Where in the world is Mauritius?

Mauritius has been a "bucket list" place for John and me since we lived in Zimbabwe when several families that we knew used to travel there for vacation. We didn't really know much about it but had just heard that it was wonderful (and it is!). But when we started to mention our plans to visit to American friends it turned out that quite a lot of them had never heard of it. And this unknown quality was further confirmed by the fact that when we visited the island and people asked us where we were "from" they were always surprised when we said the US.

In case you aren't familiar with it Mauritius is a beautiful island in the Indian Ocean with white sand beaches, turquoise water and lovely mountains. It's also fairly well-developed, modern in many places, multicultural, and multilingual (many Mauritians are trilingual). When I arrived I finally read up on the history of this island and realized that it is most famous for its extinct Dodo bird, which of course I had heard of but hadn't made the connection.

So, even from Africa (or perhaps especially from Africa?) it's not easy to get there due to the lack of direct flights and good connections. We had to spend a night in Johannesburg on either end of our trip. But at least the flight from Joburg to the island was a breeze. We were on Air Mauritius and just like I feel like I enter South Africa when I get on a SAA flight in NY or the US when I get on a Delta flight in Johannesburg I felt like I entered Mauritius when I entered the plane.

The first photo is of one of the typically beautiful white sand beaches. One of the things that I really liked was that the public beaches in Mauritius are really for the public (i.e. locals!). We arrived on Easter weekend which was the beginning of the school holidays. When we visited a few beaches on Monday there were tons of families who had set up camp in the many trees between the (free!) parking and the beach. That is what the second photo is all about. There were public toilets at all of the beaches. I really enjoyed the fact that local people get to enjoy their own beautiful country which was a bit of a contrast to some of the other island experiences that I've had. It was a bit noisy on Monday but when we went back later in the week things were quieter but still lots of multigenerational local families enjoying the beach. There were also fun food trucks and it was a great place to grab lunch. 

Besides hanging out at the beach, we enjoyed a day in the south where we drove through a beautiful national park, visited the famous seven coloured hills and went to the Ebony Reserve:

The hills were a bit touristy, but the vistas in the park and the reserve were amazing. Hard to imagine the whole island being covered by ebony trees and palms which were pretty much clear cut for the valuable wood and the palm. The island is quite covered with sugar now so it was good to see the conservation work that the reserve was doing. 

The coloured sand dunes were a bit touristy, but the vistas in the park and the reserve were amazing. Hard to imagine the whole island being covered by ebony trees and palms which were pretty much clear cut for the valuable wood and the palm products. The island is quite covered with sugar now so it was good to see the conservation work that the reserve was doing. 

We had some pretty awesome meals during our vacation. Someone advised us to stick to Mauritian style food or seafood which is what I did for the most part. Above is curried octopus and a Mauritian platter including curried venison (yes, it's a local thing). We did also go to a great Italian restaurant where they served amazing pasta. Out of all of wonderful meals our favorite was at our friends' house in their beach bungalow which is where I took the photo below:

Great food, great company and great view - it was a night we will remember!

One of our last fun excursions was to the Sugar Museum and the brand new Atelier of the Mavros family which was absolutely stunning. We first encountered this family of artisans in Zimbabwe and now I've been to 3 of their 4 locations in the world! Well worth the effort to stop in if you are ever in a city where they have a shop (you can check out the art work at www.patrickmavros.com).

As I got home from this lovely vacation I realized that what made it extra special was the people that we met - both old friends and new faces. Mauritians were very friendly and curious about us - as we were about them. If you ever get the chance to visit this lovely island you should take it.

Netflix Recommendation

An incredible true story of a Malawian boy who made a windmill based on books he read in his rural school's library. The US Embassy in Lilongwe had a public showing soon after it was released and I volunteered for the event. It wasn't a hard job - mostly hanging out for a few hours chatting with some Peace Corps volunteers and various other volunteers and guests and then handed out popcorn for about 15 minutes before the movie. 

It was great fun to hear the audience laugh out loud throughout the film (many funny moments despite the serious nature of the movie). Awesome Q and A at the end with William Kamkwamba - the main character and author of a book with the same title.  He very deftly fielded a question about the Chichewa accent. Much of the film is in Chichewa (the local language) with English subtitles. The accents of the actors have apparently been heavily criticized. William's response is that it's only normal for non-native speakers to have an accent and that they made the decision that it was more important to show how Malawians function in a bilingual manor (school scenes are in English) than to have a perfect accent. It's a great representation of that aspect of life in English speaking Africa. For all you teachers/parents out there - there is also a children's book of the story so have a look at that too! I'd love to hear what you think if you watch the film.

Beautiful Malawi - A Walk Around the Neighborhood.

You see the mountains everywhere when you are driving around in Lilongwe and even walking in our neighborhood. Around our house they are off in the distance so this photo was taken on our road trip to Zomba so that you can actually see one of the many mountains that are around. 

This is the typical wall around a house in our neighborhood. Since I'm from the east coast, I love red brick! The rest of these photos were all taken on a beautiful afternoon when we went for a walk in our neighborhood.

A bit blurry but the typical view of women carrying things on their heads - a common sight everywhere in Malawi.

This path leads down from the paved road to a village nearby.

Two views of the incredible green season this year!

We have a few really lovely roads to walk on near our house. There are always people out and about and it feels very safe. My favorite is seeing the kids of all ages (even little ones that are two or three) hanging out with friends and playing. Something we certainly don't seem to have in the US anymore but reminds me of my childhood and the freedom we had to explore outdoors.

Zomba Hiking - Forest Old and New

The last day in Zomba we decided to have a go at a hike even though it had poured the night before and looked threatening the whole way. We didn't make it as far as the famous lookouts (named for the Queen Mother of England and the Emperor of Ethiopia - both of whom visited the plateau over 60 years ago) but were just glad we didn't get dumped on. 

The area is famous for seeing huge loads of wood being carried for kilometers down the mountain. This particular group of women were not all carrying wood and the one load was quite a bit smaller than typical but it was at a moment where I could easily ask permission to take a photo since it wasn't too steep.

Unfortunately, there are lots of areas on the plateau which have been completely stripped of forest. Happily, what you probably can't see, is this whole hillside seemed like it had been prepped for seedlings and there was a large group of people there whom we assumed were going to be planting seedlings. There were many other hills with seedlings in various stages of growth (in addition to many hills with no trees left). 

 The photo above and below were taken quite close together. Below, John is standing in the old growth forest. And above is where that ends and you see the beginning of an area that was clear cut. We wondered how much of the plateau was covered in forest when the above mentioned dignitaries visited in the 50's and 60's.

Zomba - Sunbird Ku Chawe

One of the perks of being posted overseas is that John gets both local and US holidays. Taking advantage of our second long weekend we thought the next good place to visit during the rainy season was the mountain area in the south. Fortunately, as you can see from the photos here we had a pretty clear afternoon when we arrived to the beautiful Zomba plateau.

The baboons at the Sunbird Ku Chawe hotel really were a nuisance (they had to lock the doors to the dining room at breakfast time so that they didn't run in and steal food and there was no way to eat outside on the patio for breakfast). However, these two provided quite the entertainment on our first afternoon as they enjoyed the ketchup from the people who had an afternoon snack on the lawn. But the next day at dinner there were no bottles of ketchup to be found for the french fries and the waiter had to bring the little packets instead!

Food, Glorious Food

Sometimes people have asked me what we eat when we live in Africa and for us, the answer is pretty much the same thing that we eat in the US. But it does take a while to figure out exactly what that means in each new place. We have the added challenge here that John and I have both changed our eating habits since we last lived together two and a half years ago so it will be a while longer before we completely figure things out. Read on for some photo highlights of food in Malawi.

This was the lunch I ordered when we were at the Lake - curry chicken. I think the rice and beans combo is pretty common here - although Malawians prefer nsima - basically a stiff porridge made out of white corn meal (called sadza in Zimbabwe).  We had a lunch at John's boss's house last Friday and Rodwell, our housekeeper did local dishes - nsima, beans (prepared with vegetables) and pumpkin greens with groundnut (peanut) flour. It was fun to finally have someone make local food in my kitchen - that was a first in all of our years in the foreign service.

I bought a crown pumpkin and asked Rodwell to prepare it - it's delicious.  It was a big pumpkin so we had it quite a few times - like this and then roasted in cubes. 

A family favorite from the time that we lived in Costa Rica. I have a big freezer so I'm trying to freeze up some mango because I think you can only find it in season. Plain yogurt that is similar to what we can get in the US is very hard to find but I did find it in a shop yesterday that I'm hoping will normally have it in stock.

A beautiful lunch salad - again thanks to Rodwell. I love eating salad but neither John nor I love making them. Avocados are also in season (but carrots are hard to find right now).

Happy to be back to our favorite brand of South African juice. You can find this in the US (they even had it at the shop at Carnegie Mellon University where Abigail goes to school) but it we get all the varieties here - including this new one.

Yes, this is fresh salmon (not previously frozen). There is a store that occasionally imports salmon - the sign said that it was caught last Tuesday in Norway. You had to buy the whole fish but there were two couples who wanted to split a whole one three way and we were standing at the counter looking at the packages of smoked salmon (since there was no way we were going to buy a whole salmon) and they asked if we were interested in joining them. I hadn't really intended on buying some but I must say it was delicious!! The best salmon I've had in a while - sold right here in Malawi. 

First Excursion - Lake Malawi

For years we have heard our Malawian friends tell us the wonders of Lake Malawi. Since my very first weekend here happened to be Martin Luther King weekend we decided we ought to take advantage of that and head to "the Lake" even though we are in the thick of the rainy season. This is a good post for lots of photos:

Can you see the car in front of us? As we got close to our destination we saw a lot of them. I guess they are the out in the country version of the minibuses. The hatch was open for the passengers!

The grounds of the Livingstonia where we stayed.

The beach at our hotel. 

View from our room - we were out on the beach for a while and watched the rain roll across the lake. It took a long time but eventually reached the shore.

There were a number of brief pauses for the cows crossing the road. 

After breakfast at our hotel we wandered down the coast with a destination of the Red Zebra Lodge where we wanted to eat lunch. It was very picturesque and some of the bright blue sky returned.

So, the business at the lodge is exporting exotic fish. We had a tour of the tropical fish farm which was very interesting. The lake in general has been overfished so one of the things that the farm is working on is restocking the lake - not just removing fish. 

The spot for our lunch was in the garden right next to the lake. A perfect spot for lunch.

I'm not usually a big soda fan but I do enjoy a good ginger beer. This is Malawi's version of Stoney which we drank in Zimbabwe and Kenya (Arianna says its available in the US but I've never seen it).

A beautiful blue sky - there has not been a lot of that in the three weeks since I've arrived. We hope to go to another part of the lake when the rainy season is over. Next excursion is the mountains!