Mauritius: The story continued...

To recap me and my family had all flown back to Mauritius for the wedding of my cousin, which was taking place at our house. The week before the wedding was quite hectic (as already mentioned before!). On top of all the cleaning and tidying there was a lot, and i mean A LOT, of shopping! There was countless bottles of soft drinks, towering crates of beer and boxes upon boxes of wine, whiskey and rum! That was the drinks sorted. Then it was time for the food! I think there was a need for food to be served for three out fo the four days of the wedding. Being a weddign this only meant one thing...a lot of veg! So much veg that, of course, we couldn't go to just any supermarket or even markets...we went straight to the Agricultural Marketing Board (AMB), who have a nice little informative website (some free advertising there :P)

Luckily, that was pretty much all the hard work done, the people who put up the tent also supplied the tables/chairs/and some cutlery and family and friends pitched in to help with the cooking and

organising.

The Friday evening was the 'geetgawaye' where ladies come and sing and

dance. Thankfully, nothing for me to do here apart from take pictures and relax! At the end of the night I thought "hmmmm, one down three to go", how foolish I was to believe it would be so simple! I can't go into all the details of the little ceremonies and customs that happen during a hindu wedding, because else i'd be writing a small story here, but two of the main cermonies before the actual wedding are the 'tilak' and the 'haldi' (also referred to as the 'saffron'). The tilak is a ceremony where relatives of the bride go to the groom's house with gifts to offer to the groom and his family. The gifts vary but tend to include sugar, coconut, rice, clothes, jewelry and henna. All these gifts were elegantly wrapped in the morning, during which i was preparing the camera and camcorder for the day ahead. It was said at first that it would be the father of the bride (i.e. my father) that would be sitting in the tilak with a brother having a role to play. What they really should have said was that "I would be sitting in the tilak with my father having a small role at the "! So, we gathered the gifts and boarded the van and made the trip to Bel Air. We arrived there just on time at 14.00. The Pandit (priest) asked me who was the brother, *gulp*, "me, myself" i replied. I would be lying if i said i wasn't a little bit nervous, after all i had never seen a tilak being done before, let alone sat in one! So we all went into the tent, and that was it. The actual ceremony was over quicker than i had thought. Starting with a puja and finishing with the handing over of the gifts to the groom, my job was done! *phew* After my father doing his bit of the cermony it was back in the van and back to Q.Bornes!

Later that night it was time for the Haldi. The house was busy, people going and coming, like busy bees. Food was being cooked, greetings were exchanged, music was being played, and by 7.00 pm the bride-to-be emerged from the house ready for the haldi. The key feature of a haldi is tumeric paste being applied to the bride's face by relatives and friends who are married.

This itself can take a while, on some occassions mini-queues forming. Food was being served at the back, not quite sure what there was...i was too busy clicking away with my camera. That day took a lot out of me, the travelling, sitting in the tilak, travelling back home, and the haldi in the evening. A lot of weddings nowadays are all rolled into one day, now i know why! And of course, the tiredness didn't end once the haldi was over, family and friends still remained afterwards. Lights probably went out around midnight. Wake up at 7 the following day for the Wedding!

Will continue this later...need to refil my cup with caffeine!

The Homecoming

Rhinitis, fever, dry cough, vomitting, diarrhoea, stomach cramps, migraine. It sounds like the symptoms of a new super bug out of House but is in fact what i've had to deal with in the last 10 days. 10 days is a long time. 10 days ago i was still in Mauritius and having come back to the UK after 4 weeks it feels strange, having to adjust again, like being here for the first time.

Taking a step back now, being back in Mauritius was refreshing! Stepping off the plane onto the land that you took your first steps on, the land that whose beauty first graced your eyes, the land where no matter where you were in the world you knew you knew you belonged in.

The first few days we were bombarded with family and friends, and also by not so welcomed guests: mosquitos! Mosquitos are very very clever. They wait til it's dark and you're asleep...then they attack!! Defenseless in the dark they come and go as they please stealing your blood at will. I think i got used to it eventually and they either had enough blood or got bored of the taste. Anyways, the main reason for going to Mauritius was because it was my cousin's wedding which was taking place at our house. This meant only one thing for me during the first week: cleaning cleaning cleaning! Not only cleaning; the back garden had to be cleared completely for the tent to go up and the same was true for the front and sides of the house. It was a lot of work but i didn't mind one bit! This cousin who was getting married is my sister, not in the paternal-maternal sense, but in a kind of close cousin sense. In asian/hindu culture she was my sister and i was prepared, no, i was honoured to be there for the wedding and help out anyway i could. So i helped, cleared away bushes, plants, helped move stuff and gradually the grounds of the house was clean! I noticed some people stigmatise or misconceptualise Mauritians from England. Just because i've grown up in England i have not become royalty. It doesn't make me any less of a Mauritian (even if my creole stinks!) nor does it bestow an air of pomposity on me. All that needs to be said is don't judge a book by it's cover, the dictionary has a very simple design but is filled with endless pages of interesting words!

Flip-Flops! (savats) The preferred footwear for many people in Mauritius is savat leponz or sandals. It's so much easier than shoes or trainers!...no laces, you're feet stay clean and fresh and you can put them on and take them off with ease! Here in the UK the weather doesn't always permit people to wear sandals, but the second i got home in Mauritius that's all i was wearing. During my new-found feet freedom i was in Shoprite (a large supermarket in the outskirts of Q.Bornes) helping my mum with the shopping. Now, so far, savats were cool and funky but where they fall short compared to shoes and trainers was that they don't really protect your feet, or more importantly your toes, very well. Accidentally drop a knife near your feet and you could have one less toe! Anyways, long story short, pushing the trolley along i walked into the wheel with my left foot and cut my little toe. The pain i got from it didn't really bother me, looking at my mum "errr yehhh" and then looking back down at my foot my white flip-flops were smeared with my blood. Great. Luckily we were in a supermarket, because the tissue i had didn't really do much to stop help the wound. Bought a packet of plasters, put it on, paid for shopping...and limped away.

Me blabbering on about mosquitos and savats may not interest lot of you and is probably the result of me not being able to blog exactly what I wanted whilst in Mauritius. Writing this entry now has made me delve deep into my brain and pick out events that happened a month ago! It's often difficult to paint a mental picture leaving out the most memorable parts. Weirdnes apart, being back in Mauritius brought back happiness that can't really be described on blogspot; all the family, friends and the uniqueness of the island made being in Mauritius truly amazing.
I will leave it here, next time i say a little about the wedding. hmmm ok, i'll say a LOT about the wedding!

Internet in Paradise does not come easy

It's been a while since i promised to start blogging again! I do have a genuine reason, however. I'm currently in Mauritius, for 4 weeks, and don't have regular access to the net. I guess i should start from the beginning. The flight from the UK to Mauritius was an adventure in itself, a 15 hour journey, stopping over in Zurich and the Seychelles. The only entertainment to hand was a rather shoddy looking projector screen at the front of the plane and a few magazines i had picked up. When the plane stopped over to pick up passengers at Zurich the pilot/stewards very kindly turned the air con off and allowed the heat from the engines/cabin to melt us(!). I shouldn't complain really, the food was good (yep, actually 'good', not just 'decent' or 'passable') and we also got very good views from the plane between the UK and France and when landing in the Seychelles and Mauritius. Can't really write much more than this right now, so will leave with a few pics i managed to take.
(will upload more on Flickr later on)

http://yfrog.com/4q027stxjx

Mauritian Sega Dancers

Went to an indian wedding over the weekend, and they had some Mauritian Sega dancers there.
I managed to record some of it on my Viewty but then i ran out of memory :s

(its actually not that great quality and such short footage may not actually be that impressive, but i've been too busy to think of something to post, so this filler will do in the meantime :D)