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 “Remaining Journal”, which is in effect my diary entry for 15 August 1979.
Wednesday 15th of August 1979 –
Anil and I went shopping in Curepipe this morning, and this afternoon Jan Sooknah took us for a drive to see some beautiful places around Moka which we hadn’t seen.
This evening we went to Dan’s and got back late for a late dinner and now bed.
Perhaps this picture is Floréal or Curepipe or Moka
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 “Remaining Journal”, which is in effect my diary entry for 14 August 1979.
Tuesday 14th of August 1979 –
At Sooknah’s; did very little during the day, except in the afternoon his brother in law (Dan) and his wife (Sheila) came around. They invited us over for tomorrow. Anil and I were supposed to go to the postponed party today, but it was cancelled at the last minute because of the strikes.
Instead we had another interesting chat (Ahalia is very good at those) and went to bed.
I don’t think I got any pictures of Jan Sooknah and his family. He was a wealthy barrister who lived in Floréal. I don’t think he wanted me to take pictures, otherwise I would have done.
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 “Remaining Journal”, which is in effect my diary entry for 13 August 1979.
Monday 13th of August 1979 –
Went early to Shahil’s, but because of bus strike, his father had to shuttle all the workers to work et cetera and so we couldn’t make an early enough start to go to Île aux Cerfs (as planned). Instead we want we instead we went to Grand Baie and other resorts along the north coast.
We returned early to be collected by Jan Sooknah. We went to his place, had dinner there and chatted until quite late.
I’m pretty sure this picture was taken at Grand Baie that day. Left to right: Dat Biltoo, Anil Biltoo, Shahil Soniassy, Nanda Soniassy, then Mr & Mrs Soniassy with Shahil & Nanda’s two younger siblings.
Here is an extract from my third letter, which is in effect my diary entry for 19 July 1979:
Okay folks it’s tonight in fact and we are not going anywhere else so here is the news from today. This morning we wrote some letters and went out. We met one of our new found friends who works in the bakery and he showed us around that. Then we returned home, had lunch, and the Marraz took us to see the sugar plant – a most interesting sight, sweet!!?
Then we came home to meet Jan Sooknah. Marraz and Jan play football for a club team and we four, along with Bhavesh (Marraz’s eldest son) went there. Marraz is a superb player. He used to play for a first division team and without him his team would never have drawn two-all. Jan is okay but too fat!!!
Marraz, Anandani and Bhavesh BiltooBhavesh showing his best for the camera
Then we went home for supper, which was a superb curry. The food is all marvellous here. Then Anil and I went for a walk down to Lynford Smith’s, but he was out so we came home again.
A bit of bad news. We saw a beautiful bird out of the window and Marraz immediately went and got his own beautiful pair of binoculars: good job I hadn’t given him those binos earlier. What I plan to do is to bring home the binos and buy something here. In a way it is good, as Marraz has no car at the moment as it is being repaired, so plans have been changed and we will stay with lots of other relatives during the five weeks, so I can buy several small gifts.
Anyway, see you soon, lots of love, Ian
I think this might have also been the day that I bought some hand-crafted silver earrings for Grandma Anne. I wanted to get her an especially nice present, as she had always been very generous to me and in fact might (on reflection) have part-funded my flight to Mauritius.
It was an in-joke in the Harris family that Grandma Anne never really liked the presents she was given and that she had a trunk into which she threw most such presents after receiving them with grace, the present never to be seen again.
But she did like big, dangley earrings and I took soundings with Marraz and Anandani. The latter was the school mistress at the local primary school. She suggested that I go to the parents of one of her charges. They were silversmiths and would have a range of hand-crafted silver earrings of every possible description.
Anandani sent Bhavesh with me and Anil on this errand. Bhavesh blurted a message in creole to the parents, which Anil loosely translated as a statement that I was, to all intents and purposes, a member of the family and a threat that all hell would break loose if they tried to charge me a tourist price rather than a sensible price.
I chose a particularly dangley pair of highly-crafted silver earrings. They quoted a price. It sounded fair to me, but I asked them, through sign language and some very rudimentary Creole if that was the last price. They assured me through sign language and expertly-deployed Creole that it was absolutely the local, last price, below which they simply could not go. Anandani seemed very satisfied that she had done her bit when i showed her the wares and told her the price I had paid.
Grandma Anne said that the earrings were lovely when i gave them to her, but I still half-expected never to see them again. Except that is not what happened. In fact, Grandma Anne was rarely seen wearing any other earrings for the rest of her life – albeit only a couple of years. Either she genuinely liked them, or she was genuinely proud of the story – i.e. that her grandson had gone off to this far away place and chosen earrings for her, or both. In any case, the gift was a great success.
I wrote letters to mum and dad which doubled as my diary/travelogue. Here is a scan and then transcription of the second of them, which relates to 17 July 1979.
Dear folks,
As you may have realised from the drift at the end of letter one, I had the inspiration to save writing time. You want to know what I’m doing all the time and I want to keep a diary. Thus I am sending you my diary as I go along which is why I wanted to keep the letters for me when I come back. Please send me news from home about once a week or fortnight or I will feel forgotten.
This morning we first went to Lynford Smith’s house (the priest from England) who drove us to Rose Hill to Garçon’s house…
There we had a workers lunch in the market, a full lunch for a big 10p (a little less). We then visited Jan Sooknah a cousin of Bill’s. who immediately insisted we go to his house for tea and was very pleased to see us. He is a lawyer. All lawyers here are very rich. He lives in the district which is the Mauritian equivalent of Beverly Hills or Hampstead Garden Suburb!!!
They want us to stay there for a while: we may do later. Then we came home for supper where we had octopus; the food is superb!!
We went for a walk after supper and befriended the sons of the owner of the café (very convenient) and some of their friends. Marraz Biltoo is very popular around here and knowing him means instant acceptance and friendship.
Sugar cane grows like grass in Mauritius, you just tear it off the trees. It has the fascinating property that the fibres (if you carry on chewing rather than spit them out) clean your teeth and are good for the gums.
Good gums with all that sugar cane, Anil?
We are having the time of our lives here, the weather is good And improving. It is so different from England you wouldn’t believe it.
I won’t write a whole letter every day; soon the news will become less no doubt, so I will dig sections of letters, but I will be writing each day, you could say.
