Funny how some people despise Mauritians living abroad. For most of those despising the “foreigners”, the first thing is a sense either of jealousy or inferiority. But I can’t blame them for obvious reasons! When I was a kid I had uncles and cousins coming from the UK or France. We Mauritian children had to make the effort of speaking English or French, they would never get as low as start talking Creole. I recall my grandma trying to understand my cousin who could speak Creole but never did with her.
At the same time, they would tell me how great their life was abroad and, dude, let’s face it, that cousin was younger or the same age as me and he had already got on a plane. Everybody seemed just to bustle around those people coming from abroad and practically abusing of the Mauritian sense of hospitality. There was always a something to do around them since the minute they got up. The “foreigners” got eggs every morning at breakfast. I was entitled one that I ate sitting on my grandad’s lap every Sunday. Everyone somehow wanted to bask in that faint light shining around the Mauritians from abroad. For us kids, “langleter” was an El-Dorado, every plane we saw flying was going “There”, where life was great and changed you so that people just had stars shining in their eyes when they look at you when you came back.
And here we were, kids, looking up to them. We were trying to imagine their wonderful life there in Europe while we here, in the small village of Cottage went to sleep on a mattress on the floor in our little corrugated iron house. We shared the mattress in three, some cousin or my brother, my Dadi (grandma) and I. The “foreigners” chose, on their part, to go and sleep at the only relative in the group (we being an extended family) who had a real “lacaze blok”.
The best food was made for them when they came. We never had that kind of food really. People came to fetch their presents relatives gave the “foreigners” to bring to Mauritius. The whole day was a huge bustle. They were entertained and excursions were organised by the family to get a taxi to take them to the seaside, to interesting places and to enjoy their holidays. We kids spent our holidays either sitting around at home or helping Dada (grandad) in the garden or “caro pistass”.
It was fun to have them here though. Why? Because everybody was so interested in them that they left us, kids, alone. We could do what we liked since no one was paying attention. We could hang around the adults and listen to some forbidden, not usually understood but seemingly very interesting conversations till late at night. We could fish the cherries out of the “fruit au jus” without anyone noticing and we could drink all the “jus” out of it as at least 3 cans of this highly esteemed dessert had been opened.
However, some things were terribly wrong. When I grew into a teenager I started understanding the conversations. There were arranged and nearly forced marriages when the relatives got back to Mauritius. There was back biting. There was a lot of “we foreigners are better that you ‘ti kaliter’ Mauritians having stayed here in your crappy village and going to watch your football matches seated on benches in the overcrowded village hall”. There was a lot of “we have 2 cars”, “we live in a big house in London or Paris”, “we make big money”. All in all, it was the confrontation of the “better” Mauritian to the local Mauritian.
This made me understand that somehow, the Mauritian hospitality was such that you would always be welcomed like a prince, but that the ego was a thing that messed people’s minds. Ego even killed your relationships with your own family. The fact of leaving the country and living abroad made the past generations think that they had climbed up the social ladder such that even relatives should be considered as inferior. I don’t know if this still prevails. Too bad for me, I never also expected to leave the country and finally end up living abroad. For me it was supposed to be a 1 year to 4 year trip but things never turn out as expected.
Living far from Mauritius has strengthened my bond to that small piece of land. It has sealed my belonging to the Mauritian nation as a whole, where there is no difference between races and religion for me. Mine, rasson, briyani, ti-puri… tell me which Mauritian has never eaten at least one of those while each can represent a part of the Mauritian multi-culture. Years spent abroad teach you that in racism there is no communalism, its not because you’re of Chinese origin nor of “grand nation or ti nation” (it took me 22 years to understand this b*llsh*t) or even a bit fairer that you will have better treatment, you’re just a foreign tit. Say what you will but the persecution of the Creoles during slavery is part of my history as much as the coming of indentured labourers to work the sugar cane fields is part of the history of any other Mauritian.
This, dear reader, is what makes me speak only Creole when I’m with Mauritians or when I get back to Mauritius even if it means, true story back in 2001, being served last in a shop because all the other people present spoke French. Even in my family, relatives say “to encore conne coze Creole?”. How can you forget a language you’ve spoken all your life? This is the Mauritian in me.
