An overview of my 1979 trip to Mauritius, courtesy of the wonderfully hospitable Biltoo family, can be found by clicking here or below:
Here is an extract from my sixth letter, which is in effect my diary entry for 25 July 1979:
Today was even more interesting [than 24 July]. We went north today, but Garçon couldn’t come so we took the chauffeur. We went to see the largest sugar factory in the world; Flacq Union – and saw the town of Flacq…
I think that massive old sugar factory in Flacq must have closed down by now. Possibly just as well; it didn’t look very “health and safety” as I recall it. But fear not, Alteo, for example, still refines plenty of sugar in Mauritius 40 years later.
I’m pretty sure Marraz was with us that day and I’m pretty sure it was him who made some very gut-wrenching remarks about the only possible method for a sugar factory worker to take a piss if he got caught short while up on that enormous factory rigging. “why do you think demerara sugar looks the way it does?”, said Marraz. I’ve never been able to look at demerara again without thinking of that factory and that remark.
…and went to Belmar Plage [sic] where we bathed and had picnic lunch. Then we went to Pamplemousses Gardens (THE BOTANICAL GARDENS) for a brief visit to “sus the place out”. We intend to spend a full-half day or whole day there photographing and observing. We returned [to Rose Hill], prepared for dinner and then went to Roy’s for dinner. (Roy is Jan Sooknah’s wife’s brother – GET IT???) where we had a very pleasant evening.
“Belmar Plage” must refer to Belle Mare Plage, which is now (40 years later) a fancy-shmancy resort, like so much of Mauritius now. It was just a nice beach back then.
In some ways the events of this day helps to sum up much of what has happened to Mauritius in the intervening 40 years; in 1979 most of Mauritius’s economy was based on sugar cane (70% to 80% if I recall correctly). Now sugar cane plays a small part, while tourism is a major part of the economy. I talk about this some more in my prelude piece from April 1979, regarding VS Naipaul’s seminal essay on newly-independent Mauritius, The Overcrowded Barracoon.
Another topic from the Overcrowded Barracoon came up that day, which affected me deeply and triggered an element of political alertness in me that remains to this day.
As we drove around the coast along the Flacq peninsula, we drove near Le Saint Géran.
“See that hotel over there”, said Marraz to me.
“That hotel is run by a South African Company on an apartheid basis. You could walk through the front door and be served. We could only enter through the back door and could only serve people like you.”
“But that’s outrageous”, I said.
“That’s what apartheid is”, said Marraz, “and our lousy government is letting the South African’s treat our country as an offshoot of their corrupt South African regime.”
That conversation really brought home to me what apartheid was. Before then, I’d never really given it a great deal of thought before. It hadn’t really touched my life, I suppose. The little I knew of it, I realised it was bad. Also that it was stopping a darned good cricket team from playing international cricket. But on my return from Mauritius, I found myself quite avidly anti-apartheid. I switched away from Barclays Bank as soon as I was able and abstained from South African fruit and wine until apartheid was over.