Mauritius

Fresh from the garden for our New Year’s Day lunch, Sheryll's Mauritian salad was the subject of a discussion on whether Mauritian means being from Mauritania or from Mauritius. It didn’t matter – it was delicious. No one complained that we combined the food from several countries at that wonderful meal. See my Mauritania and Malta blogs for the other recipes and here for the Mauritian one: https://bosskitchen.com/mauritian-eggplant-salad-with-chilli-and-coriander/

A week later, I hopped down to San Diego for more great Mauritian food, this time with Vonnett. I had shown Vonnett this list of options http://www.travelstart.co.za/blog/food-of-mauritius/ and she chose dholl puri https://www.cookshideout.com/mauritian-dholl-puri-recipe and chicken curry https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/mauritian-chicken-curry. She even had most of the ingredients on hand. I had thought that the dholl puri would be similar to pupusas with the filling surrounded by dough, but the split peas integrated into the bread. Vonnett and I ate way too many of them and only saved a few for Kevin who was working the night shift.

Mauritius didn’t seem familiar to me until I found a story that I have been hearing since elementary school. Because there were no indigenous people or any natural predators before explorers encountered Mauritius, the birds of the island including the dodo weren’t very good at avoiding those who arrived. From discovery in 1507 to extinction in 1681, dodos make up a small part of our history but a large place in our imagination. The documentary Return of the Dodo can be found on Kanopy.

Mauritius is located on an important trade route, bringing Arabs, Malays, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, and many indentured servants from India. To get a flavor of the colonial powers fighting over this strategic set of islands, I listened to The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian. Project Gutenberg has Paul and Virginia by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2127 and Georges by Alexandre Dumas in the original French, again giving a European perspective.

Trying to get a flavor of those who have lived there more recently, I also checked out:

· An interview with Ananda Devi by her translator Jeffrey Zuckerman: https://frenchculture.org/books-and-ideas/2633-interview-ananda-devi

· The Nobel Prize lecture by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (scroll past the video, delivered in French, to find a pdf of the English translation): https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2008/clezio/facts/

· Carl de Souza on Mauritian History, Multilingualism, and the Events that Inspired “Kaya Days” from Words Without Borders: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/kaya-days-carl-de-souza-interview-jeffrey-zuckerman

Speaking of Kaya, I found his Chant Seggae to be relaxing and beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxrrWu25AAg. To pick up more Sega, check here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEtZrb5raE

I found a lovely profile on Jane Constance from CNN African Voices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3XCWnijWeI and because I didn’t hear quite enough of her audition for The Voice in that interview, I went and found that video so I could watch it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt761njh09I

I also checked out Malcolm de Chazal paintings https://www.invaluable.com/artist/de-chazal-malcolm-8aydh7e3pv/sold-at-auction-prices/ and enjoyed watching Resort to Love, a romance movie filmed in Mauritius. The scenery is beautiful and the story is cute. You can find it on Netflix.

To review just a few of the many attractions in Mauritius, the BBC Travel Show provides a tour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NziDECzeOw0 and The Crazy Tourist offers photographs of some great places to visit in Mauritius: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-mauritius/#more-8297. I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Mauritius and throughout the world.

Photo credit: Xavier Coiffic https://unsplash.com/photos/dcovteh2ti4