pre-port that it was a fairly long walk into town from where we were ported, so the water taxi was the way to go.

We headed to the right off of the gangway and walked for a few minutes and thought it was going no where, so we headed back toward the ship, only to be herded again in the direction we were originally headed! The water taxis were the ricketiest little motor boats ever…you had to jump over about a foot and a half of open water in order to get to the steps that led you down to the dock where the water taxis were waiting. We had to pay $1 each to make the 5 minute trip across the water and we were let off right at the front of this shopping mall. There was everything from restaurants to Burberry stores and other designer labels. It was as if we stepped off into a designer outlet mall. I started off the day with Jen, Elise and Bryan and we just started wandering around. The goal of most people staying in Port Louis the first day was to find some markets! We saw the post office when we first came out of the mall and then it was just a wide expanse of city! We did not have a map so we just started walking! We found a market that was all food and vegetables on the first floor…it was really exciting because the part we were in was mostly where local people were buying their produce and hanging out and talking. We wanted to find a travel agency to see about a villa or just hiring a driver for the day, and we ran into Jeff, Brianne, Ashley, Cristie, Janet, Jika, Brad and Brandon. (haha or I think Brandon was there now that I am looking back!)

I split off with the bigger group and we wandered our way through the back streets of Port Louis. We found some other really great small little markets and they were all little local ones for the neighborhoods we were in. We stopped by a travel agency again so Brad could try to arrange travel, but it ended up not working out. We walked back toward the ship and stopped at a restaurant right by the mall to get some drinks. I was going to try one of the local beers, but I decided to get a chocolate milkshake instead. Haha typical me. I tried some of the beers my friends ordered and they were okay…I mean, I hate beer, so they were palatable. We took the water taxi back to the ship and ate dinner on the ship. I decided not to go out on the town because I didn’t want to be exhausted after Mauritius. I stayed on the ship and went to the 7^th deck with Bryan and we talked a little bit about life on the ship and then I just went back to my room to read and to sleep.

Day Two: It’s a good thing I like learning about religion…

This day was spent on a Semester at Sea Field Program called “Rainbow Culture and Religion.” Mauritius is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the world. We began our day at a Tamil temple. The tour guide just simply kept saying Tamil temple and not mentioning that Tamil was Hindu. I was lucky and saw several of the statues and knew we were at a Hindu temple, but many people were confused as to what sort of religious place we were visiting. It is called a Tamil temple because the people who began and still worship at the temple were from the Tamil Nadu region of India. The port city of Chennai is in Tamil Nadu. Tamil is also a language. In many ways, it seems as thought Tamil is really a distinct culture among Indian traditions.

The temple from our vantage point at the entrance consisted of a long red walkway with golden poles on either side down the aisle. There was an entryhouse type of building which was decorated with many circular paintings and a few statues of gods and the same red aisle in the middle. Before we entered into this building we were required to remove our shoes, and we left them outside of the gate that guarded the building. There was an absolute life giving force that was exuded from the paintings and decorations and we were not even looking at the main temple yet! The top of this initial structure was covered with carvings of the different Hindu deities They love Ganesh in Mauritius, and Ganesh is the elephant headed god. He’s pretty fabulous looking.

We circumnavigated the temple and took the opportunity to stop at the shrines to the various gods around the temple structure. I recognized many of my American Religious Pluralism course with Ellen at BW and so that was nice. Our tour guide was friendly enough but not very informative. It felt nice that I could explain the very little that I knew. I was very excited to point out Lakshmi and I don’t really remember why. Haha There was a school group there and they were being shown around the grounds by their teachers, but they were speaking Creole, so I couldn’t gain any extra information from listening into them. One must be a Hindu to enter the main temple, so we could only peer in from the outside. Like the first building we saw, it was colorful and out side posted on the wall, I found what I think might be the name of the temple, but the rest of the writing was in Tamil, so this is what I think the name is: Hindu Maha Jana Sangam. We walked around a little more, but then boarded the bus to head to our next location.

We arrived at a Roman Catholic Church. We were not told the name of the church and I could not find the name anywhere. I am still hunting through other blogs to see if anyone else found the name. There was a service in progress while we were there, so that made it slightly awkward to be the Americans in the back gawking and taking photographs. They were singing some hymns in French and I believe another was in Creole so I took some video hoping that would be better than the flash on my camera and I really wanted to get some of the chanting! It was a beautiful church. I am not an expert on religious structures, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t gothic. Haha And then before we knew it, out buses were leaving and that was it. Haha

Our next stop was a Muslim Cultural Center. We were told we were going to be visiting a mosque and many of us were a little disappointed when the only spaces for prayer in the whole place were a room for men and a room for women. These rooms were just off of the main lobby and had green carpets and prayer rugs in the corners. The room for men was much larger than the room for women and the room for the men had a fan. It’s so bad, but one of the girls on the trip kept saying she was going to move the fan into the room for women!

After waiting for half an hour for our tour, we were taken up to this incredible air conditioned room. Yes, that is what I remember first, because we were sweating our butts off! We viewed a short film about the history of Muslims in Mauritius and of the center we were currently visiting. After the film he took a few questions. A lot of the questions were about Islam in general because we had not discussed it much on the ship yet. Once again American Religious Pluralism had given me enough background to know what the heck I was seeing and hearing. After the film our guide took us to the library on the top level of the cultural center. There was an amazing view overlooking Port Louis. There were many beautiful copies of the Koran and several volumes of other books that created beautiful golden phrases in Arabic when placed together in order. There was also a section with modern magazines for Muslim teenagers. It was interesting to go through and read some of the Muslim “Dear Abby” sections and see what this organization was recommending to the readers. There were three different magazines that fell into this category if I remember correctly and they were three distinct viewpoints. One was very hardline and would probably fall into Islamic fundamentalism, one was middle of road, and one seemed nearly secular. We were led back downstairs and given juice boxes before we left. Guava juice boxes are not so hot. Just trust me on this. Okay…I’ll finish Mauritius soon, so this should tide my family over so they leave me the hell alone! I am working 40 hour weeks, taking 9 credits and babysitting 10 hours a week, so I am a little busy to update!!