The Island You've Never Heard of

The average person would look at you with a blank face if you said you were visiting Mauritius. SAS 126 would no longer be included in that group. While I only spent a day visiting the island just off Madagascar, it was easy to see why every person who lived there decided to stay. The fact that Mauritius was once uninhabited island baffles me. With its warm blue waters and modern infrastructure, I found myself saying that I wanted to stay less than an hour after docking.

When I disembarked from the ship I was greeted by musicians and dancers as well as green hills in the horizon and the quiet beach breeze. The best way to describe it is an African Caribbean island. Just like in Hawaii, I spent the day on a field program called: Save the Beaches with a Local NGO.

As the name implies, we began the day at the beach. As we waited for the NGO volunteers to arrive, we dipped our feet in the ocean and put out butts in the sand. The first touch was heavenly. The water was warm and as blue as I've ever seen. It was the perfect setting for a swim. Yet that was the one thing we were told not to do - there would be beach time later. Eventually, the ladies from the NGO arrived and we were told to get our hands dirty. We split into groups and started picking up trash. Each group was supposed to pick up a certain type of trash, but in all honesty, we couldn't just walk past paper because we were picking up soda cans. So we didn't. We picked up everything. The number of cigarette butts was astonishing. Rather the amount of trash we picked up, in general, was a bit disheartening, to say the least. The worst was that the people laying on the beach looked at us like we were crazy. It was refreshing when someone enjoying their leisure day would pause us to hand us trash. After an hour we were summoned back to the meeting point to hand in the bags of trash we had acquired to be compiled.

After, we were given 2 hours to eat lunch and enjoy the beach. I spent my beach time eating enchiladas, swimming in the crystal clear warm ocean, and drying off during a quick nap under the strong sun.

Before long it was time to pile on to the bus and head to our next location - the NGO's headquarters. We watched a documentary in French with English subtitles, a perfect representation of the blend of cultures and languages that is Mauritius. The man who made the documentary watched it with us and then showed us different DIY musical instruments which were made out of recycled materials and trash found on the beaches and sides of the roads. Trash which might seem useless but is not, like torn traffic cones and parts of PVC pipe. It was quite inspiring to see him making music, good music, with pieces of trash.

Nonetheless, we eventually had to leave, this time driving to the main shopping area on the island. It was basically an outside mall on the water of Port Louis. Because it was late, many shops were closed but it was still really cool to see. The walkways were covered with festive blue, red, yellow, and green decorations in preparation for Mauritian Independence Day. I did not expect Mauritius to have malls of glass and such strong infrastructure. To say I was amazed is an understatement. I ate pizza by the water before heading back to the ship with my program group and calling it a day.

It is time to head to mainland Africa.

Until next time!