6: More about Mauritius (Ruth)

Quatre Borns, Mauritius. 29.06.07
Upon looking for a place to eat breakfast we meet Neela, a colourful woman of 50 years. Neela has a big smile and only a few teeth left in her mouth. She is very eager to show us to a nice cafe and we buy her a meal. She talks unstoppable about her life. Neela is a single woman, and we rapidly get a feeling that some of her flourishing stories are fantasies or ways to impress us. There are also some parts of her story that we believe, the one about her former husband finding some other woman, how she lost her family, how she was rejected from her sons and left totally alone. In this family oriented society that is a very hard situation to cope with and there is no social security for single women. She tells us that she had periods of mental problems. That her teeth are lost because of being beaten by the former husband is not the most trustworthy of the stories. The next day we agree to meet her again, and we are invited to her home. We are to greet her young husband in his job, but as we come to the hotel he is unfortunately not there, and some very strange excuses for this are told: "I heard on the radio that one of his relatives had died, he must have gone to see them" is one of them. So we end up believing that the husband perhaps is fiction. We come to her home, but all the time we have the feeling that it is not her home, how can she pay it without a job? Maybe she "borrowed" it to give us a nice impression?

Neela - one strange encounter

In spite of all the strange stories she is able to make good contact and she has found a meaningful way of life for herself, being trained as a hospital visitor for lonely patients. She is thankful for her life and has a meaning with it. She is a Hindu, but sometimes she goes to the Christian church as well. In the groups of visitors she has a social network and is treated respectfully. She brings us to the hospital, we hope to get in an perhaps to meet some children and perhaps sing a few songs for them. Neela presents us to Monique, the coordinator of visitors. Meeting her is also a special experience, since she also has had a life sort of on the edge of society as a single woman. We never get to visit any patients, but the encounter with this women was certainly very touching. Our songs were sung to the two Mauritian women instead of the children, and Neela responded by singing some songs to us in Indian language. They were beautiful songs, carrying a lot of emotion and pain. Before saying goodbye to Neela she wants us to say hallo to her mother who works in the market near by. Her mother is also very happy to meet us, the is 63 years old. Sixtythree??? That means she was 13 when her daughter was born. The mother seems to have perfect teeth, but she takes them out and show us that they are false. We enjoy the situation with the two women very much.

In Mauritius we also meet "Donald", an academic working in the University. He has a local name, but prefers to give us an english name. He offers us to borrow a villa in the northern part of the Island. Some of "Donalds" ancestors used to live in England and have built this villa, a once fashionable house. We feel very lucky to get this opportunity and our host most kindly drives us to the villa seated north in the island. The house is located some hundred meters near to beautiful beaches. The relatives of the family in England send some money every year to keep up this large house, but it is however increasingly becoming a burden to the Mauritian part of the family. So we are asked if we want to buy the house for 5 million MUR (Mauritian Rupies), which is about 1 million Norwegian kroner. We find the situation a bit funny and politely thank the family for their offer. We tell them that we unfortunately are not the right people to buy their house and rid them of this burden.
While driving us to and fro the place we are told a lot of stories how hard their life is in Mauritius, how much they are stressing and a lot of other miserable things. We listen politely to all the complaints, but in our minds we think that this journey teaches us a lot about different attitudes to hard life conditions. In Kenya unemployment was 60 %, and still we met such a lot of joy, happiness and people were proud of themselves in a good way, very seldom complaining. This is really something to think of coming from a rich country like Norway, where living conditions materially are so good and still many people are not content with their lives, feeling unhappy, depressed or isolated.

Well, "Donald" is also member of a trade union and politically interested. He tells us that tourist industry is rapidly growing while living conditions for ordinary people are getting harder. Prices are rising and one has to work harder and harder to earn enough money.

We also learn that employees in private business have no rights to have holidays and thus have to to work the whole year through except for a few religious celebration days.