Monthly Archives: April 2024

Poetical Seascapes

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Today we bussed, in a three hour journey, from one end of the island to the other to visit the house of the great Mauritian poet Edward Robert Hart at Souillac. Built with coral and volcanic rock it’s an idyllic place surrounded by the sound of Indian Ocean breakers and woodland birds.

We have to admit that we did not know of Hart, who died in 1954, before finding out about his place in the sweet fishing village of Souillac in the south of the island. Without even a school education the poet said that, like Wordsworth, he learned everything from nature. And what an area to learn than this!

Edward Robert Hart, also known as Edouard Hart, was born in 1936 and is considered one of the island’s most important poets. His work often explores themes of identity, colonialism, and the cultural landscape of Mauritius. Hart wrote in both English and French, reflecting the linguistic diversity of Mauritius. His poetry is celebrated for its lyrical beauty and its profound reflections on the human condition.

Hart also did various translations including the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit into French.

Edward Robert Hart had many friends, both within and outside the literary and artistic community. As a poet and writer, he associated with fellow writers, poets, and intellectuals who shared his interests and passions. Additionally, he had friends from various social circles, including those involved in activism, cultural movements, or academia. He formed connections with a diverse range of people throughout his life among which were Rabrindranath Tagore.

Among the poet’s possessions in his house I noted a large unstringed violin. It looked more like a viola. Behind it was a sheet of popular songs. I wonder what else Hart might have played and with whom.

The very personable curator of the house regretted that there were none of Hart’s books remaining there. I wonder who has his library now? I also wonder who, apart from French speakers, reads him today.

Here is one of Hart’s finest poem which is also placed on the front door of his house.

Old-Fashioned Photo Shop

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Regarding our visit to Port Louis’ photographic museum on a day when we returned to Port Louis and found that the floods had closed the town’s Natural History Museum so no chance of seeing any Dodo exhibits But we met Madame Breville, who curates her recently deceased husband’s amazing Photographic Museum, and enjoyed visiting the market and Chinatown.

Regarding the photographic museum.Sandra comments:

“A most welcoming lady with a genuine enthusiasm for photography and her, sadly recently deceased, husband’ s (Tristan Breville) creation of this amazing museum packed with cameras of all types, lenses, light meters, coloured filters. Huge film projectors, film cameras, printing presses to but the top exhibit is the daguerreotype collection on copper for wealthy people, on tin for less wealthy people. It seems these were the first in Mauritius 1836 circa!”

Golden Dust

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Thanks to an excellent privately developed local site at


https://www.mauritius-buses.com/


we have been able to make more sense of Mauritius’ dense bus network.


Yesterday we decided to visit a place near the aptly named Cape Malheureux commemorating a shipwreck which inspired enlightenment writer Bernardin De Saint Pierre to write his immortal ‘Paul et Virginie’.


The first part of our bus journey was on an express bus which meant that for over thirty minutes we were holding on for dear life as a somewhat clapped out Leyland rushed at break neck speed through a countryside of sugar cane plantations and papaya trees.


We reached the town of Goodlands, a very busy shopping centre with a colourful Hindu temple.

Transferring to a more leisurely vehicle we arrived at our destination, the quiet fishing village of Poudre d’Or.


At the end of a promontory stands the monument to one of the most famous shipwrecks in literature.


The ‘Saint Geran’, a ship belonging to the French East India company, was launched in 1736. Her first sailings were from Pondicherry under the command of captain Laurent Dupleyssis. In 1744 with a cargo of food for Mauritius, which was suffering from a terrible drought, she was shipwrecked off the island’s northern coast. Just nine out of her crew of 149 survived.

It was this event that inspired Jaques-Henri Bernardin de Saint Pierre, a French civil engineer and botanist living on the island, to write a novel which for many marked the new sensibilities of the romantic movement. In Bernardin’s story the heroine meets her fate by drowning when the ship she is returning on from France is wrecked on the lethal reefs of Mauritius. Could anyone have saved Virginie? The fact is that she could have saved herself if only she had taken off the cumbersome eighteenth century clothes she was wearing but which she kept on out of a sense of modesty. Ah well!


After our visit to the monument’s site, which also holds a much more recent memorial to another drowning, we walked to Poudre d’Or’s local eatery where we tucked into an appetising biryani, just one dish characteristic of an island which, true to its nature as an oceanic crossroad, invites cuisine from Africa, India, China and Europe into a deliciously assorted melting pot of flavours.

Leaving the beach at sunset

we concluded our evening by attending a rumbustious session of the island’s traditional music form, the Sega which incorporates elements from both Africa and India. For long despised by more prudish authorities this lively dance has encapsulated the spirit of the island in much the same way as reggae has done for the West Indies.

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A Blue Penny for One’s Thoughts?

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Mauritius is not only famous for an animal it sadly (and the world) no longer has, the Dodo, but for being the first colony of the former British Empire to issue postage stamps. The ‘Penny Black’, the world’s first stamp was issued by the UK in 1840 thanks to the efforts of Sir Rowland Hill. In 1847 the wife of the governor of Mauritius planned a ball and thought that sending out invitations to her guests using a system like the one in the UK would be a good idea. Luckily there was an engraver on the island by name of Joseph Barnard able to print stamps. He employed the design used by Hill and produced a red-orange penny and a blue two penny stamp. These have since become some of the world’s most valuable ones. An international consortium recently successfully bid for two examples (offer of £10,000,000) and they have returned to the island which originated them.


We visited the old Mauritius Post Office on the seafront. However, among the historical exhibits we could only see their copies. The stamps are so fragile that they can only be exposed to light for a couple of days each year.


Perhaps Mauritius’ most interesting museum is the Blue Penny situated on the Caudan waterfront. It’s housed in a lovely old eighteenth century building.

The museum is divided into thematic sections.

These are:

The age of discovery


The island builders


Port Louis


The postal adventure


Engraved memory (but still no original stamp displayed)

Paul et Virginie:

This recounts that emotional tale of love and death by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre first published in 1788 and which continues to haunt the island, indeed the world. It was wonderful to see Prosper Epinay’s original statue of the two tempest-crossed young lovers showing Paul assisting Virginie in crossing a stream in the forest. This sweet sculpture has been recently returned to the island through generous donations


Port Louis waterfront has turned into a smart and lively promenade. We were glad to have gathered so much information about Mauritius from the museums strung along it and were prepared for another visit to the capital.

Beyond Slavery

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Next door to Port Louis’ Slavery Museum is a building illustrating what followed the release from chains and manacles after the slave trade was abolished in 1835. It’s Aapravasi Ghat, now a UNESCO world heritage site, and consists of the remains of an immigration depot where indentured labourers, mainly from India, were received.

The British colonial government chose Mauritius as the first site for what it called ‘The Great Experiment’: the use of indentured labour to replace the slaves. The indentured labour force had to work on contract for up to five years and the scheme’s success prompted its adoption in other parts of the Empire. Between 1834 and 1920 labourers were shipped here from India, Madagascar, Mozambique, the Comoros, Yemen and China to work on the sugar cane plantations. Almost half a million landed at Aapravasi Ghat and over two million indentured labourers arrived around the world in the Carribbean, South America and south east Asia.

Regrettably a large number of these indentured labourers were treated very badly by the colonialists. They were subject to poor working conditions and made to labour very long hours. They were often maltreated and even whipped. Moreover they were in a situation where their work contracts were obfuscated forcing them.to work for years before they managed to pay off the terms of their indenture. It was largely thanks to the intervention of human rights champions like Ghandi,at that time a legal beagle in South Africa that efforts were finally made to alleviate the hard lives of the indentured, semi-slave workers in the colonies.


Since the majority of Mauritians descend from these souls it’s clear and very fitting that Aapravasi Ghat has been approved of as the island’s major heritage site .


The museum is very well laid out and documented detailing the procedures dealing with one of the greatest migrations the world has seen.

I am not sure if the famous ‘Windrush’ generation, too many of whomhave been appallingly treated in another recent Tory scandal, belongs to the indentured class of immigrants. One thing is sure in the two cases: both helped to save island economies threatened by labour shortages. Perhaps brexiticianists should bear this in mind before they continue to pontificate about their absurd policies.

To the Deer Island

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Our day sailing on a catamaran started near the old port of Mahebourg situated on the south east corner of Mauritius.


From here we headed towards the Ile des Cerfs following a picturesque coastline with mountains and hills reaching to the sea. I was glad to note the area spared from any ugly developments but wondered for how long it would remain like this.


We stopped for snorkelling on a part of the bay which rose to quite shallow depths and where the turquoise waters were remarkably clear. They provided a welcome contrast to the sea nearer the coast which had turned browner in colour due to the mud brought down by the overflowing rivers as a result of the recent rainstorms. It was fun swimming about the bay but we did not spot any fishes! More interestingly when we continued our journey we encountered a school of dolphins having fun leaping about the waves and teasing us.


It was in this bay that Napoleon won perhaps his greatest naval victory, the battle of Grand Port. Fought between 20 and 27 August 1810 over possession of the harbour the British navy suffered their worst defeat in the Napoleonic wars when the French managed to block the enemy’s frigates. Paris’ Arc De Triomphe has the name of this battle inscribed on its list of Napoleonic honours. A pity that Nelson had been killed at Trafalgar five years previously. It might have made all the difference if he had been present.


The Ile aux Cerfs is a picturesque place with its archetypal desert island atmosphere of white sandy beaches, palm trees and turquoise lagoons. We stopped for an hour there but could find no deer (cerfs) remaining. Fortunately we’d seen them during our visit to the Pamplemousses botanical gardens a couple of days previously.


It was a relaxing return trip to Mahebourg. The town was founded by the Dutch during their two brief intervals of colonization in the seventeenth century when they succeeded in eating the last Dodo. The town is named after French governor Bertrand Mahe’ de la Bourdonnaise.


It was, however, a pity that our trip did not include a visit to the town which contains two interesting museums, the Historical Naval museum housed in an ancient mansion and the Frederik Hendrik museum recounting the Dutch occupation of the island. It’s a good two hours by bus to reach Mahebourg from where we are staying but we have visited the main museums in Port Louis which similarly recount the history of the island.

Port Louis and Slavery

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Port Louis was not the original capital of Mauritius which was Mahebourg. Finding that location on the south east coast of the island too windy in 1606 the Dutch decided to move their administration to the better protected haven of Port Louis in the north west coast. Originally known as the ‘Harbour of Tortoises’ the capital got its present name in 1736 under the French in honour of king Louis XV.


Le Caudan waterfront, named after the eighteenth century French developer Jean Dominique Michel de Caudan, is the island’s most notable commercial and cultural centre containing some interesting museums

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From the nearby bus station we headed for the newest of these, the intercontinental slavery museum. Only officially opened last year the museum is housed in the former military hospital.


Still in its very early days the structure now has its walls restored back to their lava and coral stones. In it the museum presented us with some interesting projects. These included

1. Photos of facial moulds of ex-slaves collected by a nineteenth century French anthropologist to help in his investigations into the origin of Mauritian slaves.

2. Excavations of graves relating to old slave camps.

3. Research into the slave origins of selected Mauritian families.


Slavery in Mauritius was finally abolished under British rule in 1835 thanks to the efforts of persons like Wilberforce. There is so much to investigate in this disturbing phenomenon which has existed since biblical times and unfortunately continues into the present age with renewed force.


We are glad, however that a museum now exists on the island to bring this subject to the attention of a wider world public.

A Multicoloured Island

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A week has passed since we arrived in Mauritius. We are lucky to be here since we were the last ones to fly out through the raging storm afflicting Dubai when a year’s rainfall fell in less than 24 hours. Flights have resumed now but they remain far from normal and our new worry is how to get back.


Heavy rain has now fallen on Mauritius and our friend Rama today warned us to postpone our planned visit to Port Louis, the island’s capital, because of severe flooding. The tik-tok video he sent us of the Caudan waterfront was indeed frightening with spontaneous waterfalls appearing all over the area and cars and buses submerged. No dead registered so far fortunately.


Which leads me to consider the negative side of life in this otherwise idyllic island. Hurricanes do not hit this part of the world with the destruction wreaked in areas like the West Indies but they do occur. This year, for example, cyclone Belal brought death and widespread flooding to the area of the Mascarene islands of which Mauritius forms a part.


However, (fingers crossed) tsunamis have not yet affected this lovely but vulnerable island.


Going from natural to man-made calamities (although increasingly so-called natural ones are increasingly man-caused) Mauritius has had a remarkably placid recent political history.


The era before independence in 1968 did, however, produce riots and protest movements with subsequent deaths. These arose from issues regarding labour relations and racial tensions. The UK’s army was even called in to quell the disturbances.

Since those days Mauritius has had an enviable political record, especially when it is part of Africa. Let’s consider the countries who have governed it in succession from the Portuguese to the Dutch to the French and to to the English.

Let’s also consider the populace’s terms of employment from African slaves to indentured Indian workers after slavery was abolished in the UK empire by the likes of Wilberforce in 1835 to the influx of Chinese workers and now the growing number of westerners choosing thr island to work or just to retire in.


However, in an increasingly uncertain world there could arise a situation where locals arise against over-tourism in the manner of the current canary islanders. Tourism as a negative force? Sadly it’s near to that in many parts of the world including Italy.


Where issues of species extinction – sadly the Dodo is not the only animal to have been wiped out on this island witness the species of rails and pigeons – slavery, indentured labour, forced migration, imperialist dogma, racism, local mafia and international corruption have touched Mauritius it’s great that the island has retained its humanity and consistency still welcoming visitors on the way it has done us. Long may it continue in this truly democratic and multicultural fashion so well emblemized in its national flag.

‘Mon Plaisir’

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It rained on and off for much of last night. The sound of the drops was delicious – not at all like the often grim patter one gets in Europe.


In the morning the weather settled a little and so we decided to catch a bus to visit the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanic gardens. Named after Mauritius’ first president, the ‘father of the nation’, it’s situated in the town of Pamplemousses (French for grapefruits)

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The gardens hold a rich collection of plants especially palms and are the oldest such garden in the southern hemisphere having been founded in 1767 by Pierre Poivre the governor of the then French island.


Among its spectacular specimens are the giant nenuphars or Victoria water lilies growing in a very long pond. They are said to be able to support a human but we did not wish to test this theory.


Other aquatic plants include sacred lotuses and nymphaea.


The old governor’s mansion, named ‘mon plaisir’, stands near the nation’s father’s samadhi. From here a long avenue is lined by trees planted by world politicians and royalty including one by Princess Margaret.


Corners of the gardens are dedicated to medicinal plants, orchids and spices.


Perhaps the finest plants in the gardens are the collection of palms including a magnificent specimen of corypha umbraculifera. Living up to eighty years this palm dies shortly after it blossoms with buds that can reach over twenty feet in length – a true creational amalgam of Love and Death.


I loved the way the gardens were laid out in largely French classical fashion with long straight avenues. The ponds, on the other hand, are more influenced by the English landscape garden in their ‘natural’ layout.


The gardens also house a collection of animals including deer (cervus timorensis),

giant tortoises (aldabrachelys gigantea)

and a lively assortment of water fowls.


Along the avenues is a smattering of memorials. I was particularly pleased to see one dedicated to Bernardin de Saint Pierre, the author of that proto-romantic novel based in Mauritius where he lived for some years, ‘Paul et Virginie’.


Fortunately the rain stopped during most of our visit. We only had to overcome one hurdle in order to return to our hotel: finding a bus back. Without any numbers shown on bus stops and even on buses, without any bus route maps, with little knowledge of the local creole patois and without any timetables to consult this proved a bit of a challenge but the Mauritians are a very helpful people and we managed to get back just in time to avoid a further tropical downpour.

Towards the Black River

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After lunch we continued our island exploration by visiting a rum factory. Until recent times sugar cane was the most important crop on the island and Mauritius rum is reckoned to be some of the best on the planet. First we visited the equipment used in extracting sugar from the cane and the fermentation vats.

Second, we were invited to sample different rum varieties including coconut and vanilla flavoured tipples. The rum works were surrounded by a lovely garden.

We then entered Mauritius’s largest natural park the Black River gorges and forest. This forms part of the Chamarel region, one the most scenic areas of the island. Reaching a viewpoint we spotted the Black River dividing into two spectacular waterfalls known as Alexandra falls.


In the luscious forest surrounding us the trees included tropical pines, palms and baobab. There are several hikes to be made from here. Unfortunately we could only manage a short walk with the time at our disposal but Mauritius is truly a rambler’s paradise.

A section of the forest has been laid bare to reveal an astonishing phenomenon, that of different rocks displaying a variety of colours from blue, through brown to red according to the ferric amount they contain. I’ve seen photos of these rocks revealing much more lively shades than we were able to capture. Is that due to the way the sun’s rays hits them at different times of day I wonder?


Further down was a paddock containing giant Aldabra tortoises. There wasn’t a peep from any of them, not even a twitch from one of if their flippers. Perhaps they were hibernating? I don’t quite think so since, although Mauritius is now entering its winter season, temperatures remain well into the high twenties.


We returned in twilight via Port Louis, the Mauritian capital. Traffic around here was intense even in spite of a stretch of six lane motorway. More practical to solve congestion around the city is the 26 mile long metro light railway, built with help from India, which has recently been inaugurated. It goes to the town of Cure-Pipe which used to be the place where the old steam locomotives would have their boilers cleaned out – hence the name. For until 1960 Mauritius used to have an extensive standard gauge rail system covering the whole island. From that time to 2019 it was bereft of chemins de fer. Now, in common with many other world urban centres, railways are making a comeback.