As soon as we got to Mauritius, Megan, Jordan and I got on the bus to the Terre de Paix children’s center. When we got there we learned a lot about the educational system in Mauritius and what the Terre de Paix does. Apparently, around 6th grade, kids in Mauritius take a test they call the CPE. If you don’t pass the test, you can’t move on to high school, but 40% of kids don’t pass the test. If you don’t pass, you either have to repeat the grade and retake the test the next year until you do pass, or you just drop out of school. The Terre de Paix works with these children and tries to teach them different things in different ways. The official language of Mauritius is English, but most kids learn a creole language as their home language and have a hard time being taught in English. Terre de Paix teaches them in the French creole. Even though they won’t ever be able to take and pass the CPE in English, at least they will know something about reading and writing. Another reason some kids fail the CPE is because of behavior problems. Terre de Paix tries to find things these kids are good at so they will actually want to be in school. They have classes in music, sculpting, painting, and this weird wood-burning tool that people draw with (kind of like my sipring keychain from South Africa). The behavior problems usually go away when they have these things that they are actually good at to look forward to. A lot of kids go on to work in hotels or some other kind of tourism place that you don’t need higher education for, but you do need social skills and reading and writing that they can get from Terre de Paix. Besides all that for older kids, they have a preschool too. We went in when they were eating lunch and hung out with the little kids for awhile. Because this school is taught in the French creole (even the preschoolers, which I didn’t understand because they haven’t failed any CPEs yet) we couldn’t really talk to any of the students. It reminded me of something I noticed in other countries but never really thought about until I was actually in a situation where I couldn’t communicate with anyone. There are two things that can bridge any language gap.
1. Music- when we visited the music class, the students played us a Beatles song, I guess assuming we would recognize it, which we did. I thought it was funny that on a random island off the coast of Madagascar, they would play us a Beatles song. It made us all the more into it and it was really cool to see them learning songs like that.
2. Digital Cameras – kids LOVE digital cameras. They think it is the coolest thing to be able to see themselves in the picture right after it’s taken. What they like even more is taking the pictures and seeing them on the screen right away. I let them use mine for a minute…mistake! I have about 20 pictures of fingers and legs and nothingness. Ironically, in Mauritius something they liked just as much, if not more, than a digital camera was a Polaroid camera. Someone on the trip had one and they loved watching the pictures develop. So, when it comes to going to a country where you don’t speak the language, we had the right technology 60 years ago and it took about 50 years to get it again.
We got back from the school around 1 and took a taxi to a beach. The taxi ride was about 25 minutes so we talked to the taxi driver for awhile. He had some interesting things to say about living in Mauritius and being a Muslim. At first it was really cool how open he was being, but after awhile he got kind of weird. We had asked him if he had any kids and he said “I’m not married.” About 10 minutes later, someone called him on his cell phone and when he got off he said “That’s my wife.” We laughed and said “I thought you weren’t married.” And he said, “I was just kidding with you.” Then he proceeded to tell us all about his son from his first marriage and how his wife left him and now he has a second wife…the whole thing was just really weird and after that we didn’t know what to believe anymore. But, something weird about some countries is that the taxis will wait for you and you don’t even pay them until the end. We paid about the same to have this guy drive us to the beach, wait 3 hours, and then drive us back as we would have paid for 2 separate taxis. When we got to the beach, we ate lunch. It was a cool outdoor open-air restaurant, which randomly served Chinese food. Apparently Chinese people make up a small part of the Mauritius population. It was funny because whenever someone tried to tell us the people that live on Mauritius, they would say “The population is about half Hindu, there are about equal parts Muslims and Christians, and there are some Chinese.” It just made me laugh every time because Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, are people from a certain religion and Chinese people are people from a country…it was like they didn’t count as much to the people on Mauritius. They could be any number of religions, but they’re just “Chinese.” After lunch, we went to the beach and rode a banana boat. It was pretty funny. Then we got in the water which was soooo warm. It was one of those island beaches that I’m not used to that doesn’t have waves. The water was really still and clear and nice. We left around 4:30, got our taxi driver to stop at a grocery store, and then went back to the ship EXHAUSTED. It was soooo humid on Mauritius. I haven’t been in that kind of humidity since I left the USA, and my energy levels couldn’t deal with it. Neither could my sweat glands. It was pretty disgusting. From here on, everyone is pretty much counting down the days until India. I’m pretty sure we get there Thursday.
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