Here's an article of mine that was published in the summer edition of The Liberal.
---
Letter from Abroad: Mauritius
“That, sir, is a Hydrangea,” says my taxi driver as we loop through sugar cane fields, moving away from the airport, “native to Mauritius, and that”, he continues, now pointing to the horizon, “is a rainbow.”
He’s Indian by extraction, fluent in both English and French, but he speaks about the arcing spectrum of light as if this were also peculiar to his patch in the Indian Ocean. The Mauritians are proud of their island’s pigments and variety, which have long impressed jaded visitors.
“Went ashore in the forenoon at Port Louis,” wrote Mark Twain, on 16 April 1896, having docked in the capital on a lecture tour, “a little town, but with the largest variety of nationalities and complexions we have met yet. French, English, Chinese, Arabs, Africans with wool, blacks with straight hair, East Indians, half whites, quadroons—and great varieties in costumes and colours.”
Though Twain’s terms are outdated, the island’s colour and diversity still makes it an admirable place. In 1982, this reef-lined state became the first African country to vote an opposition party into office. Despite clearly delineated ethnic divides- there’s a white elite, a Hindu majority and minority of Muslims- the island’s communities remain harmonious, and the electorate continue vote for policies, rather than along colour lines. Its economy puts on a few healthy percentage points each year, and the state manages to channel this into improving the livelihoods of its citizens. Mauritius has the second highest GDP per capita in Africa, and successive governments have invested heavily training and infrastructure; legal professionals, versed in first world languages and European bureaucracy, vie for outsourcing. Last year, as if to conjure in the tertiary sector, the government threw up a countrywide wi-fi network, giving eighty percent of the island's lucky 1.2 million inhabitants, free broadband access.
Yet, there’s trouble too. Industry is facing three-fold assault: the removal of preferential EU sugar agreements - Britain alone buys about £123m worth of Mauritian sugar each year- would knock Mauritius’ principal export, while the World Trade Organisation’s lowering of textile controls threatens its other core industry. Add to this rising costs of oil, and you can understand why the current prime minister, Navinchandra Ramgoolam, believes his country is being ‘punished for its success’, and why Mauritius' Central Statistics Office has revised down its growth forecast three times in recent months.
Tourism provides a precious income, tiding the country over, as clouds gather over established industries, while newer ones wait take off. Most holidaymakers keen to see what lies beyond their resorts compound catch a cab into Port Louis. Most cab drivers, drawn by good parking, drop their passengers at The Caudan Waterfront, a harbour-side shopping development, housing informal restaurants and modern shops that wouldn’t look out of place in Barcelona, Auckland or Portsmouth. Progress further into the town and you’ll find a covered bazaar, also popular with visitors, selling coral necklaces and t-shirts.
Only after passing these two attractions do you hit upon the hive of samosa and noodle stands, Indian-style soft drink bars, tiny jewellery foundries, voluminous haberdasheries, neat internet cafes, and comprehensive bootleg tape stalls, which appear to be the most honest rendering Mauritius’ street life. There’s bustle, there’s no sense of danger, as inhabitants go about their city, tucked tight into the Moka Range of peaks.
Many local businesses cite Twain’s words, who recorded his trip in his travelogue, Following The Equator, when promoting the island’s qualities. They say he wrote that Mauritius as a kind of blueprint for heaven. Yet few acknowledge that the author was actually recording the Mauritians’ own boasts, rather than expressing his views.
Twain himself described this scenery- beautiful, though bereft of broad strokes- as “a Sunday landscape. Perspective, and the enchantments wrought by distance are wanting.”
Without straining this metaphor too much, Mauritius could also lack perspective in another sense too. Among its powerful trading partners, there’s no clear line of sight from their lofty spirit of development through benevolent globalisation and the effects pernickety global treaties and institutions have at ground level, within this small state.
Mauritius could become a Singapore or South Korea for Africa, a missing link between newly industrialized countries far off its eastern shore, and the less developed nations immediately to the west of it. Yet, if it fails to find the gold at its rainbow’s end, then you can’t help but feel that the ideal of development through the free market perishes with it.
