Mauritius - Returns at Mahébourg

Mauritius – Returns at Mahébourg

It is the lull of the late afternoon.  Clotting clouds have gathered around the monolith of Le Morne and, as they attempt to rise higher - heavy and hulking - the sky gives way and begins to drip with the first rains of tropical moisture.  Flowers begin to sing with a vibrant hue; I can see whites, yellows, purples and a deep magenta surrounded by a myriad of palm tree greens.  Each leaf stirs to an unseen breeze; birds smooth out slow, soft trills.  

I am too relaxed to read; too content to think; blissed out by the same love of Mauritian landscape that ripened the Romantic writing of Jacques Bernadin de Saint-Pierre almost 250 years ago.  There is something magical about being in Mauritius which always makes my heart feel it is in a sacred space.

The philosopher Joseph Campbell often spoke about discovering your bliss in sacred spaces – an awareness that you are being guided by hidden hands through open doors towards a path which seems to have been waiting for you.  Once you find this path then stay with it; journey towards the thing your heart really wants... no matter what. When you follow bliss, you arrive in bliss.  Poets are redefined by him as those souls who have managed to make a profession and a lifestyle out of being in touch with their bliss. 

Mauritius is the place where my original Siesta del Somewhere began in 2007.  Points of origin, like points of departure, have the potential to transform us forever.  We are reminded of Odysseus, hero of Ancient Greece, who on finally returning to his island home of Ithaka is unrecognisable to his beloved wife, Penelope.  Whenever we return ‘home’ something of it, and something of us, has changed. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre left France in 1768 an engineer; he arrived back in Paris three years later as a writer, already crafting his Mauritian love story Paul et Virginie.  When we travel, we collect stories and experiences to share, creating negotiations of space in which these exchanges can touch, affect and transform ourselves as well as others. 

We could possibly even argue that Bernardin de Saint-Pierre had discovered his own bliss in Mauritius, and was able to carry it home to France.  There, it continued to speak to his heart, enabling him to create a new life for himself in familiar surroundings – understanding in the echoes of Psalm 87: ‘All my springs are in thee.’

Sitting here now, watching shadings of rain fall far out across the boom of surf near the horizon, I reflect upon a painting I had seen earlier today, at a museum in Mahébourg.  It depicted Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s characters Paul and Virginie.  While looking at it, I remembered having bought the novel on my last day in Mauritius in 2007 – at the airport bookshop.  I read it as my plane flew across African skies towards Europe.  Each word I encountered on that flight made me fall in love with the book more and more.  Even now, I still find more and more to love about that book each time I read it – discovering something new about it and me... the same way we do about our loved ones (when we stop and look closely enough).

Standing in front of that painting today, I realised just how much that book and that initial visit to Mauritius had helped create the life I was now enjoying:  writing a PhD thesis on travel literature in which Bernadin de Saint-Pierre played a minor but influential role... back in Mauritius writing... watching how following bliss had played a minor but influential role in everything that happened the moment I left here in 2007 and continues to unfold now.  One book, one island, and a billion new possibilities every day.  How much I love this place.