In the holiday brochures, Mauritius is painted as the island getaway of your dreams. But it’s quite different to live there as an expatriate, as I found out when I lived there for a year.
It’s quite an experience living in a different country. There are aspects of Mauritius that made it feel like home to me. The sugar cane fields make me feel like we were living in Tongaat or Verulam. The beaches are gorgeous. As a former Durban girl, who then moved to Cape Town, I appreciated living on a warm coastline again.
Being in Mauritius for a year was quite different to staying at a holiday resort. You have to temper the need for familiar things with the excitement of trying new things. Shopping was interesting. I felt so silly when I asked a stranger to tell me which bottle was the crushed garlic and ginger. He kindly assisted me and then pointed out there were pictures on the bottles. Doh!
As any expat South African will tell you, safety concerns are not as much of as an issue as they are locally. I loved that we were able to walk around freely in our neighbourhood of Grand Baie on the extreme northern tip of the island. For most of our sojourn, my son Kallum and I walked to school daily, a roundtrip of 2km. This, in addition to 40 laps in the pool each day and beach trips meant that I had time to be much more active than ever before.
Kallum was 4 years old and attended the local pre-school, Martin’Ecol’ette, which offered him a great learning environment with only three other children in his class. Children were split into classes based on whether their home language was Creole or English. This school was also one of the best moves we made.
The teachers prepared Kallum to be ready for grade one at the age of five and he had already finished the entire Oxford reader series well before he turned six. The end result was that when we returned to SA, he started grade one at the age of five and turned six halfway through grade one. He’s now in grade five and positively thriving.
Grand Baie is one of the more popular tourist areas on the island and the South African expat population here was very friendly. It also boasts a major shopping centre, La Croisette, with cinemas and familiar restaurants such as Ocean Basket and Mugg & Bean – although this was only completed towards the end of our stay as it was the construction project my husband worked on.
I have never appreciated South Africa more than I did in my time away. Living in a country with poor infrastructure made me realise how much we fail to appreciate when we are home. I missed the comforts we take for granted – one that seems particularly significant right now while we are in the grip of a drought – was being able to drink water straight out of the tap and having a never ending supply of clean water. Other comforts I missed included having hot water showers every single day, and the absolute luxury of having a car at my disposal to drive wherever I want, whenever I want.
I missed the rainbow nation that is South Africa and the friendly smiles that greet me at random times and places. The language spoken is mainly Creole, which you can understand if you speak French, but the locals are well versed in English since tourism is one of the main driving forces of the economy. Since the population is largely Indian, I was often mistaken for a local and often received unfriendly treatment when I couldn’t speak Creole. A friend later explained to me that the assumption was that I had left the country to study abroad and now thought I was too good to speak Creole anymore.
Most of the homes in Mauritius used solar heating and our home was no exception. The downside was that if you forgot to switch the geyser on when the weather was overcast, you invariably ended up in a cold shower. We also ran out of water a few times and on the last occasion, we were finally informed that our water was derived from a reservoir in our garden. The water then went up to a water tank on the roof, then into the geyser and finally to our taps.
Water issues aside, the other main thing you become conscious of in Mauritius is that you take your life into your hands every time you venture onto the roads for a drive. Scenic as the island is, the driver has little time to take in any sights. Your attention is required 150 percent. You have to be wary of cars stopping at random points with little or no warning, for anything from 5 minutes to an hour, pedestrians blissfully walking directly in front of your car apparently unaware of any danger to themselves (pavements are an irregular luxury). Not to mention the numerous cyclists and guys on motorbikes which often have mini-fridges loaded on the back, so they can stop randomly to sell rotis, samoosas, pickles, fruit and curries to passersby!!
I finally got used to the frogs that croaked me awake most mornings, the little bird that knocked on my bedroom window around 9am, the chameleons and lizards in the garden that regularly invaded the car to sun on the dashboard.
An then there was the beeping noise in the middle of the night. This random beeping, which was attributed at various points in time to the microwave, the oven, the airconditioner or the fridge, was eventually traced to a rather innocent looking little toy given to Kallum as a gift. All in all, an innocent culprit and as far as things that go bump in the night, a little beeping isn’t so bad. Still, a few years back in SA and I’m happy to say that there’s absolutely no place like home.
Leave a Reply