Le Malaise Creole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius 9781782388753

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LE MALAISE CRÉOLE

New Directions in Anthropology General Editor: Jacqueline Waldren, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford Volume 1 Coping with Tourists: European Reactions to Mass Tourism Edited by Jeremy Boissevain Volume 2 A Sentimental Economy: Commodity and Community in Rural Ireland Carles Salazar Volume 3 Insiders and Outsiders: Paradise and Reality in Mallorca Jacqueline Waldren Volume 4 The Hegemonic Male: Masculinity in a Portuguese Town Miguel Vale de Almeida Volume 5 Communities of Faith: Sectarianism, Identity, and Social Change on a Danish Island Andrew S. Buckser Volume 6 After Socialism: Land Reform and Rural Social Change in Eastern Europe Edited by Ray Abrahams Volume 7 Immigrants and Bureaucrats: Ethiopians in an Israeli Absorption Center Esther Hertzog Volume 8 A Venetian Island: Environment, History and Change in Burano Lidia Sciama Volume 9 Recalling the Belgian Congo: Conversations and Introspection Marie-Bénédicte Dembour Volume 10 Mastering Soldiers: Conflict, Emotions, and the Enemy in an Israeli Military Unit Eyal Ben-Ari Volume 11 The Great Immigration: Russian Jews in Israel Dina Siegel Volume 12 Morals of Legitimacy: Between Agency and System Edited by Italo Pardo Volume 13 Academic Anthropology and the Museum: Back to the Future Edited by Mary Bouquet Volume 14 Simulated Dreams: Israeli Youth and Virtual Zionism Haim Hazan

Volume 15 Defiance and Compliance: Negotiating Gender in Low-Income Cairo Heba Aziz Morsi El-Kholy Volume 16 Troubles with Turtles: Cultural Understandings of the Environment on a Greek Island Dimitrios Theodossopoulos Volume 17 Rebordering the Mediterranean: Boundaries and Citizenship in Southern Europe Liliana Suarez-Navaz Volume 18 The Bounded Field: Localism and Local Identity in an Italian Alpine Valley Jaro Stacul Volume 19 Foundations of National Identity: From Catalonia to Europe Josep Llobera Volume 20 Bodies of Evidence: Burial, Memory and the Recovery of Missing Persons in Cyprus Paul Sant Cassia Volume 21 Who Owns the Past? The Politics of Time in a ‘Model’ Bulgarian Village Deema Kaneff Volume 22 An Earth-Colored Sea: “Race,” Culture, and the Politics of Identity in the Postcolonial PortugueseSpeaking World Miguel Vale de Almeida Volume 23 Science, Magic and Religion: The Ritual Process of Museum Magic Edited by Mary Bouquet and Nuno Porto Volume 24 Crossing European Boundaries: Beyond Conventional Geographical Categories Edited by Jaro Stacul, Christina Moutsou and Helen Kopnina Volume 25 Documenting Transnational Migration: Jordanian Men Working and Studying in Europe, Asia and North America Richard Antoun Volume 26 Le Malaise Créole: Ethnic Identity in Mauritius Rosabelle Boswell

LE MALAISE CRÉOLE


Ethnic Identity in Mauritius

Rosabelle Boswell

Berghahn Books New York • Oxford

First published in 2006 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2006 Rosabelle Boswell All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without the written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Almeida, Miguel Vale de. [Mar da cor da terra. English] An earth-colored sea : “race,” culture, and the politics of identity in the postcolonial Portuguese-speaking world / Miguel Vale de Almeida. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57181-607-0 (alk. paper) 1. Portuguese--Foreign countries--History. 2. Ethnicity--Portuguese-speaking countries. 3. Blacks--Race identity--Brazil. 4. Portuguese--Trinidad and Tobago--Ethnic identity. 5. Pluralism (Social sciences) 6. Race awareness. 7. Group identity--East Timor. 8. Group identity--Portugal. 9. Portuguese-speaking countries--Race relations. I. Title. DP534.5.A46 2003 305.86'9--dc21

2003052193 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 1-84545-075-2 hardback

C ONTENTS




List of Illustrations

vii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Maps

xi

Acknowledgements

xv

Preface

xvii

1.

Unravelling le malaise Créole

1

2.

Anthropology at ‘Home’

15

3.

Defining Creoles

41

4.

Dignity and Prestige in Flacq

77

5.

Re-viewing the Past in Karina

105

6.

Imagining Homelands in Roche Bois and the River Camp

135

7.

Negotiating Landscapes in Chamarel and Le Morne

169

8.

Shifting Selves

205

Bibliography

213

Index

233

L IST

OF

I LLUSTRATIONS


Maps

1. Map of the Indian Ocean, Showing Mauritius.

xi

2. Flacq.

xii

3. Port Louis, Showing Roche Bois.

xii

4. The Black River District, Showing Chamarel and Le Morne Villages.

xiii

Figures 1. The Creoles of Mauritius and Class Differentiation among the ‘Black’ Creoles.

47

2. A Creole Shoe-mender in Flacq.

60

3. The Ravanne, a Traditional Instrument Used in Composing Sega.

63

4. Légions de Marie (Legions of Mary).

74

5. Hare Krishna Vendors Close to the Bus Depot in 1999.

82

6. Women Labourers Leaving an Estate after Working for the Day.

83

7. A Creole Business Owner and His Son in Flacq.

97

8. ‘We Are a God-fearing People’: Ingrid and the Shrine in Her Yard.

117

9. School Children from Karina.

119

10. Clency and His Panel-beating Business.

vii

125

List of Illustrations

11. The River Camp.

139

12. Africa, Ethiopia and Black America on the Wall.

152

13. Taking Education Seriously: A Mother Collects Her Children from School.

162

14. A Soup Table in Roche Bois.

163

15. The March against Prostitution and Drugs in Roche Bois.

163

16. A View of the Black River Gorges.

173

17. Noellie and Her Daughter.

174

18. Entrepreneurs in Chamarel.

178

19. Stephano and His Délices de France.

191

20. Mount Le Morne as Seen from the Village and the Hotel Side.

196

21. Casiers (Fish-traps) Started and Completed.

200

viii

L IST

OF

A BBREVIATIONS




BIOT

British Indian Ocean Territory

BJP

Baharatiya Janata Party

CPE

Certificate of Primary Education

CSO

Central Statistical Office

EPZ

Export Processing Zone

MLF

Mouvement Liberasyon Fam

MMM

Mouvement Militant Mauricien

MSM

Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien

NGAP

National Gender Action Plan

OF

Organisation Fraternel

PMSD

Parti Mauricien Sociale Democrate

PTr

Parti Travailliste

RSS

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

SC

Secondary Certificate of Education

VOH

Voice of Hindu

ix

M APS




Comoros

15˚

AFRICA Madagascar Mauritius

Reunion

Indian Ocean

30˚

45˚

Map 1. Map of the Indian Ocean, Showing Mauritius.

xi

30˚

60˚

xii Karina

Hospital

Built up area Industrial area Cultivated land (cane sugar) Other land Main Roads Other Roads

Camp Garreau

Boulet Blanc

Camp Raffia

Kilometres

1

Bramsthan

Argy

Old Mill

Camp Bouillon

La Porte Providence

CommunityCentre School Church Mosque Temple 0

Boulet Rouge

Riche Mare

Centre de Flacq

Stade Auguste Vollaire

Hermitage

Camp Poorun

St Remy

Plaine de Gersigny

Hospital

Sugar Factory

Constance

Pont Blanc

Map 2. Flacq. Source: adapted from Philips Atlas (1994).

Flacq

Hotels with more than 25 rooms Hotels with more than 50 rooms Industries MEDIA Industrial Site Private Industrial Site Sugar Factory

Maps

xiii

C

Built up area Industrial area Cultivated land Other land Forest & Woodland

Coromandel

Coromandel Industrial Zone

Camp Benoit

Plaine Lauzun Industrial Zone

Cite Valijee

Municipal boundaries Motorways Main Roads

Tranquebar

Citadel

PORT LOUIS

0

1 Kilometres

Cité la Cure

Sainte Croix Abercrombie

Plaine Verte Government House National Assembly

Camp Yoloff

Cathedrals Hospital

La Casernes

Bell Village

Pailles

Cassis

HARBOUR

Mer Rouge Industrial Area

Roche Bois

Terre Rouge

Map 3. Port Louis, Showing Roche Bois. Source: adapted from Philips Atlas (1994).

Town Hall Market Post Office Church Mosque Temple

Pointe aux Sables

O

E

Grand River Bay

AN DI IN

Petite Rivière

Petite Verger

MAURITIUS

N

A

La Cocoterie

2

Maps

Maps

Port Louis

I N D I A N

O C E A N

MAURITIUS

Curepipe

Chamarel Paradis Hotel Dinarobin Hotel Le Berjaya Hotel

La Gaulette Le Morne

MEDIA Industrial Site DSM Industrial Site Private Industrial Site Sugar Factory Tea Factory Salt Pan

Hotel – more than 25 rooms Hotel – more than 50 rooms Places of interest Black River Gorges National Park 0

10 Kilometres

Map 4. The Black River District, Showing Chamarel and Le Morne Villages.

xiv

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS




This book would not have been possible without the people of Mauritius who graciously allowed me into their homes and lives. Jeanne Mercure, Maud Ste Marie, Ella Alexander, Carine Charlot, Marie-Nöelle Pierre-Louis, Dani Auguste and ‘Pervanse’ Louise, deserve special mention for their patience and willingness to share their knowledge. Friends at the University of Mauritius also offered constructive criticism. I thank them for their important inputs. But most of all, I thank my family. My mother and father, Ghislaine and Julien Laville, made me curious about Mauritius and supported me through difficult times, especially when I was away from my family. My husband Bevan and my daughter, Naomi, offered immeasurable emotional support in the completion of this book and my sisters, Marjorie and Françoise believed in me. This list is not complete without a vote of thanks to my ancestors and last, but by no means least, I thank God for giving me the courage to write about them and their descendants. Earlier versions of this book received substantive comments from my colleagues at Rhodes University in South Africa. I sincerely thank Chris, Robin and Mike for their advice and gentle encouragement. Financial support for research came from the Netherlands Foundation For the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), Rhodes University in South Africa, and the Council For the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA).

xv

P REFACE




Identity is a people’s source of meaning, experience and solace. There appears to be greater concern with questions of identity among those who are subjected to domination and stigmatisation. For, in these situations, one’s identity is often designated and rationalised by the powerful and there appears to be little hope for reprieve. In such contexts, identity can assume a primordial dimension and one comes to believe untruths told about self and other. This book concerns the Creoles of Mauritius and seeks to understand le malaise Créole – a phenomenon that is said to affect the positive incorporation of Creoles in Mauritian society. The Creoles are primarily the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves who were brought to the island from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Under slavery Mauritian society and identities have experienced both fragmentation and hybridisation, such that three hundred years later, Creoles are a people of mixed African, Indian, Chinese and European heritage. Personal experience of life as a member of the Creole population and the lack of substantive anthropological studies focussing on Creoles has motivated my research on le malaise Créole. Some researchers (Miles 1999, Caroll and Caroll 2000, Eriksen 2000 and Srebnik 2000) have analysed the workings of the Mauritian state and the general position of Creoles in Mauritian society. However in the course of research I did not come across ‘experience-near’ ethnography on Creoles. In writing about Mauritius I aimed to provide such an account. Research on the Creoles highlighted contemporary concerns (Papastergiadis 2000, Reddy 2001, Zegeye 2001) with the paradoxes of identity formation in postcolonial states and honed in on the condition of hybridity in a postcolonial society. Methodologically, research into le malaise Créole included analyses of the dynamics of ‘anthropology at home’ (Jackson 1987 and Peirano 1998), and indicated the increasing necessity of multi-sited research (Marcus 1995) in developing countries such as Mauritius. Finally, the study makes a case for further research on the links between subaltern identity and poverty in postcolonial states. xvii

Preface

Chapter One provides a theoretical framework for studying le malaise Créole. It suggests that imperial and colonial interpretations of ethnicity and culture have influenced the ways in which people of mixed descent have been classified and treated in colonialised states. Specifically, I argue that the negative perception of hybridity has meant that people of mixed descent are often compelled to primordialise their identity in order to be positively positioned in the existing cultural hierarchy. They do this because Mauritian society consists of hegemonies where fictions of cultural and ethnic homogeneity are imperative to the maintenance of hierarchy. Chapter Two examines the influence of research at home on the ethnography. The modernisation of Mauritius and the fact that people are constantly on the move encouraged multi-sited fieldwork. Added to this, I was doing research at ‘home’, a situation that offered opportunities and imposed limitations on the data-gathering and participant observation process. An initial foray into this social complexity necessitates an introduction to the island society, which is offered towards the end of the chapter. Chapter Three identifies the Creoles of Mauritius in geographical, religious and cultural terms. It makes a distinction between global definitions of the term Creole and suggests that, in Mauritius, the term Creole is more often used in reference to the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves. Here I argue that Creoles are a heterogeneous people, whose identity has been influenced by a wide variety of forces and choices. Subsequent sections of the book take a closer look at the particular situations and ethnicity of Creoles in specific locations on the island. Through these microcosms, it is possible to perceive the varied positioning of Creoles in the economy and society of Mauritius. Chapter Four reviews the situation of Creoles in Centre-de-Flacq (referred to as Flacq in the remainder of the book), a bustling village where there is a high level of intercultural and interethnic contact. Research in Flacq suggests that it is becoming more Indo-Mauritian in character than it was approximately twenty years ago. Demographic and infrastructural changes in Flacq create contrasting landscapes. Flacq has commercial centres, plantation communities, cyber-cafés, specialist tailors and textile factories – in short, a variety of locales for social and cultural exchange. Creoles living in Flacq have in some cases acquired values and organisational resources similar to dominant groups, which enable them to benefit from the modernisation of Mauritius. For example, increasingly Christianity has become a resource for Creoles and affords them leadership opportunities, psychological support in the face of discrimination, social structure, and positive socialisation. However, Christianity is also double-edged in that it often reinforces social and racial hierarchies through the practices and ideologies of the church. The chapter on Flacq specifically focuses on consumption among Creoles and suggests that this is not due to deeply embedded epicurean values but largely to their attempts to achieve a measure of prestige and dignity in a society that then and now has denied them both. xviii

Preface

Chapter Five discusses the situation of Creoles in Karina, a village that lies approximately ten kilometres from Flacq. Originally a village cluster that provided labour for a neighbouring sugar estate, Karina is perceived by outsiders and non-Creoles as an isolated and hostile place. Here one finds a concentration of Creole families who claim to be part of a clan whose primary ancestor was a landowning Franco-Mauritian. Research in Karina suggests that two significant causes of le malaise Créole is the loss of land (experienced after the abolition of slavery), and the feeling that one does not occupy a positive space in the Mauritian cultural hierarchy, because of one’s slave ancestry and blackness. In this chapter I argue that, through positive narratives of the past, Karina residents are able to emphasise the primordiality of Creole identity, and in turn improve their positioning within the Mauritian cultural hierarchy. Chapter Six continues the discussion on the primordialisation of identity. Residents of the River Camp are in many instances able to appeal to a primordialised Rodriguais identity through their invocation of homeland discourses. Although the residents of the River Camp are more recent migrants to Mauritius than those living in Roche Bois, one finds the development of a symbiotic relationship between the inhabitants of both settlements and that attempts are being made to recreate for affective and political purposes, Rodrigues society in the local context. Poverty is also an important aspect of le malaise Créole, and is significant particularly in the River Camp. Poverty not only has an economic effect, it also influences outsiders’ perceptions and treatment of the River Camp and its inhabitants. Outsiders to both Roche Bois and the River Camp trace le malaise Créole to the social pathologies resulting from socio-economic marginalising by dominant groups since Mauritius experienced industrialisation in the 1970s and 1980s. However, I encountered important social and economic differences between the residents of Roche Bois and those of the River Camp, suggesting that the experience of poverty depends on how long a Rodriguais had lived in Mauritius, whether they had social support from family and neighbours, and whether outsiders perceived residents to be poor. Thus a major cause of malaise in these places was recent settlement and the experience of negative stereotyping, which largely contributed to impoverishment. To counter negative stereotyping, Creoles in Roche Bois and the River Camp have begun to identify with the African diaspora and are revalidating an Africanised Creole identity. The final sites of research are Chamarel and Le Morne villages. I chose to do research in these villages because Mauritians in general perceive these as being places (along with Roche Bois, Flacq and Karina), where ‘real’ Creoles reside. At the time of research, Chamarel and Le Morne residents were involved in contestations (with government, historians, land owners and investors) over landscapes of which they are a part. In both these villages residents were aware of the impositions of dominant groups but engaged with these impositions in an attempt to include their own interpretations of history and Creole identity in Mauritian society. In Le Morne, these interpretations form an important part of the circumscription of Creole xix

Preface

identity, whereas in Chamarel one finds the diversification of Creole identity through alternative narratives of the past and experiences of the present, despite the impositions of powerful others. The diverse manifestations of Creole identity in the places where I did fieldwork, and the fact that I felt compelled to do fieldwork in multiple locations to grasp the complexity of identity formation among Creoles, suggest that it will become increasingly difficult for anthropologists to confine fieldwork to a single location, particularly if they wish to understand the complexities of identity formation in postcolonial Africa. The ethnographic chapters of the book indicate clearly that the sites chosen for fieldwork are in fact also the units of analysis. Each site contributes a particular understanding of the phenomenon of le malaise Créole and provides a view of the situational specificity of Creole ethnicity. As I moved from one site to the other, I encountered various expressions of Creole identity. Each site is different in its particular history, legends (as in the case of Karina), socio-economic and demographic profile, access to resources, and geographical location. All these factors influence the manifestation of Creole ethnicity; had I limited myself to a study of one village or one location, I would not have perceived the variation and dynamics of Creole ethnicity in Mauritius. Jeremy Boissevain’s interest in and studies of European communities in the 1970s underscores the type of complexity found in places such as Mauritius and explains why, in most instances, anthropologists may find it difficult to implement research that examines villages and world systems. He says that: Trained on literature dealing with comparatively slowly changing, isolated, undifferentiated non-Western societies, anthropologists are often ill-equipped for the complexity of Europe. This complexity, and, increasingly, that of the rest of the world, cannot be handled adequately with traditional anthropological concepts such as equilibrium, corporation, balanced opposition, reciprocity, and consensus, for example. Nor is the traditional anthropological research technique of participant observer alone any longer sufficient…The high degree of centralization, the interrelation between various levels of integration, the impact of long-term processes, the sweep of change that can be documented across centuries still overwhelm many anthropologists. Consequently, many have sought refuge in villages, which they proceed to treat as isolated entities. They have tribalized Europe. (Boissevain 1975: 11)

In the course of research, I discovered that it is only in seeing Mauritian society as a place of various, discursive hegemonic formations that one begins to understand the intricacies of identity formation among Creoles. In what follows, I suggest that Mauritians have been keen to ‘make sense’ of bewildering social complexity by essentialising groups and treating hybrids as aberrations that threaten social order. However, not everyone receives the impositions of powerful groups and individuals passively nor is this process facilitated by modernisation and its encouragement of new freedoms.

xx

C HAPTER 1 U NRAVELLING

LE MAL AISE




C RÉOLE

When I started fieldwork in Mauritius in 1998, anthropological research in southern Africa was changing. There I was, a black Creole woman on the point of doing research in her home country and on her own people. Up to that point, I had received anthropological training from mostly white professors. South Africa was just emerging from the apartheid era and black anthropologists were few and far between. At the start of my fieldwork, I felt as though I had to convince my (mostly white) colleagues that I was setting out to do research and not about to launch a political career. I was also curious about the situation of Creoles’ in Mauritius. I had grown up among mostly Creole families on a sugar estate in Malawi and family and friends often reminded us of how lucky we were not to have Mauritian Creoles’ experience of domination and stigmatisation. I distinctly remember how those whose contracts with the sugar company had ended, cried when they had to return ‘home.’ For them, Malawi offered the ‘good life’, a better social status (as an expatriate) and a real chance for progress. As an émigrée I wondered arrogantly on what I could offer those Creoles who never managed to escape. Doing fieldwork at ‘home’ was a voyage of discovery. I came to know more about myself, the situations of families, friends and new acquaintances in Mauritius and their painful experiences in a society where I realised that Creoles are literally a people of no identity and value. This lack and the consequences of it were often referred to as le malaise Créole. In 1998 explanations for the phenomenon of le malaise Créole appeared to be located halfway between fact and fiction. Those who were confident about the developmental capacity of the Mauritian state and in the ability of Mauritians to prevail over their differences argued that le malaise Créole is a vestige of slavery and that only those who had not embraced modern existence were affected by it.

1

Le Malaise Créole

The Creoles are primarily the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves who were brought to the island by the Dutch, French and the English over a period of three hundred years. Under slavery Creoles experienced dispossession and both physical and psychological violence. Centuries later, the persistence of poverty, social problems and political marginalisation among Creoles is attributed to le malaise Créole and is discussed as a primordial element of Creole personality. The anthropologist, Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues that, among Creoles, ‘individualism and a certain joie de vivre tend to be strong values…[and that these] are demonstrably so deeply embedded in personal experiences and lifeworlds that they cannot be accounted for merely by referring to stereotypes and reflexive identity politics’ (Eriksen 2000: 198–99), and that ‘Creoles in general, quite contrary to the Hindus, lack cultural values and organisational resources enabling them to take collective advantage of industrialisation.’ From this perspective Creoles are unable to become modern subject citizens or critically reflect on their brutal past, as cultural values resulting from the experience of enslavement have become a part of their personality. Also, if there is any reflection, it is simply a means for Creole leadership to obtain power and economic reparations. This book reflects on the day-to-day experiences of Creoles in five different locations as a means to unravel le malaise Créole. It is argued that Mauritian Creoles exist within a society that consists of various overlapping factions, where the discourse of ‘rootedness’ plays a major role in the acquisition of authority and privilege or in the bid to secure control over social meaning. It is evident however, that Creoles are not just victims or pawns in a multiethnic society and le malaise Créole has become a powerful tool used by some Creoles to homogenise Creole identity so that the group can participate more effectively in the pluralist society. Field research in different sites indicated the multifaceted nature of le malaise Créole and led to four interpretations of the phenomenon that depend on the interpreter’s social and political positioning in the society. Mauritius has a long and substantive imperial and colonial history. The classificatory and political imperatives borne by such a history continue to impact on interpretations of ethnicity and culture. The European colonies of the southwest Indian Ocean region sought not only to acquire territory and a servile population to work for their benefit, they also attempted to inculcate their ideas, philosophies and moralities in the societies that they encountered. It seems that some were deeply aware of the need for boundaries. A major (and variously articulated) concern was how to maintain culture, civilization and whiteness in the face of ‘paganism’, savagery and blackness. Through law, the unequal distribution of wealth and accompanying patterns of social interaction segregation was reinforced and purification ‘marrying white’, Christianization and social mobility) prioritised. Such a situation fostered the negative perception of hybridity or mixed heritage and produced disastrous consequences for Creoles. As people of mixed descent they 2

Unravelling le malaise Créole

are caught in the double bind of being encouraged to: primordialise their identity (so that they may occupy a sanctioned space in the existing cultural hierarchy) and experiencing what it is to be a people of mixed heritage. Through fieldwork in five locations, I investigate how Creoles are grappling with this problem. One of my first discovery was that in the past thirty years Mauritius has experienced substantial modernisation. Today, it is a place where people are constantly on the move and, as I argue in Chapter Two, this fact encouraged me to do multi-sited fieldwork. Furthermore, as the researcher, I was an example of the many Mauritians (Creoles included) who were multiple ‘natives’ or had experience of social worlds beyond their home country. This fact (articulated through my own experiences of fieldwork) made me wonder about how different experiences could alter Mauritians’ responses to their colonial past and its impositions. Discussing le malaise Créole necessitates an attempt to identify the Creoles of Mauritius in geographical, religious and cultural terms. In Chapter Three I make a distinction between global definitions of the term Creole and suggest that, in Mauritius, the term Creole is more often used in reference to the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves. I argue that Creoles are a heterogeneous people, whose identity has been influenced by a wide variety of forces and choices. The particular situations and ethnicity of Creoles are highlighted and discussed in each subsequent chapter. Through these microcosms, it is possible to perceive the varied positioning of Creoles in the economy and society of Mauritius and to discuss the complex nature of le malaise Créole. The first village encountered is Flacq, a bustling village where there is a high level of intercultural and interethnic contact. Flacq is becoming more IndoMauritian in character than it was approximately twenty years ago. However, there are also major infrastructural changes in Flacq. These create contrasting landscapes, which are apparent in the village’s commercial centres, plantation communities, cyber-cafés, specialist tailors and textile factories – in short, a variety of locales for social and cultural exchange. Creoles living in Flacq have in some cases acquired values and organisational resources similar to the dominant group (middle-class, French speakers) in the village, which enable them to benefit from the modernisation of Mauritius. Christianity is also an important (traditional) resource for Creoles living in the village. It affords them leadership opportunities, psychological support in the face of discrimination, social structure, and positive socialisation. However, Christianity is also double-edged in that it often reinforces social hierarchies and hegemony through the practices and ideologies of the church. The chapter on Flacq explores the definitive role of Christianity for Creole identity and investigates ‘new’ social forces (specifically consumption) and their effects on Creoles’ senses of self. On the eastern boundary of Flacq is Karina, a village cluster that originally provided labour for a neighbouring sugar estate. I learned about Karina through rumours from outsiders and non-Creoles. It was described as an isolated and 3

Le Malaise Créole

hostile place, where Creoles are still ‘backward.’ In the village, I found a concentration of Creole families who claim to be part of a clan whose primary ancestor was a landowning Franco-Mauritian. In Karina le malaise Créole was seen as the loss of land (experienced after the abolition of slavery), and the experience of racism because of the ‘taint’ of slave ancestry and blackness. Through positive narratives of the past Karina residents attempted to weave a culturally authentic and valid story of their past and sought to emphasise the primordiality of their identity, and in turn improve their positioning within the Mauritian cultural hierarchy. On the north west coast of the island, just beyond the capital city of Port Louis, residents of Roche Bois (and its adjoining) River Camp attempt to emphasise a primordial Rodriguais identity by reminiscing about their homeland and sharing food and stories from Rodrigues island. Through these efforts, those living in the River Camp attempt to recreate Rodrigues society in the local context. However, as I show in Chapter Six, poverty often interferes with these attempts. One needs money to travel ‘home’, to buy things that are reminiscent of the homeland. Being mostly poor, River Camp residents also need money to reinforce their Rodriguais identity and to resist being stereotyped as the poorest of the poor. Here, le malaise Créole is seen as the social pathologies (alcoholism, prostitution, drug abuse and domestic violence) resulting from socio-economic marginalising by whites and wealthy Hindus. However, there are important social and economic differences between the residents of Roche Bois and those of the River Camp. A major cause of malaise in the River Camp is caused by recent settlement. Those recently settled were less likely to have accumulated capital that could be used for travel back to Rodrigues. They were also less likely to have a network of contacts or to have devised strategies that could assist in their social integration. In Roche Bois, I found that many young Creoles had begun to identify with the African diaspora as a way of revalidating an Africanised Creole identity. The final sites of research are Chamarel and Le Morne villages. I chose to do research in these villages because Mauritians in general perceive these as being places (along with Roche Bois, Flacq and Karina), where ‘real’ Creoles reside. At the time Chamarel and Le Morne residents were involved in contestations (with government, historians, land owners and investors) over land, which, they argued, formed a fundamental part of their identity. In both these villages residents were aware of the continued domination of white plantation owners (and recent white foreign investors) but engaged with these impositions in an attempt to include their own interpretations of history and Creole identity in Mauritian society. In Le Morne, these interpretations form an important part of the circumscription of Creole identity, whereas in Chamarel one finds the diversification of Creole identity through alternative narratives of the past, despite the demands of powerful others. The diverse manifestations of Creole identity in the places where I did fieldwork indicate the enormous complexity of identity formation in postcolonial 4

Unravelling le malaise Créole

Africa. They also suggest that it will become increasingly difficult for anthropologists to defend the practice of fieldwork in a single location within a limited period of time, if they wish to understand the extremely mobile and multifaceted nature of identity in the twenty-first century. The rich tapestry of ethnicity in Mauritius provides many aspects of identity of interest to present-day social researchers. It is a complex society where the reconstruction of ethnic identities calls for analyses of diaspora (Anthias 1998; Werbner 1999), ‘homeland discourses’, transnationalism (Cohen 1997b, van der Veer 1999), positional identities (Anthias 1998) and globalisation (Eriksen 2002). The ethnography calls for a rigorous analysis of hybridity and a politically sensitive approach to hegemony in order to unravel the phenomenon of le malaise Créole.

The Demise of Hybridity The present situation of Creoles in Mauritius may be compared to groups sharing similar histories elsewhere. The works of Caribbean authors, Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant (1990: 893) classify the Creoles of Mauritius among the diaspora of ‘Europeans and Africans in the small Caribbean islands; Europeans and Asians in certain areas of the Philippines or in Hawaii; Arabs and black Africans in Zanzibar’. The long tradition of Creole studies in the Caribbean (Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant 1990, Braithwaite 1971, Césaire 1939, Glissant 1997, Mintz 1996) indicates that there, assertive movement to promote the identity mixed descent people has begun in earnest. In their paper ‘In Praise of Creoleness’ (1990: 896) for example, Bernabé, Chamoiseau and Confiant call for the revaluation of Creole identity and history, arguing for the recognition of the ‘opaque resistance of Maroons allied in their disobedience.’ Similar efforts have also been made (by Mauritian authors such as Hookoomsing [1993] and Chan Low [1999] in particular) to reflect on the forging of Creole identity. However, until very recently Mauritian Creoles have been less involved (than those living in the Caribbean) in the public evaluation of Creole identity. The lack of similar movements in Mauritius can generally be explained by Creoles’ historical experiences of violent domination from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Such experiences meant that Creoles were forced to accept their inferior position and identity in Mauritian society. In the twentieth century Mauritius had apartheid South Africa as a powerful neighbour and postcolonial southern Africa as an example for its race relations. Such a history does not encourage the valuation of mixed-ness or explored it as an alternative mode of being. In postcolonial Mauritius, colonial fictions and Biblical dogma persisted. As the descendants of black slaves, Creoles were deemed morally and socially marginal. Their subjective identities were largely ignored or perceived as unimportant to self and group definition. 5

Le Malaise Créole

Concern to maintain order and moral purity produced, (as Eriksen [1999] has argued) a kominoté-minded society. The kominoté is a presumed community of unified and undifferentiated people defined as an ethnic group. The potency of identity is tested by concerted efforts to defend the ethnic boundary and the defence involves consistent negotiation and re-presentation.1 In present day Mauritius, it remains difficult for Creoles to ‘defend’ their ethnic boundary, mainly because that boundary is porous and is established by outsiders. The external definition of the Creoles, their treatment as a residual category and their marginalisation, has resulted in a culturally open, largely impoverished mixed group of people. Their situation presents major problems for them in a society that deplores mixing and hybridity. The demise of hybridity in Mauritius is socially and politically counterproductive. According to Papastergiadis (1997: 257), ‘In the last decade there has been barely a debate on cultural theory or postmodern subjectivity that has not acknowledged … identity as being in some form of hybrid state [and] hybridity has, in one way or another, served as a threat to the fullness of selfhood … the hybrid [appears] as the moral marker of contamination, failure, or regression’. Papastergiadis also states that one of the triumphs of poststructuralist theory and of the postmodern age is the fact that subjects are freed from the association between fixity and purity, or fixity and wholeness. Unfortunately, in postcolonial societies like Mauritius, postcolonialism does not entail a poststructuralist existence, and Creoles are not necessarily liberated from the negative portrayal of mixed people as weak, tainted individuals with fragmented identities. The largely white (and increasingly Indian) oriented media (particularly advertising and television programmes), emphasise the value of whiteness and purity. Blacks are often portrayed in news footage (and films) as victims, despots and criminals. Creoles are not socially powerful enough to challenge these Eurocentric (and dominant) ideas concerning purity and value. In the transforming (but still largely racist and economically unequal) society of Mauritius it is difficult for Creoles to celebrate and express their mixed-ness. Politically, those of mixed descent are treated as a residual group. More detail on this is offered in Chapter Three, where I explain how, as part of the Mauritian electoral system, Creoles are (ironically) lumped together with FrancoMauritians and others of mixed descent in the General Population group. In 2004, long after I had ‘completed’ my research in Mauritius, there were discussions around the inclusion of Kreol (the dialect) into the primary school curriculum. This suggestion was mocked in local newspapers and heatedly debated in local radio programmes. This happened despite the fact that Kreol is the lingua franca of the island. There is, however, less resistance to Creoles emphasising their African heritage. One might argue that this is because this heritage was denigrated for a very long time. Closer observation shows that this approach to identity reconstruction is preferred because it offers Creoles a way to downplay the fact of their mixed-ness. In multicultural Mauritius, there can be no space for ambiguity. 6

Unravelling le malaise Créole

The view of identity as bounded, homogeneous and publicly demonstrable has made it difficult for Creoles to foster the kind of solidarity necessary for the social advancement of the group in this highly ethnicised society. The assumed commonalities of Creoles (as drinkers, gamblers and big spenders) are negative and the marginal social and political position of Creoles has until very recently, made it difficult for them to resist these.

The 1999 Riots In July 1999, six months after a prominent Creole singer died in custody and nationwide riots broke out, Creoles were publicly emphasising their connection with Africa and Creole academics and activists emerged to discuss the phenomenon of le malaise Créole. It seemed as if the riots offered Creoles (and others) a means to publicly articulate their frustration at the continuation of inequality in Mauritius. It also encouraged those who wanted to play the ‘essentialist’ card. The latter was apparent not only among Creoles but also among some Hindu communities. Encouraged by nationalist sentiments in (mainland) Indian politics, there was a growing obsession with rootedness and heritage among the Hindu majority from 1999. I arrived to do fieldwork at a time when these major transformations were taking place. Until that point, Creoles were likely to privately acknowledge their mixed-ness particularly in everyday small-scale interactions. In some cases, the fact of their hybridity offered advantages. For some, being light-skinned or able to speak French helped them to obtain jobs that might have been ‘reserved’ for whites. Outside small rural settlements like Karina (see Chapter Five), appearing Indian or being able to speak Bhojpuri might have afforded opportunities for work and access to land. From 1999 to 2004, I rarely saw Creoles publicly acknowledging the fact of their mixed-ness. Instead, there were many efforts to emphasise rootedness and homogeneity. In the new millennium, Creoles encounter other fundamentalisms. The rise of Hindu nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism both abroad and locally has encouraged some Creoles to see the potential effectiveness of this kind of politics and to adopt it rather than a politics based on hybridity. From the late 1990s the hardening of ethnic boundaries (including the Creole ethnic boundary) was evident. Various books were published on the experiences of the different ethnic groups arriving in Mauritius since the early 1800s. In 1998, the mayor of Port Louis was establishing links with cities that had experienced slavery and was inviting representatives from West Africa and the Caribbean to share their peoples’ experiences of slavery and colonisation. During four years of research and numerous trips to and from Mauritius in the 1980s, I noticed that Creoles (of the middle classes) increasingly referred to themselves as Africans or began to accept their African heritage. 7

Le Malaise Créole

The drive to primordialise Creole identity is being furthered by the process of national reconciliation and nation building. Since the 1999 riots, the various governments of Mauritius have focused on the re-integration of marginal groups (including Creoles) into the social and economic fabric of Mauritian society. These concerns and efforts are coterminous with the efforts of international cultural regimes (such as UNESCO) to preserve heritage. The latter are involved in the interrogation and reconstruction of memory and are largely encouraging the homogenisation of identity rather than emphasising local specificity. At the conference organised by UNESCO entitled ‘L’Esclavage et Ses Séquelles: Mémoire et Vécu d’Hier et d’Aujourd’hui.’ Participants from various regions of the world (east Africa, the Caribbean and north America) spoke about the ‘deafening silence’ on the experiences and situations of African slave descendants the world over. The conference emphasised a transnational collectivity of similarly disenfranchised black people, and served as an important (foundation) symbol in the local crafting of Creole group identity and solidarity.

Memory-making For Creoles the interrogation of memory has not been easy. Reparation remains a thorny issue. However, by 2004 memory-making projects were coming thick and fast. New developments in international tourism trends and global concern with environmental management, meant that vulnerable small island developing states (SIDS), like Mauritius, are compelled to rethink their tourism development strategies. Various island communities across the Indian Ocean (Zanzibar, Madagascar, Seychelles and Sri Lanka) are now investing in heritage management. In Mauritius, this investment has symbolic currency. It allows for the public demonstration (or performance) of culture and a means to indicate identity, the most valuable resource in the island society. Similar processes of memory-making are apparent among the Indian population and among the smaller ethnic groups (such as the descendants of the Chinese) on the island. These indicate not only the possession of culture but also demonstrate the memory of culture. In ‘boundary’ conscious Mauritius, pronouncements about who possesses culture and how one is able to commemorate culture are, as I argue in the chapter on Le Morne and Chamarel villages, invariably political. Memory-making is also a means to parody the ‘character’ of ethnic groups and to promote a particular model of multicultural politics, one based on integration. In this model, the distinctiveness of each group is maintained. Through the use of political slogans such as ‘unity in diversity’, Mauritians celebrate national solidarity but at the same time ‘respect’ cultural diversity. However, the integrationist model of multiculturalism in Mauritius does not really apply for these reasons at least: not all citizens participate as equals in the multicultural framework and Mauritians obtain a sense of identity and see themselves as a part 8

Unravelling le malaise Créole

of states (as migrants, holders of dual citizenship and descendants of the French, Africans and Asians) beyond Mauritius’ border. The emphasis on roots gained new impetus in the late 1990s. At the time of my research it was unclear how many Hindus support the fundamentalist politics of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a National Volunteer Corps and a private paramilitary body. However, a local body known as the Voice of Hindu (VOH) existed and its political leadership maintains close ties with the Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and upholds the promotion of Hindutva in Mauritius.

The Role of History and the Media The search for roots was supported in historical texts on Mauritius in the 1990s. From 1999 to 2002, historians participated in televised programmes on Mauritian history and society and increased efforts to influence public opinion. Extracts from their historical analyses appeared in local newspapers (in French) and were therefore widely available for mostly middle-class public consumption. I began to question the effect that these had on Creoles; for, in the search for literature to inform my study of Creoles, I also turned to newspapers in Kreol, English and French to ascertain the construction of Creole identity. I found that recent authors on slavery in Mauritius (Nagapen 1998, Teelock 1998) tended to emphasise the victimisation of slaves. This made me question whether, by choosing to emphasise the victimisation of Creoles and their specific African origins, these authors were not also choosing to create a particular identity for Creoles, one based on victimisation and marginalisation. News articles also have an important role to play in promoting cross-cultural discourses. In 1999, the recently launched paper Sunday Vani,2 encouraging Hindu nationalism à la BJP, mentioned the existence of le malaise Hindoue3 (the Hindu malaise), which it attributed to the erosion of Vedic practices in Mauritius. In that particular article, the loss of purity or mixing is seen as the root cause of Hindu malaise. This argument is supported by Chetan Bhatt’s discussion of Vedic Aryanism (2001: 12). According to Bhatt (2001), Aryanism, derived from the term Aryan or Arya (deemed the original human inhabitants of the world) is the ideological basis for Hindu nationality. In Mauritius and many other countries where there exists a Hindu diaspora there are Arya Samajs ‘societies of nobles’ tasked with reinvigorating Hindu desire for the nobility and purity of the Aryans. The Arya worshipped only one God and believed the Vedas (holy scripts) to be the literal word of God. Peace in the Aryan empire was disrupted by the advent of the Mahabharata war. In his book, Bhatt notes that in India its invocation (as a vehicle for Hindu nationalism) is promoted as a means to combat the degradation of contemporary Hindu society and as a means to return to a mythical, noble and pure past. In 1999, the national television station in Mauritius broadcast many long episodes of a 9

Le Malaise Créole

series based on the Mahabharata – stressing the loss of purity among Hindus and reinstating a call for Hindus to return to their roots. After the riots of February 1999, the newspaper, La Voix Kreol 4 (The Kreol Voice) stressed the victimised status of the Creoles and discussed Creoles as though they were a discrete and homogeneous group. The ideological thrust of both the Sunday Vani and La Voix Kreol, indicate not only the struggle of ethnic leaders for ideological and political space but also a growing local concern with roots and purity. Literary works on Mauritius and other island societies also have an important influence on ideas about purity and culture. This was especially apparent in the writings of V.S. Naipaul on Trinidad, Mauritius and other colonial societies. Naipaul illuminates both the particularities of identity among hybrid people and the challenges faced by postcolonial subjects in a modernising world. A particular focus of the texts is the struggle between the desire to obtain an essential identity that makes for political currency among the dominant groups, and the experience of hybridity. Postcolonial theorists (Hall 1992, Gilroy 1993, Bhabha 1994, Anthias 1998, Robins 1998, Papastergiadis 2000, Zegeye 2001) question the essentialising of race, culture and ethnicity, and indicate the complexities of postcolonial existence. In particular, these theorists attempt to explain the positioning of such groups in various societies, and invoke a Gramscian concept of hegemony to explain the marginalisation of those whom they call subaltern people. However, given the dialectical nature of identity formation, I refer to Hall’s (1992) concept of discursive hegemony (Hall 1992), to explain the positioning of Creoles in Mauritian society.

Framing le malaise Créole The various historical and political forces impacting identity in Mauritius have created a heterogeneous society where identity formation is situational. Mauritius is also a society with established social and political hierarchies, where white dominant groups and the existing Hindu hegemony seek to entrench specific interpretations of culture and identity. Over time, these interpretations have informed access to and the allocation of resources. It has also created various overlapping social factions on the island, whose participants compete, network and create alliances in the bid to obtain meaning or to maintain a margin of authority or privilege in a complex society. Such competitions and transactions are not always inspired by rational decision-making. The choices made, actions taken and consequences endured occur in contexts that already exist, even though constructed by other actors at an earlier stage. Thus, seemingly rational decisions are influenced by existing spatial constraints and events and may appear to be irrational to others. A particular

10

Unravelling le malaise Créole

constraint, the negative valuation of hybridity, affects the positioning of Creoles in Mauritian society. Nevertheless, hybridity remains an important aspect of Creole identity. How does hybridisation occur and what are its features? Some authors including (Carpooran 2002, and Eriksen 1999) have referred to the hybridisation of African and Malagasy cultures in Mauritius as ‘creolization’. This process consists of ‘cultural fragments from various origins, as well as original creations [that] mingle in particular ways, to be reshaped within various time-space contexts’ (Rahier 1999: 290). Creolization is also a dialogical process, and Yelvington (2001: 240) states that this ‘does not imply an equality among participants in the process. It entails, rather, multiparty interactions of material, ideational, and discursive phenomena, among others, in complex relationships characterized more often than not by an unequal distribution of power’. Thus creolization is an interactive process, where participants in the process are politically unequal but still engage in the process. In Mauritius, Creoles belong to a negatively designated category and their identity has become a resource for the construction of other ethnicities on the island. In extreme instances, Creole identity is considered a non-identity, as there is no singular homeland from which to construct an identity. The homeland ‘requirement’ forms a part of dominant group’s discussions on identity and also part of the process necessary to identify subaltern groups. In this context, Creole is a sort of anti-category, useful for other groups to define themselves and as a means to establish hegemony. In Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971: 12), Gramsci suggests that hegemony is ‘the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’. For Gramsci, hegemony is concerned with that which is ideological. But the acts of hegemonic groups have consequences beyond consciousness. They have real material effects and they contribute to other sites of power (Escobar 1999) such as the Roman Catholic Church, the state, the capitalist market, and the tourism industry. In studying le malaise Créole, I argue that Creole identity is hybrid, that Mauritians live in a complex society characterised by diverse constituencies that attempt to achieve hegemonic control of the society and economy (Knowles and Mercer 1990, and Anthias 1998). Drawing on Friedman’s (1997) understanding of complex societies, I argue that such a society is characterised by a temporal hegemony and the ‘absence of permanent hegemony’ (ibid.) Thus, in order to achieve control (or maintain hegemony) dominant groups are compelled to construct fictions of homogeneity relating to the various groups within the hegemony. Myth, legend and history become resources that enable the crafting or maintenance of this fiction and that contested interpretations of le malaise Créole indicate varied attempts to create a particular identity for Creoles. 11

Le Malaise Créole

In the encounter with the different field sites, I use Hall’s (1992) idea of hegemonies as temporary entities that are differentiated and shaped by historical events. Hall states that hegemonies are ‘temporary, historically specific, socially differentiated [and they] rely on a system of alliances for … success’ (1992: 424). The interactive nature of hegemony in Mauritius is evident in the relationship between Creoles and the white bourgeoisie. For many centuries, Creoles (and other non-white people in Mauritius) ‘offered’ their spontaneous consent to the white minority. However, this consent was never unconditional or permanent. At the time of my research, this consent was dramatically challenged and negotiated, indicating that hegemony had to be striven for. The power to challenge and negotiate the terms of hegemony came in the form of slave and maroon history. Reflections on such history loosened existing hegemonic control over meaning and identity and allowed Creoles to partially reconstruct their individual and group identity. In the new millennium, Mauritius stands to gain (politically and materially through heritage projects) from the reification of ethnic groups as bounded wholes. Reification promotes solidarity and unity among those who constitute the ‘in-group’ and differentiates them from those who are considered the ‘outgroup.’ In 1999 most Mauritians did not yet occupy entirely postmodern places and spaces, and still subscribed to colonially based fictions of race, ethnicity and identity. Conflict arose between proponents of forms of identity emphasising subjectivity and hybridity, and those concerned with boundedness and single homelands. While some Mauritians became interested in the ‘freedom’ offered in postmodern interpretations of social life and identity, many Creoles were distrustful of the supposed freedom that would come with globalisation. The various approaches of Mauritians in general to forms of empowerment (in work, women’s liberation, the rise of civil society, Internet forums and so on) mean that many Mauritians (Creoles included) have the opportunity to challenge existing discourses and perceptions of identity. New subjective forms of identification derived from beyond national borders are becoming the means for Creoles to challenge the impositions of whites and conservative Hindus, leading to what Hall identifies as the, ‘unsettling, recombination, hybridisation’ of identity and society (Hall 1992: 258). However, appeals to these new forms of identification (particularly transnational and Africanised identities), may involve reifying essentialist ideas of culture and identity, as efforts to realise links with Africa and the Caribbean are often (in the Mauritius case) inspired by the political need to ‘find one’s roots’. In the following, I provide four interdependent interpretations of le malaise Créole that are informed by my perceptions of Creole identity formation in Mauritian society.

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Unravelling le malaise Créole

Interpreting le malaise Créole In the first interpretation, le malaise Créole is the result of the ‘objective formation’ of the group through slavery. In this argument, slavery is perceived as having a fragmenting (and often annihilating) impact on identity, solidarity and economy. Slave owners and their associates are seen as largely responsible for the negative consequences of slavery on identity. However, unless slavery is perceived as an institution that had multiple consequences and was experienced in diverse ways by different people, the first interpretation of le malaise Créole risks presenting a homogeneous view of Creole experience. Despite this, the first interpretation helps to explain why Creoles continue to evoke both an idealised essential identity and hybridity, and to vacillate between these two poles, as already noted in Mauritian society the dominant majority view hybridity ‘as a metaphor for the negative consequences of racial encounters’ (Papastergiadis 2000: 169). However, Creoles’ vacillation between essentialism and hybridity is also perceived as an indication that Creoles do not belong anywhere and thus, do not have an identity. Nevertheless, Creoles do not passively receive portrayals and behaviours attributed to them and, as Creoles and their ancestors were and are agents in varying degrees, this challenges a second interpretation of le malaise Créole. The second interpretation points to pathologies that emerged as a consequence of having no identity. These pathologies are said to have contributed to the nonintegration of Creoles in Mauritian society in the post-emancipation period, but proponents of this argument assume that all Creoles have responded similarly to oppression. Creole identity, experience and responses to life vary across age, gender, class, personal history, circumstance and location. This interpretation is therefore not really useful because it does not explain why not all Creoles are drinking excessively, abusing their spouses, failing at school, or spending their money recklessly. A third interpretation is derived from a primordial and evolutionist perspective. Here, it is interpreted as the destructive dispositions apparent in Creole families and communities that are a result of their hybridity or African heritage. This interpretation denies any causal link between slavery and le malaise Créole, and is only useful as an indication of primordialist views of Creoles. A fourth interpretation suggests that le malaise Créole is a construct designed to homogenise the Creole group and their experiences. I argue that dominant groups and Creoles have both fostered this concept for specific political gain. Dominant groups make reference to le malaise Créole to distinguish the ultimate ‘other’, and some Creoles and their advocates use it as a means to motivate for social and economic reparations. Here, I do not argue that slavery and the consequences of slavery do not continue to influence Creoles’ reality in terms of their access to land, social and economic networks, capital and social prestige, or that some Creole families have not been irreparably damaged by their experience of racial and economic oppression in Mauritian society. There is a diversity of experiences 13

Le Malaise Créole

among Creoles and no set of deeply embedded values and organisational resources (see Eriksen 2000) can account for the range of responses to social stimuli. Socioeconomic processes and forces such as democratisation, industrialisation and tourism have contributed to variation in Creole identity and have (in some instances), enabled Creoles to challenge their positioning in Mauritian society. Contested views on identity raise particular questions. I became interested first in how Creole ethnicity was articulated in Mauritian society and, second, if Creoles were stigmatised, how and why had this come about? Another important issue that interested me was the mechanisms that Creoles employed in the expression of their identity. What unfolds in the ethnographic discussion is that le malaise Créole has become a construct used and usable by both dominant groups in Mauritius and to a certain extent, by Creoles themselves, to create a homogenised past and present identity for Creoles. Less essentialist interpretations of ethnicity, culture, hybridity and diaspora help us to understand the formation of subaltern identities in postcolonial states. Through these interpretations one can perceive the extent to which identity is negotiated and negotiable, and see that subordination is often incomplete, that hegemony has to be consistently maintained and that ethnic homogeneity is constructed. As to whether postcolonial subjects like the Creoles are victims struggling to define where they belong, I would argue that they participate in the ‘politics of belonging’ (Geschière and Nyamnjoh 2000), and when necessary, anchor their identity in essentialised notions of Creole-ness or break free from these by appealing to transnational forms of identity. The Creoles, like other subaltern people in the world have ‘a wider set of ‘possible’ lives than they ever did before’ (Appadurai 1995: 197–8), and are exercising their options within discursive political, economic and social space. This is the space I found myself in when I decided to do anthropology at ‘home.’

Notes 1. In my view ‘representation’ indicates the categorisation of Creoles by non-Creoles and ‘representation’ is Creoles’ categorisation of themselves. 2. An English newspaper. 3. ‘Malaise Hindoue, the Undisclosed Story, Ethnic Cleansing’. Sunday Vani 26 September 1999: 7. See also ‘Sunday Vani looks ahead! Its Inspiration and Ambition’. Sunday Vani 19 September 1999. 4. See ‘5 Directeurs créoles sur 52 corps paraétiques et agences privatisés’. La Voix Kreol July 1999: 1. ‘Aux Origins du ‘malaise créole’? Les Ex-apprentis dans la société Mauricienne (1839–1861)’ La Voix Kreol July 1999: 10–13. ‘Le Vol des terres créoles’. La Voix Kreol August 1999: 2. ‘La communauté créole attend son dû!’ La Voix Kreol October 1999: 3.

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C HAPTER 2 A NTHROPOLOGY




AT

‘H OME ’

Fieldwork at ‘home’ fascinates anthropologists mainly because it presents specific methodological challenges and encourages reflexivity; the latter being of enduring concern in the discipline at the end of the twentieth century. However, after listening (at local and international conferences) to a number of accounts of fieldwork at home and experiencing it for myself, it is apparent that anthropologists are increasingly drawn to this type of fieldwork because it allows for a more personal encounter with the self. Faced with family, history and childhood memories and having had some experience of different worlds, I began to question and wanted to reveal (for myself ) as Hastrup (1995: 50) says, the foundations of my ‘own’ society. Part of this process inspired a reflexive and politically complex picture of Mauritian society. Another part led to me becoming my own informant (Hastrup 1995: 49). Fieldwork in Mauritius produced additional (and non-‘scientific’) questions about the production of my own identity. How had I mediated my own identity as a Creole in Malawi, Mauritius and South Africa? Was I always influenced by the dominant cultural discourse in Mauritius or had I taken opportunities to re-present myself in diverse contexts? What personal or situational factors helped me to re-present myself in these contexts? Or had I been one of those weighed down by the oppressive force of class, race and gender prejudice? Such ‘un-scientific’ and egocentric questions helped me to ponder whether Creoles’ identities are differentiated and negotiated rather than being static and entirely determined by powerful groups on the island. And, while my life trajectory was perhaps different to some of the people I met on the island, the multiplicity of my own experiences encouraged a re-thinking of Creole identity and reality. In the past thirty years, Mauritius has experienced rapid modernisation. Part of this process involved the achievement of independence from colonial rule, the 15

Le Malaise Créole

implementation of a democratic system, the decentralisation of the economy, improved social services and a major demographic shift. In the late 1990s, Mauritius was also experiencing the force of globalising identities, that appeared to threaten the fragile peace and cooperation that Mauritians had managed to craft over several decades. At the time of my research Mauritius had become a place for retirees returning from their migrant jobs in Africa or Europe. It had also become a place for mobile, technologically literate and young Mauritians of mixed ethnicity. Middle-class Mauritians (some Creoles included) had lived or been educated abroad. Those who had not travelled had ‘participated’ in global communities through chat rooms, email and access to popular media and music not produced in Mauritius. According to Mariza Peirano (1998: 105), until ‘recently, the idea of an anthropology at home was a paradox and contradiction of terms’ and, although accepted, ‘the ideal of overseas research, however, remained the goal to be reached’ (1998: 106). Earlier discussions on anthropology at home (Dumont 1986) cautioned that this form of anthropology was difficult and best left to researchers who had obtained experience elsewhere. But it was not only the difficulty of this form of anthropology that made researchers wary of or drawn to it. As noted in my own conversations with colleagues, questions of power and representation also influenced responses to anthropology at home. In the 1970s, Asad’s (1979) critique of anthropology as ‘the handmaiden of colonialism’ caused many to question the political dimensions of the discipline. Peirano notes that these concerns encouraged for example, several anthropologists (Messerschmidt 1981, Jackson 1987) to do anthropology at home but that home was still the United States or Europe (Peirano 1998: 111). For anthropologists ‘who had their origins in former anthropological sites’ (Peirano 1998: 106), things were more complicated. On the one hand, ‘by virtue of their diaspora experiences [they were believed to] have the insights that others must undertake fieldwork to gain’ (Englund and Leach 2000: 225). On the other hand, their training in Western technique and institutions made them vulnerable to accusations of non-representivity. How could they claim to speak for ‘natives’ if they had little or no experience of what it is to be native? Perhaps as a response to this question, Paul Nkwi once argued (personal communication 1994) that more black anthropologists should be doing fieldwork at home. This would contribute to the ‘authentic’ representation of their societies, which had in the past been analysed and written about by white anthropologists. The issue of training still had to be addressed. Diamond (1980) argued that ‘an Indian or African anthropologist trained in [the] Western technique, does not behave as an Indian or African when he behaves as an anthropologist … he lives and thinks as an academic European’ (1980: 11–12). San Juan took this one step further, calling them ‘ventriloquists’ (San Juan 1999: 8), so taken in by the ‘mixture and multilayering of forms taken as the ethos of late modernity [that they fail to take into account the asymmetrical] interaction 16

Anthropology at ‘Home’

between the civilizations of the colonial powers and of the colonized subalterns’ (1999: 5). In other words, native anthropologists will, because of their largely Eurocentric training fail to notice the persistence of unequal power relations in post-colonial contexts. Archie Mafeje (1997) explored the debate from another angle. For him, anthropology was no longer useful for independent Africans. He could not see how they could make use of a discipline that had been inspired by and benefited from relations of domination. Taking on the role of native anthropologist and doing research in Mauritius I considered these different critiques. Can native anthropologists entirely divorce themselves from the fact of their history and early socialisation? As scholars, can they claim to be anthropologists if they do not question their induction into the discipline? Can they claim to be anthropologists if they do not critically reflect on the historical impact of the discipline on practice? It is clear from recent discussions on post-colonial anthropology that many (native and non-native) anthropologists have come to terms ‘with [their] given status as heir[s] of an imperial-colonial order … they [now] hear, rather than talk, the lives of [the people they research] in the fullness of their complexities’ (Lam 1994: 871). Doing research in Mauritius, I was profoundly aware of the complexities of doing anthropology at home. Initially unable (and unwilling) to distance myself from promoting their cause, I wondered how I was ‘serving’ the interests of Creoles by documenting their predicament for a largely privileged audience. I had spent most of my youth in Africa and when the opportunity arose for me to return to live in Mauritius, I did not want to return. I had travelled to Mauritius on several occasions with my parents and saw the impoverishment of Creoles first hand and had heard the women’s stories of gender and racial oppression. As a young Creole woman, I wanted to escape that fate. During the liminal years in South Africa when I struggled to obtain resident status (and in a sense, another identity) I felt compelled to deal with my Creole-ness. The answer came in the form of an email received from a friend telling me (in essence) that feelings and emotions are important and that it was historically proven that gut feeling and passion have contributed to great discoveries and brilliant science. This seemed to me a valuable corrective to the usual idea that anthropologists are loathe to admit that they make emotional choices, for fear of jeopardising their claims to objectivity. The first part of this chapter deals with the issue of anthropology at home. What factors influence entry into the field? What personal and political factors discourage anthropology at home? Are black anthropologists at a particular disadvantage when it comes to doing research in their own home communities? The issue of multiple homes is not one confined to my personal experience. As the second part of this chapter shows, all Mauritians are essentially immigrants who, consider Mauritius as ‘home’ but maintain other ‘homes’ elsewhere or make references to ‘homelands’. Such references are important to identity politics on the island. In the last part of this chapter I argue that it is difficult to ‘set the scene’ 17

Le Malaise Créole

for Mauritius because of competing interpretations of history and political events, and because of the diverse experiences of the people who inhabit the island. Mauritians do not live in isolated homogeneous communities, even though this might appear to be so for the casual observer.

Research in the South I was also motivated to do research in Mauritius for practical reasons. Funding was a major factor in choosing to do fieldwork at home. Messerschmidt (1981), Jackson (1987) and Okely (1987) argue that a decrease in funding for anthropological research, tight academic budgets and the shortage of jobs outside academia mean that more anthropologists are keen to do research at home. In southern Africa the funding issue is even more of a challenge. At the time of my research, national funding bodies in South Africa only funded those with a South African identity card. Research funding was also limited to field research in South Africa and the politically controversial nature of my research meant that I did not receive funding from Mauritius. Given the situation, I reasoned that even if I did not obtain funding from ‘home’, I could at least stay with sympathetic relatives who might see the future potential of my research.

Access I was also motivated by the ease of access to my own society and the prospect that I would be working in a less violent context (Russell Bernard 1995) than before: I had conducted my Master’s degree research in two settlements in the Western Cape of South Africa and had experienced being helpless and vulnerable to violence on several occasions. I thought that this could not happen in Mauritius because I was among my own people. Conscious of Talal Asad’s (1979) trenchant critique of Western and foreign anthropologists, I saw my fieldwork as an opportunity to be neither Western nor foreign. I speak Kreol fluently and so thought that I could communicate well in research, and would not look too different from those interviewed. Understanding the lingua franca put me at ease, even when I was just ‘hanging out’, and I rarely felt left out of conversations even when I was not being spoken to directly. My appearance also seemed to facilitate the research process. Being short and not exactly thin, I blended in with Creole women in various settlements. My married status also seemed to reassure the women that I was a ‘decent’ woman although they worried about me leaving my husband in another country. In the company of men, I found that they spoke to me easily, perhaps because I was much younger than some of them or because they did not perceive me as a threat. Some treated me as a young student in search of an account for a 18

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social studies paper or as a journalist in search of a story. Others seemed to perceive me in a more serious light, ‘at last’, one said ‘A Creole has come to write the true story of the Creoles.’ I relied on networks of friends, families and acquaintances to help me access communities and stories. Thus, I rarely entered a community as a complete stranger.

Engagement There were inevitable instances, however, where I was associated with particular individuals and their social politics, and this sometimes created the obligation to choose sides. For some Mauritians, the fact that I had chosen to write about le malaise Créole was indicative of my choice to act as an advocate for the Creoles. Issues of political engagement are perhaps made more complex in an era of rapid globalisation, where fieldworkers are encouraged to challenge physical, conceptual and analytical boundaries. I was not in a position of power: however, as a researcher working abroad, interviewees expected much of me in financial and political terms. In the course of research I became concerned about the possible negative repercussions of my work for family members and people associated with the research project, mainly because le malaise Créole is a politically contentious issue in Mauritius and at the time those investigating it are sometimes perceived as having a political agenda. In Mauritius ‘taking sides’ could involve: facilitating contact between projectfunding bodies and (mainly Creole) community-based organisations, helping the latter to complete project applications, and acting as a broker for communitybased organisations. When asked why I was ‘there’, asking questions and stating that I was doing research on Creole identity meant that I was drawn into public discussion forums. In these contexts I was sometimes expected to say how badly Creoles had been treated and what Creoles could do to remedy their situation. In short, various people and groups expected me to be an advocate for their causes. In a discussion of anthropological advocacy, Hastrup and Elsass (1990: 301) argue that, ‘to be advocates anthropologists have to step outside their profession, because no ‘cause’ can be legitimated in anthropological terms … the rationale for advocacy is never ethnographic; it remains essentially moral in the broadest sense of the term.’ In response to Hastrup and Elsass, Grillo (1990: 308) takes a cautious approach. He argues that Hastrup and Elsass ‘assume for anthropology an amoral relativism’ but at the same time admits that most of us do fieldwork in ‘murky, grey worlds’ where there are ‘traps ready and set for the politically naïve [postmodernist] anthropologist.’ Mathiesen (1990: 308) makes a different point, that ‘advocacy is primarily a question of establishing a context for understanding analogous to that of the “clients”.’ This is an interesting argument. If one considers that the ‘clients’ of anthropologists are not simply the subaltern people with whom they generally work but are also those who do not see themselves as 19

Le Malaise Créole

the beneficiaries, then advocacy in anthropology is a worthy goal. By choosing to study le malaise Créole and to convey my understanding of it textually, I can potentially reach those (privileged members of Hindu or Franco-Mauritian society for example) who may not see themselves as potential beneficiaries of my work. However, it remains to be seen how these client groups perceive these communications or my interpretations of Creole experiences.

Doing Anthropology at Home I soon resolved that on various grounds anthropology at ‘home’ is problematic. It implies single-location fieldwork, an implication that is mostly inaccurate for emerging ‘native’ anthropologists (or their interviewees), who in a time of globalisation have become multiple natives with different ‘homes’. Furthermore, such a statement is also difficult to realise in Mauritius or in any modernising society where field sites have porous boundaries and informants do not stay put. The modernisation of Mauritian society means that its inhabitants experience an increase in physical and social mobility that challenges the embedding of values and practices leading in some instances, to varied levels and forms of participation in social life. Despite the modernisation of Mauritius, it was evident that pockets of social conservatism remain. In the course of fieldwork I was often asked what I was doing in Mauritius, some people assumed that I was on an extended holiday and others wondered aloud what kind of work requires ‘a person to leave their family in order to study strangers.’ To pre-empt these statements, I often blurted out, ‘this is just some work for the university’, which caused some confusion because, among Mauritians, ‘work’ is associated with leaving home early in the morning and coming back late in the afternoon or at night. How was I ‘working’ by going from house to house in my own ‘home’ community or hanging out in the village? A few interviewees remembered me from an article on my research in a local newspaper and were less cautious in their conversations with me. In the first few weeks, it seemed that I would never be able to overcome the exhaustion and hyperstimulation caused by traffic, noise and air pollution in the town where I was living. Eventually I adopted a high level of activity as a form of adjustment to the furious pace of life in Flacq. For this reason, I seemed to behave in a contradictory manner in certain field sites where there was little traffic and few vendors or people bustling about. I relished the fresh air and open spaces of Karina (a village on the periphery of Flacq) but often found myself rushing to get back to town and all that had repelled me from it in the first place. My first impressions of Flacq, the River Camp and Roche Bois, was that there is a great deal of movement, change and busyness in these settlements. This observation challenged my understanding of culture shock as being caused by adjustment to a single location where one gradually begins to perceive the micro20

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detail pattern of human existence. I found that in Mauritius there are multiple, overlapping locations and an almost constant ebb and flow of people and goods that contribute to a multi-layered experience of social life. As the months wore on, I began to worry about whether I was going to make sense of what seemed to be a bewildering level of complexity. I began to doubt whether several texts on fieldwork experience (Russell Bernard 1995, Sanjek 1990, Perry 1989) could help me deal with this. I was also concerned about the fact that I might be failing at ‘live-in’ participant observation that should contribute to the acceptance of the anthropologist. I was living in Flacq, in my grandmother’s house. But with time I became used to the uneasy rhythm of fieldwork in Mauritius, I began to acknowledge that perhaps fieldwork in a place like Mauritius is different to what I had become familiar with as student in southern Africa. In Mauritius I was a ‘native’ anthropologist and experienced the range of opportunities and limitations that ‘native’ anthropologists often write about. As a ‘native’ anthropologist, family expectations, gender restrictions, racism from ethnically different others and loneliness influenced the research process. Thus I was not entirely prepared for anthropology at home neither was I prepared for fieldwork in a modernising society. Most homes in Mauritius have enclosed gardens. This is particularly so in some locations and many families have guard dogs to protect their property. The presence of walls fosters an acute sense of isolation especially when one walks through an area that is reputed to be dangerous. The feeling is justified in that one is never quite sure what type of family or individual live behind the walls along a particular street. After some months however, my confidence grew, as I began to believe that I could not be harmed among ‘my people’. I also developed the ‘art’ of walking as if I knew where I was going (even when I didn’t) as I noticed that men were less likely to harass me if I looked as if I was walking to a family member’s house in the settlement. On several occasions, I had to switch sidewalks, stop at particular gates, or walk into shops to elude ‘followers’. Modernity imposed yet another challenge. I found that it is difficult for a local stranger to stay in a Mauritian’s home overnight, unless the person in question is a family member. Other than the problem of space, one characteristic of modernisation in Mauritius (and perhaps elsewhere) is that everyone has a ‘home.’ For me to ask to live with an informant would mean challenging this view and intruding on their hard-won privacy. So, with exception to the time spent in Chamarel (a place that many Mauritians consider as isolated), I travelled everyday from my grandmother’s house to either: Karina, Roche Bois and the River Camp. Fieldwork in Le Morne was accomplished by frequent trips (sometimes hiking) from Chamarel. Travelling between Flacq and other villages helped me to live as a ‘normal’ resident in Flacq. When I travelled by bus or taxi-trains1 locals recognised me and some assumed that I was on my way to work or that I had just come from work. Interviewees’ need for privacy and local gender conservatism encouraged me to live in one place and to do fieldwork elsewhere. 21

Le Malaise Créole

Travelling to and from research locations had unintended but positive consequences. It helped me to notice the physical mobility of Mauritians and the porousness of village boundaries. It encouraged me to question the role of (intra and inter village) networks in the contemporary interrogation of Creole identity. It led me to modify my research approach and to consider multi-sited research as a way of exploring and investigating the many factors involved in the identity formation of Creoles. During research I also found that gender and personality factors assisted and at other times limited participant observation in the sites chosen for research. At first, I was quite withdrawn and worried about my ability to socialise enough to get the data that I needed. As Russell Bernard says, ‘personality characteristics do make a difference in fieldwork … there is no way to eliminate the personal equation – the influence of the observer on the data – in anthropological fieldwork’ (1995: 155–56). Not having a vehicle of my own during research, it was difficult to go to visit informants at night without being marginalised by my own family and my gender-conservative informants. Thus, with the exception of fieldwork in Flacq, much of my research took place in daylight hours. Thus my ethnicity, the colour of my skin, and gender limited the range and extent of encounters with potential interviewees. Encounters with Franco-Mauritians (whites) in the course of research were also few and far between because, in general, Creoles have little social contact with the Franco-Mauritians. With time, as I began to relinquish my own essentialist ideas of others (men, whites and non-Creoles), the data-gathering process became less difficult. Being a loner and desperate to be a ‘good’ Creole woman was in contradiction to the need to gather detailed, objective data. I was already overstepping boundaries by ‘wasting time visiting strangers’ – in other words, doing fieldwork and leaving my husband in another country for months on end.

Multi-sited Research While multi-sited research has not suddenly emerged as a research technique in the 1990s, in the twenty-first century anthropologists are increasingly using a wider range of techniques to interpret and decipher social meaning in the complex locales where they do research. In an earlier discussion on the inevitability of multi-sited and multi-sighted – in the sense that one perceives social ‘realities’ in all their complexity and that one uses a wide range of tools, techniques and perspectives to analyse social phenomena. Marcus (1995) argues that ‘thinking in terms of multi-sited research provokes an entirely different set of problems that not only go to the heart of adapting ethnography as practices of fieldwork and writing to new conditions of work, but also challenge orientations that underlie this entire research process that has been so emblematic for anthropology’ (1995: 93). Marcus also argues that multi-sited 22

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research brings a sense of the ‘research imaginary’ to fieldwork (1995: 10) that traditional single-site research does not. By ‘research imaginary’ he means that one rethinks the way in which research ideas are formulated and actual fieldwork is carried out. In doing fieldwork among the Creoles, not only did I adopt Marcus’s suggestion to do multi-sited fieldwork, I also used the technique to obtain multivocal discussions of identity. I referred to a variety of literature to understand the diverse ways in which identity is constructed and contested, and I explored the contributions of different media (film, music and political or cultural symbols) to identity construction. With regard to textual representations, I made use of historical texts, novels, fables and newspapers to shed light on Creole identity. By allowing myself to examine non-textual contributions to Creole identity construction (oral history and music) I hoped to better explain how the diverse presentations of Creole identity had become a part of the dominant ‘stream of representations’ (Fischer 1999). In Fischer’s (1999) discussion of ‘anthropologies of late or postmodernities’ it is noted that: The most important challenges for contemporary ethnographic practices include … (a) the techniques of multilocale or multisited ethnography for strategically accessing different points in geographically spread complex processes, (b) the techniques of multivocal or multiaudience-addressed texts for mapping and acknowledging the situatedness of knowledges, (c) the reworking of traditional notions of comparative work for a world that is increasingly aware of difference and interconnections, or (d) acknowledging that anthropological representations are interventions within a stream of representations, mediations and unequal discourses.

To this impressive list Fischer adds the need to accommodate other genres of writing, the views of specialists from other disciplines, and other forms of representation. He argues that these approaches illuminate the ways in which people create and sustain diverse realities. Difficult to achieve, I found that the multi-sited approach had a range of weaknesses. Other than Marcus’ (1995) argument that multi-sited research may attenuate the substantive contributions of fieldwork, I found that it requires substantial personal and research discipline. One is easily distracted by interesting stories useful for an understanding of a particular locale – but not really useful for a more holistic picture of the ‘field.’ Personal discipline and stamina is needed to encounter the multiple political complexities in each site. One moves from an area of relative affluence or peace to one where there are shocking levels of poverty and apathy. With multi-sited research one is likely to experience multiple culture shock. There is also less time to become socially flexible, receptive and focused. In the end, one has to deal with the multiple voices demanding one’s attention, almost asking to be transcribed to text. However, doing fieldwork in different locations brought me many steps closer to capturing the complexity of Creole experiences. Multi-sited fieldwork 23

Le Malaise Créole

resulted in a view of Creoles as occupiers of multiple subject positions depending on the constraints and freedoms afforded in an asymmetrically configured society. A variety of research tools are needed to ascertain diverse representations of social realities. I perceived music as a medium for representation among Creoles, and as a result, treated lyrics and musical genre as a research tool. Thus, in my discussions of Creole identities I attempt a critique of lyrics and music used, and examine the context, content, form and period of Creole music, suggesting that changes in these factors are partially indicative of changes in perceptions and experiences of Creole identities. A consideration of the multi-vocal, multiaudience and multi-layered aspect of Mauritian society encouraged reassessments of chosen research methods and tools. Participant observation featured as a primary research instrument. I spent much time in the company of families and participated in Creole life rituals, in tertiary education, aerobic classes, church fêtes, university seminars, protest marches and the general everyday life of Mauritians. To obtain interviewees I used the snowball sampling technique (Russell Bernard 1995) rather than random sampling because Mauritians tend to have enclosed gardens and have dogs to guard their property. By probing networks of friends, family, Church and nongovernmental organisations I was able to arrive at the homes of potential informants with a person that these dogs knew. As a woman, I was also perhaps more wary of the pitfalls of random sampling. Having encountered the possibility of being raped in an earlier fieldwork episode, I did not want to put myself at risk again by choosing interviewees on a random basis. Those who became part of my research sample varied from one another in terms of class, age, sex and village or town of residence. My overall sample was unfortunately gender-biased because I generally conducted interviews and participant observation during the day when men were at work. As explained earlier, conservative gender norms also made it difficult for me to travel and do fieldwork at night. However, I personally interviewed all the individuals in my sample. These people stated that they were Creole and I chose not to consider the physical stereotype of Creoles (see Chapter Four) in the identification of potential interviewees. My reason for doing this is that phenotype and diacritical markers are mutable and are therefore not reliable indices in the establishment of identity. In gathering data for this study, I used and devised specific research techniques that would assist in the analysis of Mauritian society, which consists of hybrid spaces and porous villages and towns where people do not stay put. However, the movements and choices of Mauritians are often influenced by the existence of circumscribed spaces (such as national parks, hotels, plantations and neighbourhoods among others) where social interaction may be conflictual and asymmetrical, and where people do not have the freedom to ‘flow’ and do as they wish. The existence of circumscribed spaces in various forms, are in many instances the result of historical and current imperatives to establish social and political order and hierarchy. 24

Anthropology at ‘Home’

Setting Scenes The island of Mauritius lies in the Indian Ocean at twenty degrees south of the equator and almost eight hundred kilometres east of the island of Madagascar, the nearest considerable land mass (Benedict 1965). It is part of the Mascarene archipelago in the Indian Ocean and is a small, culturally diverse island that appears to be larger than it is because of its varied topography. There are only about 1.2 million people living in Mauritius, but the island has one of the highest population densities in the world, with 579 people per square kilometre. From the mid-1980s, the country made remarkable economic progress and a majority of Mauritians benefited from the island’s good fortune. By the late 1990s, Mauritians in general expected the country to experience further industrialisation and some expressed their wishes for an end to discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. In Mauritius social interaction is characterised not simply by the desire for peaceful coexistence (Carter 1998, Eriksen 1998) but also by conflict brought about through the politics of representation. These politics are apparent where some versions of history and accounts of social interaction become the means for various groups to impose on others a view of themselves within the society. The dialectic of representation is also evident in the economy, the ethnic stereotyping of labour, the privileging of caste, and nepotism, and the maintenance (by some families) of privileged positions in the private and public sectors. Participation in the politics of representation is a means to achieving power and hegemony in Mauritian society, as individuals and leaders of groups seek to introduce representations of others and themselves in the public domain. I am aware that even in ‘setting the scene’ one risks privileging a particular version of the past and a particular set of representations. Thus, I begin by arguing that Mauritian society consists of discursive spaces within which hegemonic (and nonhegemonic) formations seek to include a particular group’s view of history and society. This view of Mauritian society means that the ‘scene’ is never really ‘set’, or that various ethnic groups, political factions and individuals are constantly setting it. Mauritius is a land of immigrants. The Dutch were the first to arrive in 1598, and they named the island after their prince, Maurice of Nassau (Toussaint 1977: 19). They left Mauritius in 1710 and focused their energies on developing a colony at the Cape of Good Hope. Around this time (1718–1725), a small party of Frenchmen were sent from Reunion to Mauritius. But this party did not manage to settle Mauritius, and up until 1735 various groups and individuals travelling to the island were discouraged from settling there because of the presence of rats, cyclones and difficulties experienced in the cultivation of the land. It was only in 1735 when the French administrator, Mahé de Labourdonnais, arrived on the island that settlement was taken in hand. The French named the island Ile de France. Under Labourdonnais’s governorship the French captured slaves off the east coast of Africa and Madagascar, and brought them to the island to cut down the 25

Le Malaise Créole

ebony forests, build roads, ports and houses, and plant sugarcane. After a series of heavy battles with the French, the English managed to wrest control of island in 1810 and renamed it Mauritius. During these wars and battles, countless men, women and children were abducted from Africa, Madagascar and India to labour in Mauritius. Those of African and Malagasy descent were stripped of their name, language, religion and culture, and were reduced to the status of possessions. Moses Nwulia’s (1981) account of European settlement in Mauritius states that the Dutch had greater difficulty in controlling the one hundred or so captives they imported from Madagascar, who escaped to the forests of the interior where they organized small communities. By the 1650s their attacks had become so ‘disheartening’ that the Dutch left Mauritius. Even with the arrival of the French in 1710, the ‘forests were still inhabited by the indomitable slave maroons,2 who struck as much terror into French hearts as they had into the hearts of their Dutch predecessors’ (1981: 21). However, slave lives were significantly structured by the Code Noir or Black Code (Sala-Molins 1987), which forbade marriage, or any form of sexual relationship between whites and blacks. The Code Noir was symptomatic of the increasing concern with race and racial purity in the Indian Ocean region, and its implementation gave impetus to the emergence of racial ideologies. Despite proscriptions against interracial marriages and sex, the population of mixed people grew. With the abolition of slavery, nearly 450,000 people of Indian descent were brought in from the sub-continent of India to work as indentured labourers (Teelock 1998). According to Teelock (1998) the living conditions of these immigrants were not much better than those of the slaves, an argument that Nwulia (1981) contests in his discussion of slaves as possessions rather than workers. The migration of people of Indian descent to Mauritius was closely followed by the arrival of numerous families from China, especially those escaping from the terror of the Opium Wars (Teelock 1998). In Carter’s (1998) account of ethnic interdependence in Mauritius, one finds that those who came to settle in Mauritius either as slaves, indentured labourers, or traders and business people, attempted to fit into this colour- and caste-conscious society. However, because there were fewer women than men in Mauritius from the mid nineteenth to the early twentieth century, men were more desperate for partners, and some married women of lower caste than themselves. Thus Mauritius became a plural state, and within it a great variety of people had to learn to coexist and to tolerate a diversity of customs and rules of stratification. Coexistence, however, was not always brought about by compromise but also by struggle and conflict. According to Teelock (1998: 34–35), French settlers obtained sizeable properties from the French East India Company via land grants or ‘concessions’ with which they were supposed to implement cultivation. But despite the low level of cultivation, the number of conceded properties continued to increase. This happened because French settlers and entrepreneurs managed to satisfy one of the primary conditions of land concession: they proved that they possessed slaves. A 26

Anthropology at ‘Home’

few settler families profited from the production of sugar, as the crop requires significant capital outlay and is best cultivated on large tracts of land. Furthermore, its cultivation is a labour-intensive process and even with the advent of new technology, slaves were still required for a variety of tasks associated with the cultivation and harvesting of the crop. In 1832, ‘38,594 of them were on some 1,036 agricultural estates, of which some 26,000-odd slaves lived and worked in a ‘slaves and sugar’ related environment’ (Teelock 1998: 104). The well-being of slaves and their descendants was generally dependent on their owners: beatings and other forms of punishment were commonplace for trivial offences. In the years leading up to emancipation (1835), the grand blancs (the owners of large plantations and the principal beneficiaries of slave labour) began to worry about the abolition of slavery. Teelock reports that these French families received ‘hefty compensation after abolition’ (1998: 113). In the Flacq district for example, one family received over £10,757 for 449 slaves, while another received £3,194 for 103 slaves (Teelock 1998). Many of these previous slave owners invested their money in the Mauritius Commercial Bank and today several of them still maintain control of the majority of big businesses in Mauritius. The slaves, on the other hand, did not receive any form of compensation. Instead their situation was such that they were compelled to accept further work as apprentices on the plantations (Benoit 1999). Recent research by Teelock (1999) indicates that white farmers appropriated land from black Creoles,3 forcing the latter to abandon the cultivation of subsistence crops. The discussion of slavery and apprenticeship provided by Nwulia and Teelock suggests that ex-slaves and their descendants were people whose identity, integrity and freedom were violated. The impact of these violations on their sense of self is not calculable, because none were asked about their experiences of slavery and indenture. The accounts of Mauritius’s past suggest that (white) hegemony was not easily achieved over some ethnic groups. There were struggles to establish and maintain control in the multiethnic society. People arriving in Mauritius brought with them specific ideas about life, spirituality and economy, and sought to include these in the broader social and economic framework. Today, various arguments concerning the Creoles’ loss of land form part of the politics of representation, as several versions of the past contribute to diverse representations of Creoles in Mauritian society. In setting the ‘scene’ it is clear that slaves and their descendants had diverse experiences of slavery and did not necessarily succumb to European domination. Similarly, those who acquired land as gifts, through inheritance or purchase, lost land in various ways and not simply because it was forcibly expropriated. Furthermore there were diverse experiences of apprenticeship, and the Europeans who attempted to settle and govern the society struggled to achieve social and economic control of it. Thus, in setting the scene, further socio-historical research needs to be done to assess the Creoles’ particular relationship to land after 1835 – not in order to produce an ‘authentic’ account of the past, but to shed light on the complexities 27

Le Malaise Créole

of social and economic interaction during that period. What is clear from the diverse accounts of Mauritian history is that even with the abolition of slavery in 1835 and the end of apprenticeship in 1839, attempts were made to maintain racial and ethnic ideologies and boundaries. As the day of independence from British rule drew near, economic and social disparities between white and nonwhite Mauritians were still great. These disparities can in part, be attributed to the consolidation of ethnic and racial ties from 1968 onwards. According to Olivier (May 1999), ‘The Mauritian business economy is dominated by a small number of Franco- and Anglo-Mauritian families … If you cast a glance down the list of directors of almost any Mauritian company, you will see the same names cropping up again and again – Lagesse, Dalais, Espitalier Noil, Harel, Leclezio and Taylor. Between them, these six families control seven of the top fifteen companies as well as the island’s largest bank (Mauritius Commercial Bank), insurance company (the Swan group), textile firm (Floreal Textiles) and most of its hotels and sugar plantations.’ Olivier notes that every single one of the above-mentioned families has a representative on the board of directors of the Mauritius Commercial Bank. In Boolell’s autobiography (1996: 107), the author notes that for many Hindus in the 1960s and 1970s ‘business [was] out of question on the account of heavy capital outlay.’ By December 1966 the political scene was clearly ethnicised, and in 1967, the campaigns of these political parties and their subsidiaries led to racial clashes between Hindus, Creoles and Muslims. These events led to the division of the country between those who wanted independence from colonial rule and those who did not. The severity of the riots prompted the government to declare a state of emergency. In 1972 the Hindu population was estimated at 428,345 people, nearly twice that of the General Population category at 261,079 (Annual Digest of Statistics 1998: 4). The sheer number of Hindus in Mauritius and fears of Hindu domination meant that some resisted independence of Britain. But independence from colonial rule was achieved, and from 1968 to 1982 politicians in particular continued to rely on fictions of ethnic homogeneity (and to promote these) for political and social reasons. In 1972, government identified four ethnic categories: Hindu, Muslim, Sino-Mauritian and General Population. This contributed to the promotion of ethnic homogenisation in politics but not necessarily in society. In the period from 1968 to 1982, Hindu power was consolidated in the public sector and the number of Hindu social and religious organizations increased, particularly the number of Arya Samajs (Societies of Nobles that emphasise Hindu need to return to Vedic Aryanism). Writing in the early 1990s, Boolell tells us that ‘In Mauritius, the Civil Service is too powerful and its lobby too effective for any attempt by any political party to point a finger at it. The risk of political toll is too high because every third family has a member in the service’ (1996: 108). This situation was caused by at least two factors: the rise of dynastic politics and increasing communal solidarity. In an interview (Lebrasse, Week-end 7 28

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November 1999), the deputy leader of the Mauritius Socialist Movement, Pravin Jugnauth, argued that dynastic politics are a tradition in Mauritius. A quick glance at some of Mauritius’s political leadership confirms his statement. In 1999 the prime minister of Mauritius was Navinchandra Ramgoolam, the son of Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, Mauritius’s first prime minister. The Minister of Agriculture in 1999 was Arvind Boolell, the son of Satcam Boolell – the Minister of Agriculture in the Ramgoolam cabinet. And, Xavier Luc Duval became Minister of Commerce and Industry and the leader of PMSD in 1999 – Xavier is the son of the late Gäetan Duval, who became leader of the PMSD in 1966. According to Hollup, (1994: 297) dynastic politics ‘arose with the transfer of political power to the Hindus after independence [the] first community leaders among the Hindus (in socio-religious associations and political parties) were mostly high caste and they also came to occupy important positions in the government bureaucracy.’ In his analysis of Indo-Mauritians, Benedict (1961) notes the existence of social structures within the Hindu caste groups known as baitkas. These are community centres that provide many rural Hindus with both social and material support. Benedict analyses baitkas as institutions that served to maintain social hierarchy within the Indo-Mauritian population. He does not look at tensions within them or the problems associated with living as part of a caste group. His account of the Hindus (in particular) suggests that heterogeneity exists within the group, but he does not indicate conflicts or contradictions that arise when people express their diverse interests. Hollup argues that this practice gradually fed both caste favouristism and nepotism’ (Hollup 1994: 298–303): powerful individuals protected their relatives from the same caste and recruited them for government jobs prior to and after independence. In his discussion of the Arya Maha Sabha Benedict notes that this religious association has four distinct branches, each with its own caste specifications. It is important in island politics. In the 1960s, many prominent politicians belonged to it. He says that these individuals are ‘active defenders of Hinduism and Indian culture … and were found in the highest echelons of government from the 1960s onward.’ Following Benedict, Hollup argues that the Arya Maha Sabha was gradually associated with the high-caste Brahmins and Babujees as it excluded lower castes. The introduction of government subsidies for socio-religious associations in 1958 increased the status and affluence of such associations. ‘The largest socio-religious association among Hindus, the Sanatan Dharm Temple Federation formed in 1964 … controlled all orthodox Hindu temples … until the mid-1980s. This association received substantial amounts of government subsidies (2.4 million rupees annually)’ (Hollup 1994: 312). Closer observations of Mauritian society from 1990 to 2000 indicate that macro-economic and social changes have impacted on identity formation and experiences, and that these changes have contributed to the complexity and diversity of identity despite attempts to consolidate ethnic and racial ties. When I interviewed Mauritians in 1999, many expressed their concern about Hindu 29

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control of the public sector, arguing that it fosters communalism. Furthermore, a number of people in Flacq, Roche Bois and Karina, mentioned the importance political backing for social and economic advancement. Few of the Creoles, when interviewed, said that they have recourse to this practice, which implies the support of influential politicians, civil servants and administrators in the search for employment or other services. In many instances, beneficiaries of political backing have caste, kin, religious or neighbourhood ties in common with the influential person. For this reason, Mauritians have developed a particular term for this practice: they call it ‘buddy-buddy politics.’4 More popular references to this practice can also be found in the saying that ‘Each monkey protects his mountain.’5 In an interview on the radio service of the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation in September 1999, the Minister of Labour mentioned the importance of ‘V.I.P.B.’ (Very Important Political Backing) in searching for employment. In agreement with the minister, several people who telephoned in and spoke to him on air maintained that knowing a minister, civil servant or manager in the private sector means that one’s chances of obtaining employment and favours relating to civil service matters is greatly improved. What is the purpose of ‘VIPB’ beyond employment? I would argue that it is a means to consolidate racial and ethnic ties and to promote political and social homogeneity within ethnic groups. By employing people on the basis of race or ethnicity and promoting one’s group in the work environment, some individuals are clearly distinguishing between cultural insiders and outsiders. In doing so, they also reify the positioning of their group in the society as a whole. Thus some Mauritians argue that Hindus of particular caste strata (mostly Vaish) are in the civil service, and a woman living in Black River told me that Marathis6 had taken over the cleaning and waiting jobs at a hotel on the west coast. With regard to racial categorisation, a man interviewed in Chamarel mentioned that mostly pattes jaunes7 (a pejorative term for the gens de couleur) were employed as administrators and supervisors in a hotel that he worked for on the west coast. Towards the end of 1999 the government of Mauritius attempted to respond to these allegations. It ratified the Public Procurement, Transparency and Equity Act late in 1999, aimed at combating nepotism, particularly in government services. But the increasingly liberal economy and the persistence of various cultural and familial affiliations reduce the potential of the state to intervene in matters beyond governance. In the discussion of Mauritian history presented at the start of this chapter, I argued that Mauritian society and identity is heavily influenced by racial ideology. From the time of independence, however, one finds that Mauritian society has also been influenced by various state-inspired ideologies, particularly Fabian socialism. The first Prime Minister of Mauritius, Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, is acknowledged by various Mauritians to have been an adherent of Fabian socialism: he believed that the state could bring about social reform, and from 1968 he set about implementing various social and economic policies that aimed to improve the situation of all Mauritian citizens. As Fabians, they ‘did not accept 30

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any notion of historical determinism, namely, that all depends on the historical stage of an economy and its production. They believed in governmental action.’ (Vincent 1992: 98). Ramgoolam was particularly strongly influenced by a Malthusian report produced by Professor Richard Titmuss of the London School of Economics in 1960. The report, entitled Social Policies and Population Growth in Mauritius, drew attention to the high population growth rate on the island and predicted that this growth would lead to a dramatic decrease in life expectancy and living standards on the island (Mannick 1989: 117). For Ramgoolam and his followers, the scenario predicted by Titmuss was to be avoided at all costs as, in the years preceding independence, the island nation was already experiencing high levels of unemployment and poverty. Ramgoolam advocated state-led development through the meticulous application of initiatives derived from rigorous research and documentation by social scientists. Various social policies were implemented within a Four Year Plan. As a result of these initiatives, the gross reproductive rate of Mauritians dropped from 2.9 to 1.7 percent in 1975, the rate of employment increased from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, and from the mid-1990s to 2001 the rate of women’s employment exceeded that of men. According the Ministry of Economic Development, Financial Services and Corporate Affairs Report (2002), the Mauritian labour force continues to increase. From 1995–2001, the Mauritian labour force grew at an average rate of 2 percent. The advent of Paul Berenger on the Mauritian political scene in 1969 also initiated a series of events and actions that sought to unite Mauritians as human beings rather than as members of specific ethnic communities. Berenger encouraged his young followers8 to accept Marxist doctrine, as he believed that the only way to counter patronage and inequality was to challenge existing power structures. As leader of the Militant Mauritians Movement (MMM), Berenger managed to garner support from the youth of Mauritius. In the 1970s and again in 1982 they voted en masse for the party, which called for an end to ethnic discrimination and for the institution of Mauricianisme, a doctrine designed to unite the country’s diverse ethnic groups under the banner of nationhood. Berenger also contributed to the devolution of power in Mauritius by setting up various unions in 1970 and the initiation of strike action. But after 1971, he acknowledged that even with the support of MMM members, he would not be able to implement the party’s proposed reforms without the assistance of the powerful bourgeoisie in Mauritius. Thus he declared that his followers ‘either stay the way [they] are, [protecting their] popular and revolutionary image, or dilute [their] ideological message and stretch out [their] hands to the country’s progressive and democratic elements’ (Mannick 1989: 39). By 1999 it was apparent that Berenger had persisted in the accommodation of ‘progressive elements’ (ibid.), in an interview (Le Mauricien 28 October 1999), in which he dissociated himself from the ideologues and appeared to accept that capitalism was entrenched in Mauritius, through his emphasis on the continued 31

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importance of the state to development.9 The developments set in motion by the Fabians and Marxists further contributed to the diversification of identity, particularly in the effects of these ideologies on the position and identity of women. Given that Creoles constitute more than one-fifth of the Mauritian population, they, like most Mauritians, benefited from the implementation of Social Fabianism and Marxism in Mauritius. The promotion of mass action by the MMM under Paul Berenger encouraged the youth of Mauritius to participate more vigorously in the shaping of the political economy, and, through these forms of popular protest, young Mauritian women were encouraged to perceive themselves as individuals with multiple, social identities as opposed to being members of a specific ethnic group. The emergence of various women’s organisations in Mauritius from the mid1970s inspired non-ethnic identification among women. In some ways this process contradicted forces shaping identity in the family, work place and the religious context – where some women were expected to demonstrate their subordination to men by emphasising their cultural identity through appropriate diacritical markers and value orientations. At the government level, several women’s organisations appeared to perceive Mauritian women as a homogeneous category by virtue of the fact that they all shared the same gender. As Mohanty argues in her discussion of liberal views of gender, ‘women [were perceived] as an already constituted, coherent group with identical interests and desires, regardless of class, ethnic or racial location, or contradictions [this implied] a notion of gender [which could be] applied universally and cross-culturally’ (1970: 55). The view of women as a homogeneous group unaffected by structural asymmetries was still apparent in 1999 in that Mauritian women were often characterised as ‘sisters in struggle’ (1970: 56), irrespective of their ethnic identity or class differences. This view of women, inspired the principles of liberal feminism and Fabianism, led to struggles for women’s access to various economic, social and political opportunities that, as Nababsing (1996) argues, did not always improve the lot of women because the latter occupy diverse cultural and social spaces. Nababsing argues that although family planning initiatives started by the Mauritian government and some religious institutions help women to plan their child-bearing years and to obtain time for work, women are often employed to do repetitive low-paying work that dramatically increases their stress levels. The liberal feminist approach is especially evident in the rise of a Mauritian women’s liberation movement called Muvman Liberasyon Fam (MLF). There are other women’s organisations in Mauritius.10 While the objectives of these organisations differ in certain aspects from the MLF, most of them aim to increase women’s access to social and economic opportunities. The Mauritius Family Planning Association, for example, is involved in the education of (mostly) women about contraceptive use and reproductive health. S.O.S. Femmes is actively involved in the prevention of domestic violence and sexual abuse of women and girls. The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 32

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regularly campaigns for demilitarisation and disarmament in Mauritius and in the Indian Ocean region. In Roche Bois, I came across the Roche Bois Women’s Commission, a community-based organisation that seeks to improve women’s access to services offered by the state and NGOs in Port Louis. By 1998 the Ministry of Women, Family Welfare and Development had implemented a variety of initiatives and pioneered several legal reforms including the promotion of the Protection from Domestic Violence Act of 1997. Several Domestic Violence Intervention Units were set up across the island, including one in Flacq. In August 1998 the ministry set up its Gender Bureau. The principle objective of this unit is to ‘ensure the integration of the principle of gender equality and the promotion of gender concerns in the development of a more equal society’ (Ministry of Women, Family Welfare and Development Report 2000: 1). To achieve this, the Gender Bureau is working on a National Gender Action Plan (NGAP), which follows the proposals made by Mauritius at the Beijing conference in 1995. Thus in 1999, positive changes to the situation of women and girls were apparent, although these were not necessarily evident in the lives of all Creole women. Nevertheless, I observed that a number of women were beginning to see themselves as ‘sisters in struggle’, whereas others emphasised their position in a distinct class stratum. Thus, social policies regarding the positioning and experiences of women in Mauritius have in some senses contributed the diversification of identity, in that they have pointed out women ‘in need’, and helped to distinguish between women of the working and middle classes. However, with regard to places such as the River Camp, it is possible that those concerned to improve the situation and opportunities of women are not perceiving the diversity of experiences, especially in places that at first glance appear to consist of impoverished people. Nevertheless, by attending to the liberation of women in various sectors of the economy, the proponents of gender awareness and equity have also highlighted the range of employment and diversity of skills among women. Thus women’s liberation movements and the ministry dealing with women and children’s needs contribute to the setting of the scene, in that they have altered the ways in which women are perceived and perceive themselves in the broader social and cultural contexts. From the mid-1980s, Mauritius experienced an economic boom. Two basic parts of the economy established in the early 1970s – manufacturing and tourism – began to bear fruit, and impacted on the articulation of identity and the social and economic landscape. In 2002, some Mauritians complained that the unbridled liberalisation of the economy was leading to a sharpening of social and economic disparities and the reinforcement of communalism on the island. In 1970, the government established an Export Processing Zone (EPZ) to address unemployment,11 assist in the repayment of debt to the World Bank, and increase investment and trade in the country (Mannick 1989). In twenty years, Mauritius experienced major economic and social development, so that by 1994 it was classified a middle-income country on the United Nations Human 33

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Development Index (UNDP Report 1994) and in 1999 its per capita income stood at ten times that of Madagascar. The per capita income of Madagascar in 1999 was 300 U.S. Dollars per annum, whereas in Mauritius it was 3,300 U.S. Dollars per annum. During this time, another major industry made its mark on the Mauritian economy – tourism. Since the early 1970s, Mauritius has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of hotels and tourism-related industries. In the past two decades tourist arrivals increased at an average annual rate of 9 percent with a corresponding increase of about 21 percent in tourism receipts. In 2000, tourism contributed to approximately 11 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP)12 and in 2001, 50,000 Mauritians were employed in the industry. Land previously owned or used by non-farmers is also gradually being taken up by the construction of hotels along the coastline and other buildings in the interior. Patel (1999) explains that, hotels control 13.8 percent of beaches, private bungalows occupy 16 percent of beaches, and only 8.77 percent of the coastline consists of public beaches (Week-end 24 January 1999). The 8.77 percent of public beach is shared by local residents and fisherfolk alike and the remainder of the coastline is controlled by the big sugar estate owners and other business people. The encroachment of hotels and private bungalows along the coastline means that many Creole fisherfolk gradually lose access to the sea and to land which is close to the beach. Furthermore, construction activities, and sailing and other motor sports disturb not only fishing but also the fragile fauna and flora in the tidal pools and further out – leading to a depletion and, in some cases, destruction of marine life. From an economic perspective, fisherfolk living in villages such as Le Morne are in many instances unable to continue with a mode of living that provides social sustenance. Only older fishermen now spend time to build casiers (fishtraps) and these are often subject to vandalism by younger fishermen who cannot catch enough fish to sell, in order to meet increasing subsistence costs. Those who work in the hotels often experience high levels of stress because they are expected to perform for a high-quality market. However, it is not only hotel construction and operation that are affecting Mauritian society. The textile factories in particular have contributed to the pollution of rivers, streams and the sea through flushing their fabric dyes into natural waterways.13 The introduction of garment and furniture industries (necessary for the diversification of the economy) have in some cases deprived tailors, seamstresses and furniture makers (a number of them Creole) of potential clients. In 1999, Ilois fishermen living in Port Louis complained about the loss of their livelihood, as many are now unable to fish along the west coast because of the development of the mer rouge industrial area. Away from the coastal areas, in places such as Chamarel, Creoles are still largely employed on white-owned plantations. Social relationships between FrancoMauritians and Creoles in such villages are changing slowly. In Chamarel, one finds that the development of Mauritius has meant that its leaders have been encouraged to follow international trends with regard to environmental 34

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management. A large part of the Black River district (of which Chamarel village is a part) was declared a national park in 1994. This has meant that many of the hunters and other people who sought both large and small game in the forests are now prevented from entering them. Writing on Mauritius (1988 to 1999), Thomas Hylland Eriksen noted that Mauritius is in the process of becoming one big village, as it is almost impossible to identify where one row of houses end and another begins. Interviews with long-time residents in Roche Bois in 1999 indicate that the urban areas have undergone enormous change in the last thirty years. Plants obtained by women in thickets and bushes for the treatment of dysentery, diarrhoea and fever are no longer easily obtained. To heal their children, women are often now compelled to take their children to the local clinic or hospital. Urbanisation has also meant that pig keepers in Roche Bois have to take care not to upset their neighbours for fear that they might call a sanitation officer, who might order them to remove the pigs altogether. In Roche Bois in particular, one finds that the development of industries in the greater Port Louis has meant that increasing numbers of Rodriguais from the neighbouring dependency of Rodrigues, are coming to Mauritius in search of employment and a better economic standard of living. In some instances, the influx of migrants is leading to the emergence of impoverished areas on the margins of towns and villages. People living in these areas tend to have less in the way of access to social services and resources. In the case of the River Camp near Roche Bois, these are sometimes areas where gender and ethnic disparities are at their greatest. By 1999, the economic and social lives of Mauritians, and in some cases, Creoles in particular, had been influenced by: • • • • • • •

The closure of factories in the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) The closure of factories in the sugar industry The mechanisation of the ports The loss of fishing rights The pollution of the coastal zones and the sea The emergence of new sanitation laws Increasing landlessness

The loss of income caused by these events, including the closure of the sugar factories,14 is not the only reason for Creole hardship. In addition to this list, new sanitation laws impact on the keeping of livestock in residential areas. In some instances, the implementation of these laws (as part of the government’s bid to create ideal urban spaces), has contributed to the impoverishment of Creoles who raise animals for subsistence and business purposes. The industrialisation of the economy has also meant that Mauritians have been compelled to become technologically literate in order to benefit from the computerisation of the economy. Technological literacy, however, is not easily achieved by many Creoles because it depends in part on regular access to functional computers and 35

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appropriate training. The lack of infrastructure in predominantly Creole villages means that even if some children or youths are keen to become technologically literate, they do not have the facilities to help them achieve this goal. A close look at the poorest regions and wards identified by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) (News on Sunday 25 July 1999)15 shows that these are mostly areas associated with Creole communities. The island of Rodrigues for example, whose population is 90 percent Creole; is ranked 145 at the bottom of the development index list. Other villages that interviewees later told me consist mainly of black Creole families such as Clemencia, Grande Rivière Noire (Black River), Poste de Flacq, Olivia, Petite Rivière, Le Morne, Baie du Cap, Chamarel and Case Noyale are ranked (in descending order) from 120 to 145. The places in which I conducted fieldwork are ranked as follows: Centre de Flacq 49; Roche Bois (part of Port Louis, ward 6) 83 and Karina 65; Chamarel 122 and Le Morne 135. Despite these rankings, my research revealed that there was considerable variation within settlements and villages. By indicating the position of villages on a development index, the CSO attempted to prioritise areas that required the attention of government and NGOs for social and economic development. However, it also contributed to the homogenisation of these places, which in the long term could lead to material losses on the part of government and tax payers. Nevertheless, the CSO statistics on housing and population (Housing and Population Census 2000, Volume I: Housing and Living Conditions) provide some indicators on housing conditions, mortality, marriage, gender/age ratios and population distribution across time. In the ethnographic chapters of the book, I use CSO statistics to help set the scene for each village or settlement, but it is only in doing fieldwork that one can obtain a more detailed image of each setting. This was apparent in The Social Fabric Study, Phase II (Bunwaree 1999) commissioned by the Mauritius Research Council in 1998. The study suggests that the geographical isolation of communities is one of the main causes of poverty in Mauritius, and focuses on the structural aspects of isolation: unemployment, unequal distribution of wealth, landlessness, poor transportation, and poor educational facilities. While the study provides a general overview of the perceptions of social actors and the situational context of social transactions, the authors seem to suggest that the poor imagine their experiences of ethnic discrimination. They argue that, in ‘a world of increasing want, limited resources and rising population, deprivation and inequality are becoming high. In most semi-literate population groups, people fall easy prey to believing that the causes of their misery lie in one ethnic or religious group dominating the other. This is fuelled by the zest of sectarian leaders’ (The Social Fabric Study, Phase II 1999: 2). In Chamarel and Le Morne, geographical isolation does play a role in the impoverishment of the population, but it is not the main cause. Furthermore, within these villages, there are those who are wealthy but for various reasons do not display their wealth. In Roche Bois and the River Camp, migration has an important influence on poverty, whereas in Flacq, spending patterns are causing families who appear to be wealthy, 36

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to become poor. By contrast, in Karina one finds that poverty is brought about by isolation, landlessness and unemployment. However, one also has to examine the role of gender in impoverishment because, while many women in Karina are getting jobs in the tourism industry on the east coast of the island, they are not being paid enough to meet the ever-increasing demands for books, private tuition and examination fees in the education of their children. The extent to which formal education promotes ideas of difference and of the ‘other’ is well known in Mauritius (Bunwaree 1998, Griffiths 1998).16 Primary school children are often expected to learn about the cultural and religious traditions of various ethnic groups as part of the national political plan to promote social harmony. Instead, their texts promote social differentiation. Asian characters, for example, predominate in depictions of industrious persons and few characters of African origin appear as entrepreneurs. Thus, from a very early age, young Creole children are taught that Creoles do not really feature as producers in the Mauritian economy. For many, this is reinforced by ‘reality’ in the communities where they live. This was especially evident in Flacq, where shop owners, salespeople and other entrepreneurs are mostly individuals and families of Asian origin. However, the possible cultural and social origins of these realities are rarely explained to pupils, while Asian-owned shops and businesses are proffered as evidence of Asians’ superior skills in trade. Creole children’s experience of education is also influenced by direct racial discrimination in schools (Bunwaree 1998). Poverty compounds the experience of racism, when students from poor families cannot afford expensive private tuition, fail their examinations and subsequently drop out of school (Bunwaree 1998, Griffiths 1998). Language is also a major barrier to education in Mauritius, as classes are taught in English, a language rarely spoken in public and hardly ever spoken by Mauritians (including Creoles) at home. In the Social Fabric Study, Phase II, researchers note that nine out of ten Mauritian children find it difficult to communicate in either English or French, the languages used in schools. Furthermore, competition for places in the ‘five star’ schools on the island is fierce. Once they have obtained their Certificate of Primary Education (CPE), the examination results of pupils are ranked according to the percentages and grades achieved. Only the top 3,000 students are given a rank number and this number determines which schools they will be allocated to by the Department of Education. Administrative and transport problems created by this system led to the abolishing of the CPE examinations and the ‘ranking’ system at the start of 2002; instead, children are going to be placed by the Department of Education in schools closest to their village. This is also problematic in that, in some of the poorer areas, education facilities are less developed and teachers are unwilling to transfer to these areas, partly because of the perception of poor (and mostly Creole) students as being less hardworking and more difficult to discipline. For secondary school students, there is still the need for private tuition in order to obtain good grades in the Secondary Certificate of Education (SC). At 37

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this level, lessons become more expensive as more specialised material appears in the curriculum. Parents’ inability to pay for extra lessons leads to higher rates of failure, particularly among poorer students. High failure rates reinforce negative social and economic stereotypes, because failure is viewed as a consequence of inferior intellectual capabilities rather than socio-economic circumstance. However, since 1968 increasing numbers of Mauritians have experienced both primary and secondary education,17 and the percentage of literate people in the population has increased dramatically. With an improvement in literacy and numerical skills, Mauritians (including Creoles) have been able to participate more confidently in the economy and in politics. The confidence levels and literacy of Mauritians is apparent in their active participation in radio talk shows, debates on national television, their written letters of complaints in various newspapers, and their participation in public demonstrations and marches.18 These forums add to the discursiveness of Mauritian society. Each letter to the newspaper, each comment in the television studio or in the street, offers the opportunity to influence individual or group positioning in the broader social framework. Thus education, whether negative or positive, has been contributing to public debate in Mauritius from 1968 onwards. Other equally important aspects of social change also influence public debate. Competing accounts of industrialisation in Mauritius, some focusing on the overall outcomes of industrialisation in the 1980s, others looking at the groups that were ‘left behind’, paint different pictures of Mauritian society and influence interpretations of social interaction and identity on the island.

Conclusion In conclusion, Mauritian society consists of various overlapping groups and political factions, but it also consists of individuals. Each of these influences and is influenced by particular interpretations of history and society, and when they articulate their interests (by continually contributing to public debate), they depict the heterarchic nature of Mauritian society and the discursiveness of hegemony. This means that despite the impositions of powerful groups, there is space for resistance against stereotypes and space for the reconstruction and representation of identity. Plus, the making of Mauritian society (or any society for that matter) is a discursive process where even dominant groups and their narratives of the past have to engage with those less powerful and their lesscompelling narratives in order to maintain socio-political advantage. With regard to Creoles, there are various interpretations of slavery that contribute to their portrayal in Mauritian society. But for ideological and political purposes, or for lack of resources indicating slaves’ perspectives, the focus of some (historians and Creoles) has been on the victimisation and humiliation of slaves. In this chapter, I have argued that the interpretation of history is not the only factor influencing 38

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the shaping of Mauritian society or the identity of Creoles. Social and economic changes in Mauritius since 1968 have impacted on the ways in which Creoles are perceived, and the ways in which they re-present themselves in Mauritian society. Such processes have also contributed to the diversification of the identity, despite government attempts to consolidate ethnic and racial ties through the identification of ethnic groups for political purposes. Thus Mauritian society is a discursive space within which competing interpretations of past and present exist. In the following chapter, I discuss the ways in which Creoles have been defined, and attempt to define themselves, in Mauritian society. I argue that these processes also highlight the interactive nature of Mauritian society, undermining the presence of cultural and political hegemony.

Notes 1. Taxi-Trains are cars that take up to four or five paying passengers and drop them off, either on the way to or at one location. 2. See Hollingworth’s account of the maroons in Nwulia (1981) for a more detailed account. 3. See Le Justicier 1999, ‘Le vol des terres Créoles’. La Voix Kreol August 1999. 4. ‘La politique de petit copains.’ 5. ‘Sak Zako protège so montagne.’ See also ‘Les dynasties en politique, une tradition à Maurice’. Week-end 7 November 1999. 6. People of Tamil descent. 7. Pattes-jaunes literally ‘yellow feet’. 8. In 1983, a year after the general election in which the MMM/MSM alliance won all sixty seats of the Mauritian parliament, 22 percent of the Mauritian population was aged less than twentyfour years. 9. See Le Mauricien 28 October 1999. 10. Mauritius Alliance of Women, Mauritius Family Planning Association, The Mauritius Mothers’ Union, National Women’s Council, SOS Femmes, United Nations’ Association of Mauritius Women, International League for Peace and Freedom, and Women’s Legal Action Watch. 11. See Dabee and Greenway 2001: 110. 12. 508.3 million U.S. Dollars per annum. 13. See ‘Rs 6.7 bn for a cleaner island?’ News On Sunday 31 October 1999. 14. See ‘Industrie sucrière à Maurice “Highly Vulnerable” à des changements climatiques’. Week-end 4 July 1999. ‘Dr. Arvin Boolell: The Sugar Challenge’. News On Sunday 8 August 1999. ‘Industrie sucrière: l’usine Rose-Belle a roulé pour la dernière fois, hier matin’. Week-end 25 November 2001. 15. See Nicolas Von Mally, ‘Maurice tigre de l’océan indien, avec rodrigues, chat de goutières à ses côtés’. Week-end 27 June 1999: 2. 16. See ‘CPE comme classement pas pour les enfants d’esclaves.’ La Vie Catholique 5 November 1999., and ‘Unequal Opportunities’. Week-end 3 October 1999. or, ‘Quand l’education contribue à perpetuer l’exclusion.’ Week-end 22 August 1999. 17. See http: www//ncb.intnet.mu/education/stat99.htm for the primary and secondary school enrolment trends. 18. See my discussion of the Rodriguais’s participation in a television broadcast of dance in Rodrigues, and the march against prostitution and drugs in Roche Bois, in Chapter Six.

39

C HAPTER 3 D EFINING C REOLES




Mayoumbé Mayoumbé Ne va pas chez nos frères aux sangs durs purs sûrs … Mayoumbé, Mayoumbé do not go to our brothers their blood is hard pure and sure … Emmanuel Juste, Mots mar(te)lés (in Prosper, J-G. 1994: 75).

In 2000, the population of the island of Mauritius was 1,143,069. Of this number, 35,779 lived on Rodrigues and 289 on outer islands (Ministry of Economic Planning and Development Central Statistical Office Report 2000: ii). The country’s population density is one of the highest in the world. More than 70 percent of the land consists of sugarcane plantations, which are still owned and controlled by the historical bourgeoisie, the descendants of Europeans. A correlation of population and density statistics may lead us to believe that, while Mauritius has a small number of inhabitants, the welfare of its people is generally affected by spatial rather than social factors. Furthermore, it may also be presumed that these spatial constraints will in general influence the cultural identity of the inhabitants. Anthropological research in Mauritian society (Eriksen 1998 and 2000, Nave 1998, Carroll and Carroll 2000) indicates, however, that while population density does affect cultural identity in Mauritius,

41

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differential access to wealth and social prestige plays a more important role in constituting cultural identities, especially ethnic identity. This chapter introduces the Creoles of Mauritius and makes several comments about the complexities involved in the establishment of their ethnic identity. It offers an introduction of Mauritian Creoles and their historical origins, then follows with a discussion of three categories of Creoles currently living in Mauritius: the Créole Morisyen, the Rodriguais and the Ilois. My ethnographic research from 1999 to 2002 indicates a variety of Creoles living in Mauritius, some originating from the Chagos archipelago, Rodrigues and Seychelles islands. These groups have been and are still subject to biological and social stereotyping and the current marginalisation of Creoles can be partly explained in terms of their experiences of stereotyping. More than stereotyping, the non-constitution of Creole identity in state politics and, particularly the designation of Creoles as a residual category has a negative impact on Creole identity and its positive valuation in Mauritian society. The third part of the chapter examines Creoles’ means of self-definition. In particular, I focus on the roles of music and Christianity in the categorisation and grouping of Creoles.

Historical Origins and Political Definitions of Creoles There are approximately 200,000 Creoles in Mauritius (Eriksen 1998). At the start of my research I was uncertain as to their possible origins. However, during my time in the field, historians and linguists (Alpers 1999, Teelock 1998, Hookoomsing 2000, Carpooran 2002) interested in the origins of slave descendants in Mauritius wrote extensively on the subject. Slaves captured off the east coast of Africa, for example, were often registered as Mozambican, even though documentation of their body markings, language and social behaviour indicate that they were an ethnically diverse population (Alpers 1999). Travel diaries and accounts of the nineteenth-century inhabitants of Mauritius describe ‘Mozambican’ slaves as an ethnically heterogeneous group. The ethnicities of these slaves are said to be: Moujouane (probably from Anjouan in the Comoros), Kamanga (from the western side of Lake Malawi), Maravi, Yambane, Sagara (from central Tanzania), and Makua from Mozambique (Alpers and Teelock 2001: 119). Slaves from Madagascar were not simply labelled Malagasy. According to Vaughan (2001: 53–62) and Allen (1999), a distinction was made between the lighter-skinned Asiatic Merina and the more Negroid lowlanders. Vaughan tells us that the Malagasy were ‘always thought of as having a particular propensity for violence and flight’ (2000: 63). Larson (2000) and Teelock’s (1998) analyses of slavery in the Indian Ocean region suggest that Malagasy slaves living in Mauritius in the eighteenth-century were from various ethnic groups in Madagascar. Larson, in particular, emphasises the importance of various forms of 42

Defining Creoles

bondage in Malagasy society that inevitably led to a diversity of Malagasy slaves in Mauritius. These historical analyses are supported by anthropological research which, in Madagascar (Bloch 1986, Graeber 1995), reveals that Malagasy people living in the southern and western parts of Madagascar had long experienced local slavery and would often flee to hilltops and mountains to evade marauding slavers. Vaughan also tells us that, ‘specialist roles were accorded to [the Wolof and Guinée of West Africa and that] in the hierarchy of the slave economy [the Mozambicans] lay at the bottom, valued not for their skills but for the strength of their bodies’ (Vaughan 2001: 59–62). Alpers’s (1999 and 2001) analyses of the diversity of Africans in Mauritius also offer a glimpse of how they were perceived by their owners. Mozambicans were generally considered to be hard workers who were obedient to their masters. Early ethnographic research in the Indian Ocean unveils part of the social life of the Creoles’ ancestors. The French ethnographer, Eugene de Froberville, conducted his research on the Mascarenes in the mid 1840s. His task was to communicate with societies who had become enslaved in the region. De Froberville interviewed more than three hundred people. In Mauritius and in other Indian Ocean islands, de Froberville studied Makua, Ngindo, Ngoni and Yambane dress, belief, and craft skills. Among the Makua, de Froberville noted that ‘spirits, sorcery, divination and recourse to poison ordeal to determine causality’ were significant in religious practices (Alpers 1999: 16). The Ngindo, on the other hand, were skilled crafts people. They designed traps for hunting purposes, crafted musical instruments and were competent woodworkers. However, these have not remained unchanged. Craft skills have been transformed, and in present-day Mauritius a significant proportion of Creoles are artists, musicians and craftspeople. The poetry of Emmanuel Juste, laments the denigration of Creoles under slavery, while Megan Vaughan’s archival research (2001) reveals that ‘slavery was a differentiated sort of affair, with many slaves trained and employed as skilled workers and artisans … many, both men and women had undertaken apprenticeships through which they had acquired highly marketable skills as masons, carpenters, seamstresses, wigmakers, domestic servants and cooks’. She also notes that ‘divisions of labour and of ethnicity, were to become more than mere colonial labels and were to endure as lived identities’ in Mauritius (2001: 52). Field research almost two centuries later shows that certain spirit beliefs, sorcery and divination rituals have survived from the time of slavery. Presently, however, it is difficult to trace religious practices to particular African ethnic groups. What is found in Creole communities is a fusion of cultural ideas and practices derived from African societies and elsewhere. For example, Creoles often make use of the djembe drum in the composition of sega typique (traditional sega): this instrument originates from West Africa. In my discussion of new identities among Creoles, I consider the significance of such musical instruments and musical styles to the reconstruction of Creole 43

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identities. Cultural practices and ideas among Creoles incorporate elements belonging not only to Asian but also to European belief systems, and are therefore difficult to identify as being specifically African, or as having been derived from a particular ethnic group. It is also extremely difficult to set clear boundaries in identifying Creoles in Mauritius. Creoles are both a socially and physically diverse population. Burton Benedict (1965) explains that, originally, the word ‘Creole’ meant a person of French descent born in Mauritius, but by the 1960s it meant a Mauritian of mixed biological and cultural heritage. Thus, a Creole of the eighteenth-century would be a Franco-Mauritian in the Twentieth Century. Thomas Eriksen’s (1986) paper on Creole culture and social change, attempts a comprehensive list of the social and behavioural traits of Creoles in an effort to delineate the deeply embedded values that make it difficult for Creoles to benefit from social and economic change in the country. Further challenges to defining the Creole group became evident in my encounter with the Nelson Mandela Centre for African Culture in Mauritius. In a casual conversation with one of the staff members of the centre, the story emerged of how difficult it was to define Creoles in Mauritius. On one occasion the Minister of Arts and Culture telephoned the centre to ask for a definition of the ethnic category known as Creole. In ethnically conscious Mauritius, a precise definition was required for brief mention at an important social event. The staff member at the centre was eventually compelled to send the ministry a series of documents that approximated to a definition of the Creole. The problem here was not that the centre lacked the information, but that there existed so many potential political pitfalls in settling on a particular definition and the Creole community is so heterogeneous that it would take considerably longer than a simple telephone call to answer the minister’s question. For example, there appeared to be significant dispute as to whether those physically identifiable as African have appropriated the term ‘Creole’ to define themselves and to exclude those whose appearance was less African. The debate as to whether the term Creole simply signified a person of mixed genetic heritage or whether it referred to a person of mixed heritage but a more African phenotype added to the complexity. Discussions of this nature often take place in academic circles. These arguments did not surface when I spoke to people in the general public. In my conversations with people (outside academe), Creoles were often defined as ‘the mixed population.’ Despite references to their hybridity, Creoles are often spoken about as a group with distinct cultural traits. For example, they are said to be the people of Roman Catholic faith and the descendants of Africans. The latter statement was often clarified by references to the hair type and the social habits of Creoles. Today, the population of Mauritius is officially divided into four ethnic or cultural groups. These groups are by no means easy to identify in Mauritian society, as cultural and racial interrelationships since the seventeenth-century have 44

Defining Creoles

created a physically and socially heterogenous people (Carter 1998, Teelock 1998). Nevertheless, in 1972, a comprehensive census was completed in which Mauritians had to declare their ethnic identity. The categories identified by the government of Seewoosagur Ramgoolam are as follows: Hindu, Muslim, SinoMauritian and General Population. The Creoles, generally acknowledged as the descendants of African and Malagasy slaves, were incorporated within the General Population category. This category also includes European families living in Mauritius. As Europeans constitute about 1 percent of the General Population category (which in total represents 29 percent of the nearly 1.2 million people in Mauritius) the category was in effect a residual one including all those who acknowledged mixed physiological and cultural heritage. In contrast, other cultural groups are identified by their religious affinity or geographical origin. This form of identification enables other cultural groups to maintain a more concrete sense of ethnic identity and origin. This is not the case for Creoles. They are not formally acknowledged as a distinct ethnic or cultural group in the Mauritian census, even though they are associated with the creation of the island’s lingua franca, and have made distinct contributions as a group to the island’s folklore, music and culture. Creole cuisine, dance, architecture, fishing techniques, dress, art and oral history are rarely recognised as unique cultural contributions made by Creoles to Mauritian society. Without a comprehensive account of their past and of the achievements of their ancestors, Creoles are difficult to define as a homogeneous group. In presentday Mauritius, attempts are being made to recover Creole history. While this is a noble endeavour, the emphasis remains on the slave past of the Creoles’ ancestors. Much of this history is told from the perspective of slave owners and tends to stress the degradation and powerlessness of the slaves, homogenising the Creoles’ past. Accounts that do provide some insight into the time of slavery (Teelock 1998, Nagapen 1998) are generally based on documents reflecting the views and attitudes of non-slaves. Given the fact that slaves were prevented from acquiring literacy and were rarely mentioned in public discussions – except as subjugated possessions, complainants or notorious troublemakers – slaves were unable to create a positive identity for themselves in the public domain. Imperial perceptions of culture as possession and of social groups as bounded entities situated along an evolutionary continuum justified primordial definitions of humankind, including slaves and their descendants – whose humanity was, in any case, questionable. The transportation of slaves to neighbouring islands (Reunion and Rodrigues) and further away (the Seychelles and Chagos Archipelago) led to the development of distinct cultural traditions among slaves and their descendants. However, these groups were not bounded entities. Travel (after slavery was abolished), interethnic communication and marriage, the sharing of culinary skills, beliefs and concerns fostered interdependence and cultural diffusion (Carter 1998). While there are cultural peculiarities in each, the groups do not form bounded wholes. 45

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A Taxonomy of the Creoles The figure presented below (Figure 1) indicates the diversity of Creoles. It draws some of its main components from Eriksen’s (1986: 60) diagram that indicates that Franco-Mauritians born in Mauritius would historically be considered as Creoles, because in the eighteenth-century, the term Creole was applied to all whites who were locally born in the Indian Ocean islands or born in Mauritius. In the twentieth-century, the term Creole implies mixed heritage. Children born of white and black parents should therefore be considered as Creoles. However, in Mauritius, they are generally referred to as gens de couleur. On the chart, the latter are not put on the same level as the Créole Morisyen, Ilois and Rodriguais, because they occupy a superior stratum in the social hierarchy by virtue of their lighter skin colour. Nevertheless, they are still descendants of black families, and for social and economic reasons are sometimes compelled to associate with other ‘black’ Creoles. Presently, the term Creole is used most often in reference to AfroMauritian families, the slave descendants in Mauritius and surrounding islands, namely, Rodrigues, Reunion, Seychelles and the formerly settled, Chagos islands. Contested definitions of the term Creole seems to suggest that all Mauritians are in fact Creoles. However, as stated previously, the term has been most commonly used in reference to Afro-Mauritian families, particularly as other subcategories (Créole Madras, Créole Sinwa or Créole l’Ascar) have on occasion emphasised other aspects of their ethnicity. The second diagram below indicates further complexities, namely, class differentiations among Creoles. Class differentiations are indicated because they contribute to significant intra-ethnic social and material diversity, which in turn, creates varied experience. Franco-Mauritians, in particular, recognise the existence of a ti Créole group. The ti Créole are essentially rural working-class people most of whom live in the coastal villages of the island. In Chapter Seven, I suggest that the ti Créole consist of a more distinct category than this, and can be perceived as the underclass of the Creoles. The ti Créole are contrasted to the working-class Creoles encountered in the urban area of towns such as Port Louis and Curepipe. The lifestyles of the urbanites differ somewhat from those living in the coastal villages, in that they have greater access to goods, services and types of employment not found among the coastal dwellers. In Figure 1 I distinguish between these three class strata. The ti Créole stratum is more likely to belong to the underclass segment of Mauritian society, as they often do not have a steady income and may be unemployed for long periods of the year. The klas travailleur (literally working class), on the other hand, is likely to have a steady income, is generally employed on a regular basis, and does have access to social networks to help them manage in times of hardship. The klas bourzwa is less evident because few Creoles occupy a leadership position in the Mauritian economy or the state – in a survey of Creole leadership, out of fifty-two directors of parastatal and private sector companies only five were Creole (Chan Low La Voix Kreol July 1999: 1). 46

Defining Creoles

However, there is also an emergent middle-class among Creoles particularly as those educated in the period of massive economic growth in Mauritius begin to assume senior positions in the private sector and the civil service. To my knowledge, there was at the time of research no term to describe this group although they do feature in the ethnography presented in the following chapter on the village of Flacq. Skin colour and other phenotypical characteristics, socially prestigious associations, and education levels forge bonds (even if only

Créoles of Mauritius

Black AfroMauritian Families

White FrancoMauritian Families Mulatto gens de coleur

Créole Morisyen

Rodriguais

Créole Madras

Ilois

Créole Sinwa

Créole l’Ascar

Black Afro-Mauritian Families

Créole Morisyen

Ti Créole

Ilois

Rodriguais

Ti Créole Créole Bourzwa

Ti Créole Klas Bourzwa

Klas Travailleur

Klas Bourzwa Klas Travailleur

Klas Travailleur

Figure 1. The Creoles of Mauritius and Class Differentiation among the ‘Black’

Creoles. 47

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temporarily) between people from different class segments. Similarly, considerations of these factors can lead to cleavages within class segments. As suggested in the Introduction, Eriksen (personal communication 1997) has noted that class is becoming an important factor in the structuring of Mauritian society. While I agree with Eriksen on this point, I also maintain that ethnicity remains central to the organisation of Mauritian society, and that it contributes to more important cleavages than class does. Nevertheless, class differentiation among the Creoles adds to the complexity of their definition. In the following sections, I highlight the main differences between the three major categories of Creoles – the Rodriguais, the Ilois and the Créole Morisyen. Differences in terms of geographical origin, history, economic experience, skin colour, age, gender and a range of other individual categories, make the Creoles a complex and hybrid group. In following chapters I indicate the varied implications of such categories for Creole identity.

Créole Morisyen, Ilois ek Rodriguais – Some Creole Groups in Mauritius The Rodriguais The ethnic and religious composition of Rodrigues is different from that of Mauritius. More than 90 percent of the population is of African descent and the majority of this population are followers of Roman Catholicism (UNFPA Rodrigues Report 1996). The ancestors of the Rodriguais were transported to Rodrigues from Mauritius, in the eighteenth-century by white planter families to work in the sugar cane fields. Situated some 560 kilometres east of Mauritius, Rodrigues is a dependency of Mauritius and its inhabitants are Mauritian citizens. For instance, Rodrigues has its own ministry responsible for implementing government policies on the island. Two members in the Mauritian parliament represent the island. In Roche Bois and particularly the River Camp, the majority of the people were from Rodrigues. Several Rodriguais informants explained that they had left the island to seek their fortunes in Mauritius and that Port Louis was the most convenient place to settle. To date, there are few infrastructural developments on the island of Rodrigues and its inhabitants depend greatly on the several business and tourism opportunities generated on the island by Mauritius. Antoinette Prudence, once a leader of the Rodrigues Local Council, complained about the fact that Rodrigues was not taken seriously by the Mauritian government (Prudence Week-end, 9 January 2000: 1). Major problems relating to the water scarcity, poor education and bad environmental management were on the increase on the island. But by 2004, Rodrigues Island was on the path to obtaining political and economic autonomy and Mauritian and Rodriguais authorities were dealing with these concerns. Yet most Rodriguais live in the rural areas of Rodrigues. The population is scattered over some 138 villages all over the island and these families do not have ready access to resources 48

Defining Creoles

that many Mauritian families enjoy. The majority keep livestock and rely on raising cattle or fishing for a living. Today, a great number of Rodriguais families live in Roche Bois, a suburb of Port Louis in Mauritius, and other working-class suburbs of the port city. Their living conditions vary depending on the number of years they have resided in Mauritius and the reasons why they migrated. Recent migrants who have been in Mauritius for less than five years and who arrived on the island on their own and with no family to welcome them are often poorer and more socially marginalised than those who have been in Mauritius for a longer time or have social and family networks in Mauritius. The distinction between recent and older migrant families is apparent in my discussions on Roche Bois and the River Camp. The latter are generally more recent arrivals in Mauritius and tend to have less in the way of social and economic networks to sustain them. Most Rodriguais, living in Port Louis, however do contribute to the formation of a distinctive Rodriguais identity in Mauritius. They achieve this by cultivating particular distinctive markers and value orientations that set them apart from other Creoles in Mauritian society. It is also apparent that Rodriguais emphasise a distinctive ethnic identity to subscribe to the dominant (Hindu and Franco-Mauritian) discourse on multiculturalism. They do this more effectively than the Créole Morisyen. Comments made by Rodriguais living in Roche Bois about the Créole Morisyen also suggest that there are important differences between the two groups of Creoles. The Rodriguais suggest that the Créole Morisyen are individualistic, and not inclined to become entrepreneurs because they (the Créole Morisyen) see this form of activity as ‘money-grabbing’ and dishonest – an activity associated with the Asian population on the island. The Rodriguais argued that they, on the other hand, were not worried about how they are perceived by ethnically different others and saw no harm in engaging in entrepreneurial activity. The Créole Morisyen The Créole Morisyen may be defined as people of mixed heritage (including AfroMalagasy ancestry) who are born on the island of Mauritius and profess to be Creole. The Créole Morisyen may also be individuals of Afro-Malagasy descent whose ancestors came from neighbouring islands (Reunion, Rodrigues, the Seychelles, Chagos), but who, with time, have forsaken or diluted their nonMauritian identity by intermarriage or being born among the Créole Morisyen. In the early 1990s, the term Créole Morisyen became strongly associated with Mauritians possessing Afro-Malagasy phenotypical features. This association followed the sharpening of ethnic and economic differences between the various groups in Mauritian society. As Mauritius becomes a wealthier society, economic differences between the middle and lower classes are growing more apparent. However, the Créole Morisyen are a culturally and economically diverse group, consisting of various classes and cultural mixes. This means that not all Créole Morisyen have been ‘left behind’ economically. In fact, as the following discussion 49

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shows, some are actively using the resources they possess to enjoy the benefits gained through the country’s economic development. The ethnic division of labour in Mauritius has also influenced the occupational roles of the Créole Morisyen. While the Rodriguais note that the Créole Morisyen are averse to entrepreneurial activity, I noted that such aversion is only confined to particular circumstances. There are almost no Créole Morisyen families selling goods on the streets of Flacq, but several conducted their businesses from the home. These businesses included car repairs or the repair of various machinery, sewing, embroidery, hairdressing, catering, and providing after-hours lessons to school children. As I explain below, some of these entrepreneurial activities are extremely profitable, enabling families to buy property and dramatically improve their standard of living. Nevertheless, many Créole Morisyen appear reluctant to start businesses outside of the home, some saying, ‘that is the work of Indians.’1 Among all Creoles, generational differences are quite marked. Young Creoles appear to be less bound by group traditions, either Rodriguais or Créole Morisyen. Interviews with fifteen young adults revealed that young people in general (and not just Creoles) were quite open-minded about inter-ethnic contact through friendships, work and leisure time. Twelve of those who responded stated that there are many racists in Mauritius and that the older generations (who are more concerned with the maintenance of tradition), are often the culprits. Asked whether they thought that Mauritius is a tolerant society or that it would become one, the majority of young Créole Morisyen interviewed answered in the negative, Michael a Créole Morisyen, aged twenty-one said ‘it will depend on the young. Actually, if the youth have the vision to fight they will fight for this. So I think that the future is in the hands of the youth.’2 Bryan, aged twenty, another Créole Morisyen, said ‘Maybe, it will depend on the old. Actually, the latter have to let go and allow the young to do what is right,’3 while Corinne was less optimistic. She argued that the future of ethnic tolerance is bleak because of the country’s long history of ethnic tension. Overall, Hindu and Tamil respondents were more optimistic. Anjini, a twenty-years-old student, said ‘It all depends on the coming generation. In fact there is no ethnic difference for youngsters. For them it is not a problem. Thus there is a possibility for a peaceful future for Mauritius.’ A minority of Hindus and Tamils disagreed. Roshni said, ‘Not really, as I see that everyone cares for himself. That is why I don’t expect a peaceful future for Mauritius.’ The young also perceived the ethnic division of labour as a major obstacle to their economic advancement. When asked if they would work in Mauritius after completing their studies, the Créole Morisyen were again less optimistic about their future prospects. Vanessa, aged twenty said, ‘there is so much favouritism and I do not think that I will be able to get a job. In fact, I am sure that even though I have the required qualifications, I may not be able to get the job I deserve.’ Michael declared that favouritism/nepotism, ‘ruins everything,’ and Bryan agreed with him, arguing that ‘backing’ played such a huge role.’4 50

Defining Creoles

Except for Roshni, none of the six Hindu/Tamil interviewees expressed any doubt about obtaining employment after their studies, except perhaps to state that there may be no employment in Mauritius for the kind of studies that they are doing. Older Créole Morisyen interviewed (from ages thirty-five to sixty-five) noted that levels of consumption had increased in the last twenty years (1979 to 1999), that Créole Morisyens had been the ones to fall prey to this ‘scourge.’ They argued that unfortunately, it was Créole Morisyen who entertained regularly, bought the latest gadgets and wanted to be the big spenders in Mauritian society. The older generations argued that the spending is most evident among the younger generation of Créole Morisyen, especially those with white-collar jobs in the tourist industry and the private sector. Older respondents traced this behaviour to access to foreign currency. Either these young families had experience of living abroad or they had family overseas who gave them money on a regular basis. In other words, those who do not have relatives abroad or who have not been outside Mauritius tend to be more careful with their money. However, unscheduled field research in an aerobics class among predominantly non-Creole middle class women revealed that high levels of consumption are apparent among non-Creoles as well as Creoles, suggesting that consumption patterns are a function of class, not ethnicity. During research, I interviewed and observed families of various income and occupational groups. The Créole Morisyen who had access to private schooling or were employed in the upper echelons of the sugar industry or the private sector tended to have a social life that differed from those who did not possess these resources. As with the young Créole Morisyen who have experience of life overseas and who are in white-collar jobs, the wealthier Créole Morisyen tend to spend money on luxury goods. As an informant explained, ‘the Créole (Morisyen) feels that he needs to show everyone how well he has done. To do this he must have all the latest gadgets. Its as if he is constantly trying to match the lifestyle of his white boss. If the boss has a big yacht, then he must have a small boat. If the boss has a big car, the Créole Morisyen will get himself a small car. Everyone must know that he is on the path of progress.’ The Créole Morisyen’s emulation and ‘admiration’ of white families is caused by two interdependent factors. Firstly, colonisation involves the imposition of dominant value systems and cultural practices on the colonised. To achieve power and maintain dignity, those subject to colonisation emulate those who have power and dignity in order to achieve these for themselves. Secondly, to achieve a measure of dignity and respect, it becomes imperative to dissociate oneself from the contamination of failure and humiliation. For some Créole Morisyen the latter are encoded in the blackness of their skin and the rootlessness of their hybrid selves. Debt is another vice attributed to Creoles by non-Creoles and Creoles themselves. But debt among the Créole Morisyen is a sign of both the increasing level of material consumption in Mauritian society and the fact that the Créole Morisyens’ self-esteem is closely linked to the acquisition of prestige goods 51

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generally associated with the lifestyles of middle-class whites living in Mauritius. Field’s analysis of coloured identity in South Africa adds to this discussion of identity among the Créole Morisyen: ‘The central theme … is an apparent acceptance of the universal discourse of whiteness as constituting civilized and desirable culture’ (Field 2001: 105). The practical implications of the formal introduction of credit-based companies such as Mammouth (a furniture and household company) has meant that many Créole Morisyen do not have to save for years before buying furniture, household items or vehicles. To obtain credit from stores such as Mammouth, however, one needs to be permanently employed, with a payslip. These types of employment are generally only available to whitecollar workers who live in the urban areas. Access to credit has changed class-oriented behaviour by allowing some to bypass traditional processes in the acquisition of goods. Thus, for this subcategory of Créole Morisyen, it is no longer necessary to rely on the blessing of the previous generation to obtain a house, furniture and other material goods traditionally accessed through complex networks and social processes. By circumventing traditional processes associated with Creole culture, new generations of Créole Morisyen are also signifying their validation of whiteness and its association with modernity and civilisation. The Créole Morisyen also differ slightly from the Ilois and Rodriguais in their cuisine, music, and life and death rituals. Baptism, Holy Communion and marriage among the Créole Morisyen draw largely on the traditions of French families who were living on the island in the eighteenth century. In her account of celebrations in Mauritius, Le Chartier (1993: 8) explains that the use of pralines and dragées wrapped in gauze and offered at baptisms is a custom that the French brought to Mauritius and which the Créole Morisyen creolised. Another culinary tradition that has its roots in the Easter celebrations in England appears at the celebration of the first Holy Communion. At this ceremony, hot cross buns (traditionally produced at Easter) are blessed by the parish priest in church and shared afterwards by the families involved in the first Holy Communion. But it is not only European culinary traditions that have been hybridised by Creoles, African and Malagasy cooking styles and ingredients are also apparent in Creole cuisine. These include: manioc pudding, breadfruit pudding pineapple and papaya cake. The techniques include – drying and salting fish, roasting wild pig, tenrec, goat, simmering monkey meat in a curry,5 or boiling pumpkin leaves. The influence of English traditions is also apparent at most Creole weddings, where the first dance of the newly married couple is usually a waltz and the last is a sega. A sub-category of Creoles that has attempted to retain distinct cultural and social traditions is the Ilois. In the following I define this group and indicate in general their position in Mauritian society. The Ilois In 1776, the island of Diego Garcia came into the possession of the French governor of Mauritius, the Vicomte de Souillac. In a bid to make the islands 52

Defining Creoles

profitable, several hundred slaves were transported with their owners to settle on the island. The inhabitants became an important part of the French and subsequently the British economy. Their production on copra plantations added to the cash crop incomes generated by Mauritius and the Seychelles. Two centuries later, the islanders (or ‘Ilois’ as they are commonly known in Mauritius) were forcibly removed (see Miller The Mail on Sunday 1999) from Diego Garcia and its neighbouring atolls (including Peros Banhos, Salomon, Speakers Bank, Eagle Island, Danger Island, Pitt Bank and Six Iles) to be resettled in Mauritius. The pro-independence party of Seewoosagur Ramgoolam agreed to cede possession of the islands to the British in return for the independence of Mauritius. The Chagos islands thus became a part of British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and were subsequently leased to the American government for the construction of a base, strategically placed to counter Soviet militarisation of the Indian Ocean. In 1965, the islanders (Ilois) were lodged in the worst slums of Port Louis. Starved and homeless, many turned to prostitution and gang-related crime to survive. Others died in the streets or committed suicide (Madeley 1982). Today many Ilois are still living in Port Louis (many in Roche Bois and Cassis) and their situation has not improved much. In 1979, the British government deceived the Ilois by getting them to sign a document renouncing their right to return to the islands. Olivier Bancoult, the present leader of the Chagos Refugee Group (CRG) explains how the community had been told that they had to sign the document to acknowledge their status as Ilois and guarantee an income drawn from the £ 1 million offered by Britain in compensation for the loss of their territory. The document was in English and many Ilois could not read. Several years later (1984), in the face of mounting protest by the Ilois, the British paid the Mauritian government £4 million to compensate them for the loss of their homes. According to the islanders, this money was badly managed in Mauritius because no measures were taken by the Mauritian government to help them integrate into Mauritian society. Some of the Ilois interviewed maintain that they did not know how the money had been managed and there are allegations that the various governments of Mauritius (up to 1990) pocketed the money allocated to them. Thus, of the 1,300 Ilois families in Mauritius today, many are still living in the slums of Port Louis and many are unemployed and economically marginalised. Despite their miserable situation, their desire to return to the Chagos islands seems to encourage them to maintain their home island’s cultural practices in Mauritius. These beliefs and practices distinguish them from the Créole Morisyen and the Rodriguais. Powe (1982) also explains that, unlike the Créole Morisyen, the Ilois woman occupied an important position in her community. According to him, in the Chagos archipelago the Ilois had generally lived in matrifocal communities, where the women took care of the family and formed enduring female friendships that enabled them to face the hardships of plantation life. The nature of Ilois women’s 53

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work on the plantation also provided more opportunities for the sharing of information and the strengthening of women’s freedom from men. For instance, as workers, the Ilois women were paid for their work. Thus, women had personal access to money and they also purchased items for the family from the plantation store, such as flour, sugar and clothing. Barter systems existing between the islanders also allowed women to exchange goods and ideas. Men were involved more in heavy duty and individualised work, where they had little time to socialise. Part of this freedom resulted in their considerable sexual freedom compared to Créole Morisyen women. Scarr’s (1998) historical analysis of Indian Ocean society and history suggests that Creole women were more sexually liberated than they are today. In the Seychelles, non-conjugal unions were common (because slaves were banned from civil marriage and church weddings were expensive) and there were marriages en essaie (trial marriages) where a woman could dispense of her husband if she found him a poor worker or an unsatisfactory sexual partner. My first encounter with the Ilois came after I learned about their desire to return to Diego Garcia and its neighbouring islands in a news programme on national television. The leader of the CRG, Olivier Bancoult, was on his way to England to seek a judicial review of their case against the British government. Since the early 1970s, the Ilois community has staged public demonstrations protesting against their situation in Mauritius and demanding that the British government allow them to return to the Chagos islands. In their protests, the Ilois are also asking for just financial compensation, which will enable them to resettle in the Chagos islands. Bancoult told me that in Mauritius, the Ilois regularly get together to think about their ancestors buried on the islands and to pray for their souls. They also take the opportunity to prepare and share meals that are culturally specific to the islands, especially dishes prepared with seafood and coconut milk. He said that this helps them to remember what they were taken away from. Those gathered at Bancoult’s house argued that despite their hard labour on copra plantations, the Ilois lived well into old age. Their longevity is attributed to their low-fat and nutritionally balanced meals and relatively clean environment. In recent decades, however, the Ilois have adopted the nutritional and habitat patterns of working-class Créole Morisyen. Although there appear to be no current statistics to attest to their decreased age of mortality, the Ilois are, like other Creoles, succumbing to high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes – diseases, Bancoult argued, that are associated with industrialising societies. The Ilois appear to see themselves as part of a bounded group with distinct cultural traditions and practices that they regularly invoke by coming together to share a meal dance or reminisce about life in the Chagos archipelago. In short, they see themselves as part of a cultural diaspora and are able to dispense with negative stereotypes of hybridity by asserting their common origin in the Chagos islands. They have also successfully emphasised important elements of their ethnicity, namely, a shared sense of suffering and shared territory. By emphasising these elements, they have managed to reaffirm their status as a culture-possessing 54

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group, an important achievement in a society concerned with primordial ties. Primordial links are further stressed by the Ilois in the veneration of their ancestors. In his account of cultural life among the Ilois, Powe (1982) discusses the great sadness of the Ilois who, in Mauritius, can no longer take care of their ancestors’ graves. Powe states that the Ilois believe that their current misfortunes are due to their inability to perform ancestral rites. On All Saints Day, when members of the Catholic faith commemorate the loss of their loved ones by tending to graves, the Ilois are said to look out to sea, crying that they cannot take care of their grand dimounes (their ancestors). The Ilois’s sense of suffering is also captured in a sega song that narrates the inability of the group to tend to the graves of their ancestors. Discussions with non-Creoles on the cultural aspects of the Rodriguais, Créole Morisyen and Ilois, suggest that Creoles are a residual category that are also (paradoxically) identifiable by their values and practices. Biological and social stereotyping, in particular, are ways for non-Creoles to homogenise the Creole group and to emphasise the primordial identity of non-Creoles. However, Creole identity is also largely circumscribed by its non-identification in the Mauritian constitution. This creates specific difficulties for Creoles, as it is difficult for them to define and establish a positive ethnic identity that is not recognised by the state. The non-definition of Creole identity by the state is owing to the general view that one’s cultural identity must be traceable to a specific cultural root. As Creole identity is derived from a variety of cultural sources, it does not meet the requirement. This has meant that Creoles have been placed in the General Population category, which is, a residual one. The treatment of Creoles as a residual category is also apparent in the treatment of the Kreol dialect, which is spoken by most Mauritians but is attributed to the descendants of Africans and Malagasy in the country. As Eriksen (2002) notes, Kreol has been stigmatised in Mauritian society as ‘an impoverished, shallow and context-dependent idiom’ (Eriksen 2002: 80). The stigmatisation of the language is caused not only by these characteristics but also to its hybridity, as Kreol is made up of African, Indian and European languages. However, Carpooran (2002) keenly observes that Kreol, like the identity of the Creoles themselves, has been subject to change over time and identifies four phases in the evolution of the dialect: the exotic phase, scientific phase, militant phase and post-militant phase (Carpooran 2002: 8–9). For him, changes in Kreol mirror changes in Creole identity, particularly Creoles’s engagement with their stereotyping in Mauritian society.

Biological Origins and Social Stereotypes The creation of a people of mixed social and genetic heritage in Mauritius came about through social and sexual relationships (both forced and voluntary) 55

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between the greater number of white, Indian and African men and African women in eighteenth-century Mauritius (Benedict 1965). There were fewer men of Indian origin living in Mauritius in the eighteenth century, compared to the larger Indian population in the country, by the mid-nineteenth century. According to Marina Carter (1998) there were many illicit unions between the white and African population living on the island. Despite miscegenation, biological and social stereotypes were fostered and persisted. In the following subsections, I discuss these stereotypes.

The Colour Conscious In the time of slavery, the children of slave women were sometimes fortunate enough to be freed by a parent who was free. Others obtained freedom through a sibling or other family member who had been freed. These individuals were defined as ‘free coloured people’ and were distinguished from the slaves by their freedom and sometimes, their lighter shade of skin colour. In French, the term ‘free coloured people’ has greater social significance. Its interpretation as gens de couleur (people of colour) places these lighter-skinned individuals higher up in the pigmentocracy of Mauritius. Norbert Benoit (1999) argues that the descendants of the gens de couleur were generally liberated before 1835. As a result, they had a longer period during which to mingle socially and physically with the European population in Mauritius. Closer to the Europeans in phenotypical and social terms, they systematically dissociated themselves from those who appeared to be African. Their subsequent associations and dissociations from the Creoles in the 1990s depend, largely on micro-social relations (family position, affluent friendships) and macro-political needs (votes, social support). The Créole Morisyen sometimes refer to the gens de couleur as Créole fer blanc (wannabe whites), emphasising the Francophile nature and racism of the gens de couleur. On the other hand, the gens de couleur sometimes refer to the Créole Morisyen and Rodriguais as Mazambiks (Mozambicans) or refer to black Creole men as noir chiolos (black vagabonds), emphasising their Africanity and savagery. Colour consciousness is also apparent among Creole islanders coming from the Seychelles and Reunion. In Scarr’s (1998) historical study of Seychellois society, he notes that an intermediate colour category (between white and black) known as the ‘high reds’ was common in the Seychelles. In Reunion, black Creoles are often referred to as caffres (kaffirs). In Vaughan’s analysis of slavery and colonial identity in eighteenth-century Mauritius, she notes that colour consciousness was imperative to the achievement of order and respectability. Miscegenation was perceived as dangerous, Vaughan draws on an extract from the Congregation de La Mission Parisienne record 1504 (in Mauritius) which states that ‘it causes great disorder on Isle de France to see 56

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men of certain rank publicly associating themselves with negresses whom they treat as wives and with whom they have children who will one day become a bastardised and dangerous race’ (Congregation de La Mission Parisienne, record 1504 in Vaughan 2001). Vaughan states that ‘for the colonial administration here as elsewhere, it was important to continue to struggle to determine a method of knowing who, exactly, everyone was, in part because ‘race’ was such an unreliable marker’ (Vaughan 2001: 51). The unreliability of race as a means of categorisation is apparent in the use of hair as an ethnic and racial marker.

The Ti Sevé: Hair Matters Megan Vaughan also notes the importance of hair texture to identity in her discussion of the mixed races (métis) in Mauritius (2001: 49). Again, she draws on a quotation from the Congregation de La Mission Parisienne where it is stated that, ‘despite the fact that both their hair and manners resemble those of the blacks, they have a distinct aversion to the latter and call themselves French’ (Congregation de La Mission Parisienne, record 1504 in Vaughan 2001). In present day Mauritius, Creoles are also identified by their hair texture and both Creoles and non-Creoles refer to Creoles as ti sevé, meaning Creoles with ‘small hair’. Individuals who correspond to the visual stereotype of the Creole as a darkskinned person with Negroid features is more likely to suffer prejudicial treatment and abuse in public. Walking home with two friends (one Creole and the other African-American) one afternoon I was reminded of what such discrimination feels like. A group of young Indian men drove past us. Leaning out of the windows, they shouted out ‘Femmes caffre!’ (Kaffir women!). They also yelled out other abusive words implying that we had loose morals and were dirty. Possession of certain physical features is also associated with particular stereotypical behaviour. Women who possess these features (and are thus identifiable as Creole) are perceived as being sexually uninhibited and therefore sexually available and open to harassment. The power of these stereotypes are such that women attempt to change themselves to escape categorisation by manipulating ethnic markers. Thus, Creole women in Mauritius often say, ‘Hair matters!’ – the reason for this being that Mauritians often perceive hair texture as a reliable ethnic boundary between Creoles and non-Creoles, and hence a potential asset for social mobilisation. With the introduction of expensive hair relaxers or straighteners from France in the 1970s and from America in the 1990s, many of the ti sevé have been transformed socially and politically. No longer perceived as people who clearly occupy a stigmatised and Africanised identity, they are treated as evolués, those who have ‘evolved’ in physical and cultural terms. Among the middle-class Creole communities, where women can afford regular trips to the hair salon for a ‘relaxer’, the pain of this hair treatment seems to outweigh the possible discrimination and abuse they might experience on a daily 57

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basis. However, this treatment makes it more difficult for Mauritians to use hair as an ethnic marker, and intermarriage both within and beyond Mauritius has made this ethnic marker virtually obsolete. Nevertheless, Mauritians still make use of hair as an ethnic marker and a social ‘sophisticate’ marker, which reinforces the stigma against the ti sevé as being characteristic of poor, rural and lower-class Creoles. But in contemporary Mauritius, this is no longer a reliable means of identification, at least not for those who can afford hair salon treatments. Horror stories about young Creole women whose hair was falling out owing to ‘do it at home’ hair straightener creams were common in the village of Flacq. One local Creole hairdresser sometimes refused to deal with these women, but more often than not reverted to herbal remedies passed on to her from her family to help these women grow their hair back. In recent years, more sophisticated straightener creams have enabled many Creole women to cross ethnic and social barriers. This re-invention of themselves has to take place on a regular basis, however, and sometimes involves secrecy about their true appearance. The tension caused by this was clearly observed among Creole teenagers. Much effort was taken to dye hair a lighter shade, to prevent the hair from becoming curly when atmospheric humidity was high and to straighten hair with whatever product was available, the moment that new, curly hair appears. In Eriksen’s taxonomy of Creoles in Mauritius, he notes that the Creole category includes a wide range of people of mixed cultural and physical heritage. Those classified as Creole Madras (Creoles with Tamil heritage) and Creole Sinwa (Creoles with Chinese heritage) or Creole l’Ascar (Creoles with Arab heritage) do not slot into the currently popular definition of Creole. The term Creole is presently identified with those who exhibit negroid phenotypes. Attempts to reify the Africanness of Creole identity are also evident in the current trend among young Creole activists, who profess the need to publish their African ancestry, by growing dreadlocks or not straightening their hair. The fact that hair can be changed, or that it cannot be used as an ethnic marker, poses a serious problem for the often racist, visual identification of Creoles. Similarly the view of Creoles as possessing deeply embedded values and practices, which set them apart from other Mauritians is also problematic. I discuss non-Creoles’ views of Creoles and argue that proponents of these views rarely take into account the impact of social and economic change on values and behaviour.

Matrifocal Families Non-Creoles interviewed suggested that Creoles tend to live in matrifocal families because the father is often absent or a weak figure in the family. Those non-Creoles interested in social history argued that matrifocality among Creoles is a result of the slave experience. Slave owners, they argued, did not recognise paternity among slave families, marriage was forbidden and families were often torn apart by the re58

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sale or long-term hire of siblings and parents to other plantation owners. This meant that only descent from the mother was recognised. However, this is difficult to prove, and more historical research needs to be done to ascertain if matrifocality was common among slaves in Mauritius. Research on similar situations in the Caribbean and in America, however, suggests that matrifocality resulted from the destruction of extended and nuclear slave families. Smith (1996) also suggests that matrifocality is related to the status of men in the community – notably their ability to secure a steady income and to remain at home. During research, I came across some matrifocal households among Creoles, particularly among the Rodriguais in Roche Bois. There I observed that some Rodriguais men are not able to secure a regular income (particularly as the Mauritian labour force is feminised), and are often away from home for long periods, as many work as deep-sea fishermen. In the absence of a regular income such men and their families depend on shops that offer credit. A second explanation for the appearance of matrifocality is the extent of single parenthood, particularly in the (recently settled) River Camp – a community bordering Roche Bois, where there are many Rodriguais families. Matrifocality is therefore, not necessarily a phenomenon restricted to slave societies, but is also apparent in modernising societies where social and economic change impact on the form of the family. Substance abuse is yet another factor caused in part, by social and economic change. In Mauritian society, non-Creoles argue that Creoles drink too much and are spendthrifts. I discuss these stereotypes in the following paragraphs.

Substance Abusers and Big Spenders Ethnographic research suggests that there is a history of prohibited drug use in communities mostly inhabited by Creoles. However, substance abuse stems from limited choices, the influence of work conditions and the effects of long-term social and economic differentiation on behaviour rather than innate, primordial, characteristics. Internal causal factors also contribute to substance abuse, which include a family history of substance and physical abuse – factors not confined to Creole families. Creoles are also stereotyped as the arch-consumers of Mauritian society. In Moutou’s (1998) discussion of Creoles’ consumer behaviour, he argues that they are wasteful in their Christian festivities evidence of this can be found in their ‘excessive’ drinking and partying. This argument is also taken up in an earlier discussion of Eriksen’s where he outlines the Dionysian character of Creoles and discusses their stereotyping as hedonists in Mauritian society: life would be ‘boring’ without the ‘fun-loving’ Creoles. In the last twenty years, Mauritius has experienced a rapid rate of modernisation. The latter has also meant an increase in the spending power of Mauritians. The increase in income was met by an increase in the number of shops and furniture stores where one 59

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could buy on credit. Purchase on credit enables some Creoles to have quick access to prestige and dignity. Education is also offering Creoles a chance to improve their social and economic standing in Mauritian society. Those who have received good education in the past twenty years have, in some instances managed to obtain a better life than their parents. The income of such a generation is generally spent on consumer goods because, as Eriksen (2002) argues, social mobility among Creoles involves the individual and perhaps the nuclear family not an entire network of families as among the Indo-Mauritians. However, as the following chapter on Flacq shows, education may also contribute to exclusion, as access to a good education is determined not only by a family’s material situation but also by their access (to a certain extent) to social networks. Basic observation of Mauritian social life indicates that many Mauritians are buying consumer goods on a grand scale, irrespective of their ethnicity, which suggests that many middle-class Mauritians (not just Creoles) seek to obtain status and to achieve dignity through consumption.

Figure 2. A Creole Shoe-mender in Flacq. 60

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However, dignity is not the only motivating factor, perceived necessity of such goods is also important. For example, Creole (and other) women who spend an entire day at work would much rather buy a washing machine to do the family laundry rather than spend hours washing clothes by hand. Similarly, a big refrigerator is not just about looking good in the eyes one’s neighbours but is necessary for keeping food fresh, if one is not able to go to food stores and markets every day to buy fresh produce. Thus the perception of Creoles as the ‘big spenders’ of Mauritian society is often misguided, because the proponents of the stereotype do not take into account how non-Creoles are using their money nor do they consider the impact of economic change on behaviour in Mauritian society. But as I show next Creoles are not just defined by others, they also define themselves.

Self-definition through Sega The music and entertainment of Creoles reveal much about their identity and situation in Mauritian society. Recent (1990s) interest in sega is apparent in the nationalist aims of the state, in the tourism industry’s concern with ethnic tourism as another means of revenue, and in the politics of identity reconstruction among a Creole elite. The exact origins of sega are hazy, but Arago’s (1822: Vol. I, 223–24 in Alpers and Teelock 2001: 91) analysis of similar dances by slaves elsewhere (Mozambique, Brazil) provides some clues. Arago identifies the chéga or tséga from Mozambique that he says is similar to the fandango or the chica from Brazil. In these dances, the top part of the body stays relatively immobile while the hips move. Two dancers are involved, male and female, and Arago, (like Milbert) says that the dance ‘degenerates’ into simulations of sex. In his early work on the Creoles of Mauritius, Gäetan Benoit (1985) suggests that the Malagasy brought sega to Mauritius. It is possible that there is a link between the Merinas’ mortuary ritual of famadihana (the turning of the bones) and the sega. North-Coombes (1978) describes a form of sega that simulates ‘a primitive death ritual … in this ritual, eight or ten men will carry shoulder-high the rigid body of a ‘dead’ participant, going round and round in circle and chanting words … the meaning of which is now lost. The ‘body’ is then thrown up in the air and dead man comes to life again as he lands upright on the floor and sega ends.’ In a number of songs, the daily suffering, joy and ordinariness of Creole lives is depicted. Singing is thus an important medium for expressing Creole identity in Mauritius and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean. Sega is also an important form of lamentation and the varieties and diverse social meaning of the sega to Creoles indicates the ways in which sega contributes to the diversity of Creole identity in Mauritian society.

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Varieties and Perceptions of the Sega Several versions of sega are found on certain islands of the Indian Ocean such as Rodrigues, Reunion and the Seychelles. In Reunion, for example, sega is known as the maloya and the dance has certain aspects to it that are reminiscent of France. In the first instance, the Creole spoken by Reunion islanders contains a number of old French words and phrases unlike Mauritian Kreol. Reunion Creole is used in maloya songs. Until very recently, maloya was banned by the Roman Catholic Church in Reunion (Didier 1990). It was believed that performance of maloya led to a trance-like state, where participants lost control of their morals. Before the advent of mass tourism in Mauritius, sega gatherings were rarely organised. In René Noyau’s (1977 in Benoit 1985) account of sega in Mauritius, the author explains, that historically, sega dances were never ‘organised’. They were spontaneous events. People attend and bring with them food and drink for the ‘owner’ of the party. Dance parties were common at Easter, Christmas, the Assumption and New Year’s Eve – some of the times during which slaves would not work. However, like maloya, sega was not always performed in public places. In fact, until the work of a Creole singer, Alphonse Ravaton (alias Ti Frère) was popularised in the 1960s, sega was performed in private spaces, at home or among friends. In many instances sega was excluded from formal celebrations, especially among wealthier Creoles, because the dance was associated with the lowest category of Creoles and was perceived as a barbaric dance by the FrancoMauritians and non-European middle classes. For example, Benoit explains how sega was frowned upon by the Church and upper rungs of Creole-Mauritian society, which, for quite a long time, used to label the performers as creolo-tiolos or chiolos – Creoles of the lowest class (Benoit 1985: 34). In 2001 there were still some gens de couleur who referred to Creole men as noire-chiolos, meaning black vagabonds.6 It was mostly young women from the middle classes who used this term, saying that their friends would end up marrying ‘des noire-chiolos.’ Sega is also a form of escape from a harsh social world. Benoit (1985), Didier (1990) and Nagapen (1998) argue that dancing and singing the sega was the only manner in which the slaves could forget about their hardships on the plantation. By fashioning instruments made from the natural materials found on the plantation and getting together to sing and dance, the slaves were able to find solace and creativity in music and entertainment. Teelock’s (1998) study of the history of slave plantations in Mauritius, does not provide information on whether the Creole sega was partially a social ritual that reinforced existing power relations. Several sources (Benoit 1985, Didier 1990, Le Chartier 1993) state that sega gatherings took place in the private enclosure of the slave camp, implying that there were no performances staged for the owners. Early observations of music and entertainment in Mauritius show that Creoles were often the object of spectacle. During a visit to the Champ de 62

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Figure 3. The Ravanne, a Traditional Instrument Used in Composing Sega.

Mars (a horse-racing course) an observer of Mauritian social life in the 1850s explains how the Creoles’ ‘merry black eyes sparkle with pleasure, their heads and feet move in harmony with the music … The quickness and correctness of the African ear would be almost incredible to those who have not observed the rapidity with which they master the intricacies of the most difficult pieces of music.’ This stereotype was extended to the plantation, where slave ‘masters encourage them in their musical propensities, finding that the slowness of the work when the music is slow is compensated for its rapidity when the music is quick, and that when there is no music, there is more chattering and laughing than work’ (Beaton in Benoit 1985: 32). It was morally and politically necessary for slave owners to see their slaves as infantile and submissive, ironic that they should have also been seen as joyful, given their atrocious experience of slavery.

Performing Culture through Sega The concern of Mauritians (in general) to present an image of ethnic and racial harmony in order to attract tourists is apparent in a popular tourism slogan coined in the early 1980s. Tourism officials in particular, promoted the slogan ‘no problem in Mauritius.’ Since then the tourism industry has attempted to achieve this image of harmony and social order, and as Denis Beckett, a South African 63

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travel writer and reporter, noted on his visit to the island in the early 1990s, ‘Almost the only dark faces you see are the endless layers of hotel servants in their neat Legoland liveries – blue for boatmen, white for the beachsweepers, green for grasscutters.’ (Beckett 1996: 21). The emphasis on ethnic segregation is strong in Mauritius as dominant groups on the island are keen to represent the diversity and distinctiveness of each ethnic group. As sega is representative of the island’s population of African descent, at hotels they are often called upon to demonstrate their Africanised identity. However, hotel entertainment managers do not completely impose their perception of Creole identity on Creole dancers and entertainers at hotels. In many instances, Creoles are taking on their negative stereotypes and transforming these into assets. For instance, there are some who are keen to be the ‘fun-loving’, ‘partying’ types. It offers them a distinct and valuable identity, particularly in a tourist-obsessed state. Some Creoles interviewed, who work in the hotel entertainment industry, say that they lead happier lives than those who do not work in this industry. They explain that in the entertainment context they do not feel as though they are victims. This enables them to portray creoleness to white tourists and enjoy the money earned from this enterprise. Others ‘resist’ by singing songs in languages other than Kreol, performing other dance routines in between sega numbers and including politically conscious lyrics in sega or seggae. Through these diverse strategies, Creoles challenge the impositions of Hindus and whites and obtain the best circumstances that they can. Challenging the status quo is not always easy. The subordinated position of women sega dancers at hotel (and non-hotel) performances is evident – particularly when women appear as sexualised objects. Beyond the hotels however, sega is still performed in the home and at weddings. In these locations the performance of sega is not to indicate the possession of culture or the lack of it. There is also a higher incidence of improvisation and equality between the sexes. It seems that at home there is no perceived threat to one’s identity or ‘need’ to perform one’s identity. Historically sega was seen as dance that consisted of ‘suggestive and lascivious contortions’ (Benoit 1985). Certain sega songs contain sexual references but close analysis reveals that the emphasis is on play and verbal skill rather than sensuality. Ultimately, the sexual and social nuances of sega lyrics are complex, for although the sexuality and vitality of Creoles is celebrated in the physical performance of sega, it is also this performance that abases them as a morally negligent people in the eyes of others. The incorporation of African moves into sega danced at home is rare. Since the 1980s, dancers and composers have incorporated ‘African’ elements in sega songs, costumes and performance. A particular version of the sega, known as the tongolele has been popularised by two musical groups: the Serpent Noir (Black Serpent) and Mo Mam Twa (You’re My Kind). However, resistance in sega has been apparent even before the incorporation of African moves into the dance. Resistance through lyrics forms an important part of Creoles’ challenge to dominant ideas of culture and identity. 64

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Resistance and Lamentation through Sega Lyrics Some sega singers acquire great prestige in Creole communities. It is through these composers and performers that Creoles are able to indicate their existence positively as a distinct and yet heterogeneous population in Mauritian society. Unfortunately, this often leads to conflict between particularistic and universalistic claims to identity, a situation that complicates the social definition of Creoles. The conflict itself stems from a struggle between the experience of negative stereotyping and the desire for a particular cultural identity in a country where the latter is valorised. In recent years, some Creoles have argued that they are an integral part of Mauritian society and that they have to be recognised as such by the state and by other cultural groups. Statements about their importance to Mauritius are apparent in Serge Lebrasse’s sega, Ti Paul Coupère Canne (Little Paul the Sugarcane Cutter). ‘Little Paul’ works hard, his life is organised and he is wise enough to know that he has to buy cake for his sweetheart and her family when he goes to visit her at home. Earlier in the song, little Paul explains why the manager of the estate does not watch him at work – just in case he accidentally slices the man’s ankle as he takes a swipe at the cane, a comment that reminds one of the punishments meted out to rebellious slaves in the time of slavery. Those slaves that attempted to escape were captured and had their Achilles tendon severed by plantation foremen (Nagapen 1998). However, it is little Paul’s statement that without him the estate would ‘fall to pieces,’7 that is more revealing of the position of Creoles in Mauritian society as it suggests that Creoles form an integral part of Mauritius’ success. The sega is also a form of lamentation. In Feld and Fox’s (1999) analysis of the lament genre in music, they note that ‘lament stylisations performatively embody and express complex social issues connecting largely female gendered discourses on death, morality and memory to aesthetic and political thematization of loss and pain, resistance and social reproduction, and to ritual performance of emotion’ (Feld and Fox 1994: 39). Various sega songs (especially those of Ti Frère) are lamentations that emphasise loss and pain, morality and immorality. However, while sega lyrics enable Creoles and others to perceive the daily realities of Creole existence, they also foster negative stereotypes as sega lyrics often portray Creoles as drinkers, gamblers and seducers. In the mid-1980s a different form of sega emerged which indicated changes in definition of Creoles. This form of sega, consisting of a blend of sega and reggae, was named seggae.

Seggae and Identity Reconstruction in the 1990s In the 1980s the accession to power of pro-Marxist (MMM) and Socialist (MSM) parties in Mauritius promoted favourable conditions for the emergence of anticapitalist, anti-caste and anti-patriarchal groups. Local structural changes and 65

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political developments in the African diaspora also contributed to the appearance of anti-hegemonic groups. One of these groups, the Rastafari, is the most visible ‘anti-establishment’ group among Creoles in Mauritius. Inspired by the music of Bob Marley and the Afrocentric spirituality of the Rastafari, some Creoles (particularly those described as ti Créole) living in Mauritius, have combined sega and reggae to produce their own (overt) protest music in the form of seggae. In doing so, Creoles indicate that not only should they be defined as a Mauritian ethnic group, one should also perceive them as a diaspora group. Reflecting on what makes a collective a diaspora group, Cohen (1997a) says that such groups experience: dispersal, collective trauma, cultural flowering, troubled relationships with the majority, a sense of community that transcends national borders. Doing research among Creoles, I found that they drew on these elements to define their identity at different political moments, maintaining political flexibility in their search for a comfortable and valuable space in the local ethnic hierarchy. The most public form of (black) consciousness-raising came from the political rhetoric of the late Gäetan Duval, the self-proclaimed leader of the Creoles in the 1970s. Duval, a local politician, was a keen proponent of negritude and asked Creoles to recognise their common African ancestry. Privately, Duval socialised with the gens de couleur and the Franco-Mauritians, casting doubt on his allegiance to the Creole cause. The Rastafarian movement also gained ground in the late 1970s as the songs of Bob Marley became more popular among people who saw themselves as oppressed in various parts of the world. For this segment of the Creole population, Rastafarianism offered and still offers an appealing and alternative explanation of their position in Mauritian society and it provides an alternative (subaltern) history and vision of the future. Its music, reggae, articulates their experience of marginalisation in Mauritian society and offers (as it does elsewhere in the African diaspora and previously colonised societies), a source of inspiration for an alternative identity politics. Viewed from afar, Rastafarianism also helps to locate Mauritian Creoles in a wider political arena. It connects them with African diaspora groups in the Indian Ocean region and as far as the Caribbean (see Hookoomsing 1995). In her analysis of diaspora and their transnational qualities, Floya Anthias (1998) makes the point that diaspora indicates ‘the growth of non-nation based solidarities in the contemporary period’ (Anthias 1998: 557). For her, these formations show how locally marginal groups can forge sociopolitical bonds that transcend nationally defined boundaries and reveal the more transnational and historically grounded aspects of race and ethnicity. Adding to this, Friedman has argued that invocations of transnational subjectivity may also be perceived as manifestations of new class formations (Friedman 1997). Hence, Creoles who listen to reggae in the River Camp and Roche Bois could be exhibiting both aesthetic preferences in music and their participation in new class formations that go beyond the nation state. Such forms of identification may ultimately produce a global class structure that undermines local hegemonic formations (Friedman 1997). 66

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Among Mauritian Creoles, Rastafarianism seems to possess most of the sociopsychological characteristics to be found in Rastafarian movements in Jamaica. The lyrics of seggae songs call for a form of psychological ‘return’ to Africa: in several seggae songs, Creoles are encouraged to recognise the value of, and to return to Africa by symbolically acknowledging their African origins. Forms of ‘return’ vary. Among the Creole Rastafarians, the ‘return’ involves overt political opposition to the normative conventions of Mauritian society. This is achieved by embracing a pro-Africa ideology by growing dreadlocks, smoking ganja (cannabis) and adhering to the dietary and social conventions of the Rastafari. However, as I show in my discussion of Rastafari in Chamarel, many Creoles who smoke ganja do not necessarily follow the dietary and social conventions of the Rastafari. Sackcloth Rastas (those who follow the Rastafari conventions) symbolically reject all that is associated with ‘Babylon’: that is wealth, power, cruelty and dishonesty. Black people are also encouraged to dissociate themselves from what are perceived as exclusively Western practices and established rules. In Mauritius, this has (on occasion) landed people in trouble with the law, particularly in the cultivation and smoking of ganja, which is illegal in Mauritius. Seggae and Rastafarianism are generally traced to certain suburbs of Mauritius, especially places such as Roche Bois and Chamarel where many (working class or ti Creole) Creole families live. Some of these places have acquired the reputation of ‘no-go’ areas for middle-class Creoles and non-Creoles. In both of these places it seems to appeal to young Creoles who see Rastafarianism as a potent response to capitalism and the ‘mental slavery’ of racism. They indicate their rejection of capitalism and racism (and therefore, hegemonic impositions of identity), through the public presentation of their dreadlocked hair and the smoking of ganja. However, the popularity of seggae is not confined to the Creoles in the poorer suburbs of Port Louis nor is it to be associated with Rastafarians alone. In the 1990s this music has become extremely popular among the young in Mauritius: Creoles from all social and economic milieus enjoy the music, attend the concerts and buy the compact discs. It is a music that is reaching a wider ‘subcultural’ category – that of Mauritian youth in general. In contemporary Mauritius, Rastafarianism enables some Creoles to play a double game. By turning to Africa for cultural inspiration, they confirm and conform to the ‘homeland discourse’ – essentially hegemonic discussions and symbolic representations of the presumed fixed origins and traditions of some ethnic groups in Mauritian society. At the same time they disrupt social order by selecting and displaying specific aspects of African diaspora identity. Furthermore, using the generally anti-establishment aspects of Rastafarianism: smoking ganja, growing dreadlocks or choosing not to buy capitalist commodities, some Creoles are regularly engaging in symbolic confrontations with other ethnic groups and one could argue, with the dominant concept of the Mauritian state. Similarly, when Creoles adopt rap or reggae music and their associated diacritical markers, they perceive themselves as countering the marginal position,8 by obtaining 67

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power via lyrics and words that attempt to puncture false consciousness. But it is important to note that because Creoles belong to more than one socio-economic stratum (and therefore to different classes), not all Creoles are reaching out to the African diaspora in order to (consciously) reconstruct their identity. Many continue to experience the constraints of local hegemonic impositions more profoundly than they experience liberation through transnational forms of identity. Indeed, some are beginning to think globally but many are still living locally in a profound sense (Clifford 1994). Thus it is possible to conclude, like Friedman, that cultural self-identification is a matter of social position (Friedman 1997: 88). This issue of social positioning was evident in Creoles’ treatment of seggae and rap, because although Rastafarianism and rap music signal Creoles’ interest in transnational forms of identification, the lyrics in seggae and rap often essentialise them. Ras Nattybaby a seggae singer who produced songs in the late-1980s, urged the Creole community to realise that their (African) ‘culture’ was fast disappearing. Hinting at the further (negative) hybridisation of Creoles through inter-ethnic marriage, Ras Nattybaby warns Creoles that their African roots are burning and disappearing, ‘My people your roots are burning!’9 Even rap and ragga artists emphasise the ‘roots’ of Creole identity. Rap groups for example, often use the word ‘nas’ referring to ‘nation’10 when referring to Creoles, suggesting, as Eriksen (1993) argues that Creoles are the ‘true’ Mauritians.11 For example, in the late 1990s the band Nas T Black produced their first album, which features a wide variety of music styles, including soca and calypso. The band emphasises the essential, rooted, identity of Creoles by referring to them as nas. In one of their songs, they indicate the negative connotation and use of nas: ’Wherever you go they say ‘nas’ this and ‘nas’ that, for them that word ‘nation’ is synonymous with the word slave, it’s blasphemous!’13 Having said this, Creoles are by no means closed to outside influences on their identity. Many of those spoken to demonstrated a cosmopolitan approach to life, by their willingness to engage with non-Creoles or their willingness to adopt Hindu, Tamil or Hakka rituals and beliefs. Following Anthias, ‘Such shifts fundamentally alter the ethnic landscape’ (Anthias 1998: 566). But, as argued in the chapter on Flacq, the cosmopolitan attitude of Creoles is subject to careful consideration. To obtain clients for a sewing business and to maintain tourists’ material contributions, Creoles need to be acquiescent and to perform. At the same time, they obtain advantages when opportunities arise or when it is evident that they can do things in their personal interest rather than in the interest of others. Thus, Creole identity is not only shaped by local and transnational forces, but also by circumstance and choice.

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Pagans and Parishioners? The Interactions of Belief and Identity The Roman Catholic Church is a significant part of Creole identity and experience in Mauritius. From the eighteenth-century onwards, the orthodox Churches were involved in a number of activities that sought to rid the slaves of their cultural and social identities and to replace these with socially sanctioned beliefs and practices. As Danielle Palmyre (personal communication October 1999) put it, ‘the church was all powerful.’ Thus, at a very early stage in the history of Mauritius, the Church compelled disparate slave communities to adhere to a specific religious identity, one founded on Christianity. Prior to the abolition of slavery the teachings of the Old Testament were often referred to, to justify the institution of slavery. In the twentieth-century, emphasis has been placed on those teachings of the New Testament that encourage a radical form of equality. In this section I argue that Christianity holds a special appeal for Creoles in that it offers them a chance to publicly redeem and reconstruct their identity. However the process of identity reconstruction is uneven, as Creoles in general wish to embrace the forces of diversification but are enticed by dominant groups’ valuing of essentialism. The following subsections indicate complexities associated with the presentation of an essentialised Creole identity through religion.

Christianity and Creole Identity under Slavery: The Code Noir Until the arrival of Jacques Desiré Laval there were no attempts to make Creoles believe that they were human beings made in the image of God. Under the Code Noir instituted by Louis XIV in March 1685 (initially implemented in the West Indies), the slave ancestors of Creoles were subject to absolute rule by their masters. Nevertheless, the first duty of Louis XIV was to safeguard Roman Catholicism and to ensure the salvation of all his subjects whether free or enslaved (Nagapen 1998: 57). Thus great care was taken to ensure that the Code Noir included detailed provisions for the regulation of slaves. In an amended version of the Code Noir (1723), designed for the Mascarene Islands, there are particular articles dealing with work conditions, nutrition, capital punishment, freedom and religion. With regard to religion, it was stated that all slaves should be baptised and instructed in Roman Catholicism. According to Sala-Molins (1987) it was imperative to convey an important biblical message to the slaves. This message was taken from Genesis and it provided a simple but necessary ‘truth’. Captured Africans were told that they were the descendants of Ham, who as described in the Old Testament book of Genesis, had been condemned to servitude for having seen his father naked. Sala-Molins explains that it was far easier for Roman Catholic missionaries to tell this tale than for them to explain the principles of racial degeneration as 69

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defined in the monogenic theory.13 Furthermore, the condemnation of Ham justified the existence of slavery in a way that monogenism could not. It is highly likely that a similar explanation was put to the slaves in Mauritius. This explanation did not stand alone, but was supported by convenient interpretations of certain biblical verses. For example, slave owners were often cited a passage from the letters of St. Paul that said slaves should accept their fate and masters should not be obliged to free them. Baptism, however, was seen as a good thing. It was argued that the situation of slaves would improve as they had been brought into a Christian country and that they would benefit from their newly acquired faith by atoning for the sins of Ham in their suffering through slavery (SalaMolins 1987: 65). Nevertheless, a great number of slave descendants were not baptised by the time that Jacques Desiré Laval, settled in Mauritius.

The Role of Père Jacques Desiré Laval Jacques Laval devoted twenty-three years of his life to setting up a mission for the ex-slaves of Mauritius. Laval learned Creole, he fasted and like the ex-slaves he lived in poverty.14 ‘He refused to accept the common opinion that regarded them with contempt. He tried to awaken them to their personal worth by telling them of God’s great love for each of them’ (Sala-Molins 1987: 65), Laval was convinced that the predominantly black population of Mauritius would benefit from Christianity and he made it his life’s work to encourage Creoles to convert. His work was perceived as a form of social and political emancipation and was not warmly received by the minority European settlers. The fact that a minority disapproved of him is not a counter-factor, for, when he died in 1864, there were 40,000 people at his funeral, Franco-Mauritians included. In 1977 the government of Mauritius made the 9th of September a national holiday, in his honour, and in 1978 he was beatified in Rome. To date, Mauritians of all faiths visit his tomb in Sainte Croix and pray for his intercession on their behalf. Many have told of miraculous events after praying at his tomb. For a considerable number of years after emancipation ex-slaves were not permitted inside churches and had to pray at a crucifix placed in the church grounds. Some of the older people, interviewed during my research, explained how before the 1940s their parents and grandparents were prevented from entering certain churches because they were black. My mother, Ghislaine, told me of her experience as a child in the 1940s. Her mother would take her to pray at the crucifix positioned outside the Catholic cathedral in Port Louis and, at the appropriate moment in the church service, the priest would come out to give them Holy Communion. Eventually the descendants of ex-slaves were permitted into church, but in most instances the first two or three pews were reserved for the Franco-Mauritian families in the area and parish priests often insisted on this reservation of pews. Masses were initially conducted in Latin and then in French, which very few 70

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Creoles understood. Thus, at an early stage in their experience of Christianity, Creoles experienced marginalisation; yet for a minority of Creoles, church attendance formed part of a broader strategy for social acceptance and advancement. Participation in church activities provided some with advantages. They developed social networks that would help them acquire resources such as education and employment. By contrast, the majority of Creoles developed an uneasy relationship with religious institutions. The Catholic authorities possessed considerable power in the shaping of the Creoles’ interaction with the Church, and, as I explain below, Creoles did not possess the same leverage as whites with regard to parish authorities. It is evident that Creole parishioners were necessary for the general social legitimacy of the Christian churches in Mauritius, but at the same time, Creoles were largely relegated to peripheral and minor positions within the Church system. Those who were not actively involved in church matters often contributed what little money they had to support church activities and officials.

Christianity and Identity in the 1990s An interview (July 1999) with Roger Cerveaux, a Creole Catholic priest, reveals that many Creoles are unhappy with the Catholic Church authorities. They do not understand why Church authorities fail to support them in their quest for special assistance, especially in education and politics. In a tape-recorded interview (at a political meeting in 1999),15 Cerveaux attempted to explain the situation to a gathering of Creoles. First, he reassured them that he understood that Creoles feel that they are the last to be considered for places in Catholic schools and that as faithful Catholic parishioners they believe they ought to be considered first. Cerveaux also said that he had heard the call for priests to bring about national solidarity. Then Cerveaux confirmed that he had heard their pleas for church authorities to contribute to a positive national view of Creole identity and that church authorities had not really responded to their pleas. He argued that this was probably because the Catholic Church did not wish to affiliate itself with any particular ethnic group, as its parishioners are culturally and ethnically diverse. Furthermore, he argued that Creoles are not only Catholic, there are many who are Anglicans, Pentecostal and so on; for the Catholic clergy to claim that they are the social leaders of Creoles might cause conflict with the Church leaders of other denominations. This interview revealed that the Catholic Church did not want to be accused of communalism: later on, in 2004 it was deeply implicated in a ‘communalist’ scandal over its Catholic colleges’ admissions policy. At this time, 50 percent of its admitted students had to be Christian. Between 1999 and 2004, debates ensued around the ‘fairness’ of this practice and its impact on an educationally needy society, as private Catholic colleges are reputed to produce quality school leavers. In 2004, the Mauritian Supreme Court 71

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ruled this admissions policy unconstitutional and the Church was publicly accused of discrimination. This recent turn of events is problematic, as Creoles can no longer hope to obtain ‘official support’ from the Church, even though Catholicism is part of the essentialised identity of Creoles in the 1990s. In 1999 it was evident that Christianity was not only important to identity but also important to economic and social survival. As argued in the next chapter, the Church has long afforded Creoles in Flacq networks that facilitate social and economic advancement. With regard to Church rituals and practices, Creoles have, in many instances, creolised these, and as a result have made them a fundamental part of their identity.

Diversification of Identity through La Vierge The experience of two major Catholic celebrations in 1999, the gathering of people on a religious feast day16 and the service that followed,17 convinced me that orthodox Christianity and, in particular, Catholicism remains important to the shaping of Creole identities. On 15 August 1999 the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, nearly twenty-thousand people assembled at a statue of the Virgin Mary18 to pray for the continued intercession of the Holy Mother in their lives. People arrived early, some nearly three hours before the Mass began. Preparation for the celebrations began at the beginning of the week and while non-Creoles were involved in material preparations (the making of Virgin Mary cakes and the preparation of sales’ stocks for the week), Creole seamstresses were busy making white dresses for young Catholic girls, to symbolise their virginity. Among the more traditionally minded Creole suitors, efforts are made to procure a Virgin Mary cake to offer at their next visit to the home of their potential inlaws. The offering of this cake signals a form of acknowledgement that the daughter’s honour is intact. Naturally, only the very brave (or honourable) young men dare visit their girlfriends on this day. To appear at her home without a Virgin Mary cake is considered an insult to the authority of the parents. The following extract taken from my fieldwork journal describes and depicts the importance accorded to the celebration of the Virgin Mary: The whole week has been building up to a major religious event, the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The monument to the Virgin Mary reminds me of the statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro. It is a massive figure of stone, placed atop an open pavilion. She watches over the city (Port Louis), her arms outstretched in compassion … the slope stretching down to the edge of the city was initially empty and windswept, but soon, people began to appear. Some had brought picnic baskets and mats to sit on. Others had special fold-up chairs and gleefully unfolded them while others looked on, slightly envious as they shifted about on the rough ground cover. At last, the sermon began and the priests (one white and one Creole), paid homage to the

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thousands of Creole mothers present at the Mass, reminding them that the Virgin Mary was a mother compelled to see and experience the suffering and death of her son. The priests pledged their support for Creoles whose children had become drug addicts and criminals and for those children who were persecuted in Mauritian society because of prejudice. The women responded by raising their arms and asking the Virgin Mary to intervene in their lives and the lives of their sons.

The service on this particular day was not entirely a conventional one. It hosted a series of groups who are non-Christian, detracting attention from the traditional aspects of the celebration. Under normal circumstances, one or two priests conduct the service. At this particular Mass, two politically controversial priests conducted the service. A Franco-Mauritian priest, Henri Souchon, called for peace and the acceptance of ethnically different others. He dedicated the Mass to two seggae artists who had died in the February riots earlier that year. He then invited two non-Christian groups to the pavilion. The first was an Islamic group who attested to the religious connection between Islam and Christianity. They explained how, in a particular chapter of the Koran, God validates the purity of the Virgin Mary. The second group consisted of Sai Baba representatives; they venerated the Virgin Mary in a song that they had composed. Those who had gathered to participate in the Mass were encouraged to applaud the efforts at national and spiritual reconciliation. Other Mauritian spiritual leaders made similar efforts at national reconciliation after the riots of February 1999, but Souchon is well known for his attempts at cultural integration. Souchon’s presentation was overshadowed by the exuberant performance of Père Jocelyn Grégoire, a Creole preacher known as ‘the swinging priest.’ Grégoire began his sermon by encouraging the people to sing one of Kaya’s songs, the lyrics of which emphasise the need for social justice and truth rather than reconciliation. Few seemed to notice the contradictory messages in the two sermons. But as I saw it, the crowd responded more enthusiastically to the messages of Grégoire. In the weeks following his sermon at the monument to the Virgin Mary, there were several articles in Mauritian newspapers about Grégoire’s charismatic personality and letters from parishioners, praising his messages of hope and liberation: ‘Father Grégoire knows how to make the Bible real and Jesus a hero who is present and alive in our everyday lives … he has come to save the drug addict, the alcoholic, the prostitute and those who are bewitched.’19 (La Vie Catholique 15 août 1999). Grégoire is not only seen as someone who is ‘in touch’ with the concerns of Creoles, but is also seen an ideal Creole in that he is Christian, revolutionary and aware of the positioning of Creoles in Mauritian society. Emphasis on the relevance of the message of Christianity to people of all faiths, and mention of references to the Virgin Mary and Jesus in the other religious texts, suggest that Church officials’ wish to promote Christianity as a faith for all ethnic groups. However, Creoles seem to want the opposite.

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Figure 4. Légions de Marie, Legions of Mary. On the 9th of September, pilgrims gather at the tomb of Jacques Desiré Laval in Sainte Croix, Port Louis, to pray for his intercession in their lives. As previously described, thousands of Mauritians converge on Laval’s tomb to pray and to ask for healing and spiritual support. But this pilgrimage is of particular importance to Creoles in that it does three things: (1) it offers a positive public image of their identity, one that opposes stereotypes of their ethnicity; (2) it offers a public performance of culture; (3) it indicates the solidarity and (religious) homogeneity of the group. As a religious event it suggests the piety and morality of the individuals involved, contradicting the public stereotypes of Creoles as immoral, individualistic and uncultured. The pilgrimage to the shrine of Père Laval is comparable to the Hindu pilgrimages to the Holy Lake (Maha Shirivatri). Chan Low (personal communication October 1999) suggests that by initiating these pilgrimages, Creoles are symbolically identifying with the ritual performances of the powerful in Mauritius and are attempting to indicate their equal status as citizens of the country. I would argue that it is more than this: some Creoles are indicating (like Hindus in their elaborate public rituals) that they are members of a homogeneous, ‘African’ ethnic group. In Mauritius, there are many such public rituals (such as the Chinese New Year celebrations) every year. As the island’s roads are narrow and pilgrims numerous, special arrangements have to be made to divert traffic from the pilgrims’ path and to provide them with medical and nutritional support. Furthermore, as most of the pilgrimages take place during 74

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the summer months and pilgrims sometimes walk barefoot, the fire services have to ensure a constant supply of water to cool the tarmac. Thus, pilgrimages attract a lot of attention from the media, municipal services and non-pilgrims. By initiating their own pilgrimages, Creoles are drawing attention to themselves as a people with a particular religious culture. In 1977 Père Laval had become the apostle of Mauritius and a spiritual leader who now is accepted by both the orthodox Christian churches and a variety of non-Christians. In essence, Père Laval was ‘separated’ from the Creoles and integrated into the broader spiritual identity of Mauritians. On the eve of the new millennium, it appeared as though Creoles were attempting to reclaim him. Various articles appeared in the press relating the precise history of Père Laval’s work among the ex-slaves and the fact that he was dedicated to their spiritual emancipation. Young Creoles from Flacq walked more than thirty kilometres from the village to his tomb in Sainte Croix, and Creoles from villages and towns along the way joined their pilgrimage.

Conclusion The portrayal of the Creole group as a residual category with its own characteristics is the most important solvent of Creole ethnic homogeneity. The response to this has been a defence of the people who are ‘discriminated against in a particular way’ by creating a history of a people triumphing over slavery and oppression. This defence can also homogenise Creole identity and suppress a range of narratives about who they are. The analysis of the role of music and religion in the re-presentation of Creole identity in this chapter suggest that Creoles are diversifying their identity through appeals to transnational identities, and in the creolization of religious practices. Closer analysis of lyrics and public ritual reveals that Creoles are still concerned to essentialise their identity. This concern is a result of the imposition of colonial fictions (Comaroff 2001) and the continued, positive, value accorded to bounded identity in colonialised societies. The sega offers a vehicle for challenges to colonialised notions of identity. In the sega challenges to authority and stereotype are mostly hidden (Scott 1990), particularly for those who do not understand Kreol well or do not really listen to the lyrics. Jokes, verbal skill and specific contexualisations (e.g. people at work, parties or in a bar) conceal messages of resistance, triumph and revenge in segas that some Creoles pick up on, as they listen to the songs. Seggae on the other hand are chansons engagées (politically explicit songs) and seem to bring messages, particularly ones about Creoles’ marginalisation, to the attention of powerful others. In the next chapter, I discuss the situation of Creoles living in Flacq, showing Creoles’ concern to achieve dignity and prestige in Mauritian society mainly because other avenues of prestige, such as a specific 75

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homeland rich in history and ‘culture’ are not available to them, as hybrids and as members of a diffuse African diaspora. However, I also argue that consumption is not just about the achievement of dignity and prestige it also includes satisfying practical needs for specific commodities in a modernising society.

Notes 1. ‘Sa travaille Malabar’. 2. ‘Oui, cela dependra des jeunes. En effet, si la vision des jeunes et celui de se batter, ils se battront. Dont je pense que tout est entre les mains de jeunes’. 3. ‘Peut-etre, tout dependra des vieux. En effet ces derniers doivent se retirer et laisser la place aux jeunes’. 4. ‘Non, car le “backing” joue enormement un role’. 5. ‘Cari no. 2’. 6. In Spanish, the word ‘chiolo’ means vagabond. 7. ‘tombe dans la pailles’. 8. See also ‘Culture rap: “enn beat ragamuffin” pour libérer les ghettos’. Week-end 11 November 2001. 9. ‘O pep to racine pe brillé, Morisyen to racine pe brillé!’ 10. In Kreol, the word is ‘nasyon’. 11. In Eriksen’s (1993) study of nations and nationalism in Mauritius, he explains that the term nasyon (nation) is often used to denote various ethnic groups in Mauritius and in some cases, caste groupings. 12. ‘Cotte to passé zotte dire nas par ici, nas par là, pou zotte sa nom nasyon reste touzours ène nom esclave, blasphème!’ 13. The monogenic theory is based on the idea that all humans are created by God, but that when Adam and Eve were cast out from Eden humans degenerated and that black populations have degenerated more than white ones. It differs from the polygenic theory, which suggests that humans are not the product of a single creator, but rather emerged on several continents as separate sub-species. 14. 15. The political meeting was convened by a pro-Creole group called Unity For Progress ‘l’Union Pour Le Progrés’. 16. A Catholic celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. 17. See also Vencattachellum, V., ‘A Marie-Reine-de-la-Paix, Jocelyn Grégoire, superstar.’ L’Express 3 décembre 2001; ‘Concert du père Grégoire, au benefice de l’école pour la solidarité et la justice.’ La Vie Catholique 10 August 2001 and ‘Jocelyn Grégoire pour une église pluraliste!’ La Vie Catholique 20 August 1999: 18. 18. The Statue of Marie-Reine-de-la-Paix. 19. ‘Le Père Jocelyn Grégoire a su faire de la Bible un journal d’actualité et de Jésus un héros présent et vivant dans nôtre vie de tous les jours … il est venu ressuciter le drogué, l’alcoolique, la prostituée, l’encorcellé’.

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D IGNIT Y

C HAPTER 4 AND P RESTIGE




IN

F L ACQ

Si nu prans conscience nu enà ène l’avenir brillian Milan Appollon

My earliest experiences of Flacq date back to the time when my paternal grandparents were still alive and the village consisted of mostly Creole and Muslim families (at least down the street where my grandparents lived), who were tradespeople and shop-owners. At the time (1970s to 1980s) many families kept livestock and the village of Flacq truly had a rural ‘feel’ to it. I clearly remember sleeping on straw mattresses that contained ‘things’ that bit me through the night and I remember what it was like to wake up to the sound of cocks fighting on the fragile roof while my grandmother attempted to shout them down. Meanwhile, my grandfather would be taking care of morning tea, which he brewed on the kerosene stove. When I drank the tea, I could almost taste the kerosene or at least smell the fumes. No one seemed to be in a hurry to go anywhere. The house was always open and, throughout the day, family and friends would drop by to visit. My grandmother was always cooking for these guests although it seemed that my grandparents had little money to spare. However, my grandfather and uncles hunted small game when they could and these supplemented the family diet or were used to feed those who came to the house. These times were, of course, holiday times. My father provides a different picture of Flacq. During his childhood (1940s), he herded other people’s cattle to earn money for the family. He and his brothers also hunted for small game and set traps for fish and crustaceans in nearby rivers for food. After a few years at school, like other young boys in the village, he spent a great deal of time learning how to be a car mechanic by observing workers at a local garage. His principal means of transport was a bicycle, which he rode everywhere, visiting outlying villages, and fixing cars and all sorts of machinery. 77

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At that time, most of the houses in Flacq had tin roofs and some had walls of wood. When cyclones struck the island, entire communities were devastated and people had to work together to restore the villages. Malnutrition, childbirth, smallpox and pneumonia killed many of the people whom my father grew up with. Today, in contrast, young Creole men living in Flacq, such as Milan Apollon, can state with confidence that ‘Si nu prans conscience nu enà ène l’avenir brillian’ (‘If we become aware of the opportunities that exist, there is a great future ahead for us’).1 By the 1990s the situation in Flacq has changed dramatically. The wooden French windows of my grandparents’ house had gone, the red polished floor had been replaced by carpeting, and another storey had been built on top to house a new generation. The only things left, to remind me of what the house was like, were the rough brick walls in the main bedroom, which have since been covered with thick white paint. Flacq itself has become a hive of activity. Few men ride bicycles as most areas are now more easily accessed by buses and other forms of motorised transport. Most men do not hunt small game or fish to supplement the family diet. The pollution of rivers, the conversion of shrubbery and forested areas into cultivated land, and the low status associated with foraging means that men either cannot or will not participate in hunting and or fishing, except in the more rural areas of the Flacq/Moka district. Concrete houses, motorised transport, tarred roads and better services are signs of the modernisation of Flacq. Changes to Flacq have also influenced the identity of its inhabitants, processes of modernisation are influencing the form and experience of Creole identity in the village. In particular, consumption and commodification, part of the processes of modernisation, are both confirming the social stereotype of Creoles as the arch-consumers or big spenders of Mauritian society, and contributing to the social and economic liberation of Creoles. Commodities that Creoles buy are also objectifying existing social relations between Mauritians (Miller 1995: 147), but despite their positioning in Mauritian society, Creoles are actively using a wide range of commodities and consumption styles to alter their positioning and identity in Mauritian society. Access to, and use and appropriation of, these commodities and consumption styles are not uncomplicated. In many instances dominant notions of style and value heavily influence Creoles’ consumption habits. Creoles living in Flacq are also predominantly of the Roman Catholic faith. Many of them participate in activities organised through the local Catholic Church and are active members of religious civic organisations. There is a continuing dialogue between the Church and its Creole parishioners, for the Church needs parishioners to advance its mission in the country and Creoles need the Church for spiritual and political support. In particular, the Church offers Creoles respect and dignity, which are important elements in the public constitution of Creole identity and power. As previously mentioned, in the time of slavery, Christianization was perceived as a way to civilise and ‘save’ the ‘pagan’ people who had been captured. 78

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Christianization was also a means of homogenising Creole identity, such that Moutou (1998) refers to Creoles as the ‘Christians of Mauritius’. Thus while Creoles attempt to demonstrate the extent to which they are modernised, they are faced with class conservative perceptions of modernity as a ‘systematic tearing at the roots, leaving … humanity in an increasingly unstable, fluid environment.’ (Miller 1994: 69). However, by embracing modernisation, Creoles (and one can argue, other Mauritians) are challenging ethnicity, which in the first instance enables them to belong in Mauritian society. In a modernising village such as Flacq, respect and dignity are achievable through consumption and the display of valued commodities. The choice of some Creoles in Flacq (and elsewhere on the island) to achieve respect and dignity in this way has led to them being accused of wasteful or spendthrift behaviour. Furthermore, their choice to seek dignity and respect through other means is contesting dominant designations of them as Christians and challenging established social order. In a modernising society such as Mauritius, people’s sources of identity change and diversify, as do their sources of prestige and power. It is interesting how when Creoles are accused of being wasteful, non-Creoles affirm the manner in which Creoles should achieve respect and dignity. These suggestions are usually aimed at homogenising behaviour and identity, and establishing regimes of value. This chapter is organised as follows. The first part examines the role of religion in the formation of identity and power among Creoles. I follow this by discussing Creoles’ diversification of Christianity through a rejection of orthodoxy and the creolization of Christianity in healing and educational practices, and civil organisations. In the second part of the chapter I discuss alternative routes (kinship, entrepreneurship) to dignity and identity. I conclude by arguing that Christianity provides a less limiting framework for the reconstruction of Creole identity than the state.

Flacq In 2000 Centre de Flacq (otherwise referred to as Flacq) had a population of 16,225 (8,167 men and 8,058 women) (Housing and Population Census 2000, Volume II: Demographic and Fertility Characteristics 2000: 42). On the Mauritius development index (1999), Flacq is ranked 49 out of 145 cities and villages on the island. In contrast to Roche Bois, Karina and Le Morne or Chamarel villages, Flacq also seems to have a high level of economic development, as shown by buildings used wholly as one housing unit (67.6 percent) and the partly residential, partly commercial buildings (8.2 percent). Based on observation and informal conversations, people living in Flacq do not live in rented homes or flats. However, Flacq has a young population with 25 percent of the inhabitants being less than fifteen years old and a total of 42 percent younger than thirty years old. 79

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In 2004, the sheer number of young people living in Flacq was evident shortly after the daily closure of schools in the village, when pupils stream into the village streets. The young age of the inhabitants of Flacq coupled with the low number of rented homes and flats in the village suggests that most of those under thirty years old are living with family. Participant observation in Flacq confirms this. Young married couples tend to live in extended households rather than rent a house or flat and, as I suggest further on, this arrangement affects family prestige, dignity and consumption patterns. From the CSO statistics it is difficult to discern the ethnicity of the residents living in Flacq. Even if one takes into account that there are 4,233 Christians in Flacq (Housing and Population Census 2000, Volume II: Demographic and Fertility Characteristics 2000: 74) this does not necessarily mean that all of these people are Creole. Furthermore, simple observation (and conversation) at Mass on Sundays in Flacq also reveals the heterogeneity of parishioners. Only when I asked people what ethnic group they felt they belonged to (and in some cases how others categorised them), could I ascertain with some difficulty, their ethnic identity.

A View of Flacq The hybridity of Flacq is visible not only in the people but also in the variability of street names and in the multicultural character of particular streets. A letter addressed to the house where I stayed during fieldwork can make use of three varying street names – Impasse Ste Ursule, Cassomally Road or Le Rève road. The use of the first could suggest that one is an old resident of Flacq who associates the street with the local Roman Catholic church. Use of the second suggests recent residence and perhaps a partiality to the Muslim character of the street. The third indicates that the resident or letter writer remembered a time when there was a cinema at the top of the street. Today, Le Rève cinema is no more: it has been converted into a dormitory for Malagasy migrant workers. On this street there is currently a bakery, a mosque, a dormitory, textile factory and a car-mechanic’s workshop. Further down, a seamstress works from home and there is an after-hours classroom for high school students. Beyond this street, the level of commercial activity increases. All the shop owners seem to believe that their products will be best advertised on the pavement: once in the village centre, one has to take care to look ahead and behind for traffic, being forced to walk on the road. On Wednesdays and Sundays, the village is packed with people coming from nearby villages and ‘camps’ to buy fruit, vegetables, cloth, dried seafood and spices from the market (la foire). Temporary tents are set up and goods are displayed on the ground or on roughly made stalls. The main area of the market is divided into food and textiles sections. In the food section there is a great variety of vegetables, roots and spices. I found myself struggling to name all of these in English. 80

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Tourists are keen to come to this market, and their guide invariably takes them to see the dry and twisted remains of octopus, shrimp and other seafood, which are used to enrich hot tomato sambals and fruit chutneys. In the textiles section, one can obtain anything from a kitchen cloth to lounge curtains. It is like a souk: swathes of cloth, hanging beads and trinkets draw one into its darkest depths. By wandering through the market and buying fruits and vegetables for myself, I noticed the ethnic division of Mauritians. The vegetable and foodstuffs section, for example, is dominated by Indo-Mauritians. Brief conversations with these sellers indicated that many of them either had small plots of their own (which they cultivated) or were selling these goods on behalf of a prosperous planter. There are no white or Franco-Mauritians selling goods in the market, and, during the time that I was in Flacq, I rarely saw any Franco-Mauritians buying food or textiles from the market traders. In the textiles area, however, it is possible to see some Creole traders. These individuals are either selling items that they have made as part of a group or they trading on someone else’s behalf. Access to the market is controlled by a system of permits. Traders have to apply to the local municipality for a permit to sell their goods in the market. So, each trader is to be found in the exact same place each week. Acquiring a permit is not easy mainly because one’s application is subject to many different forms of assessment, some legal and others not. This situation has led to chaos in some towns including Flacq. Over the months, the market seemed to expand and in 1999 traders set up their stalls parallel to the bus depot. In towns such as Rose Hill and in the capital of Port Louis, I observed many traders running away as policemen chased after them for their trading permits. Until 2001, Flacq did not appear to be experiencing this and stalls flourished everywhere, fostering tension between legitimate storeowners, hawkers and stall keepers. In 1999, the area enclosing the bus depot turned into absolute chaos every Wednesday. Commuters and shoppers jostled for space while attempting to dodge motorbikes, cars and bicycles that chose to circumvent the (constant) traffic jam by driving through the depot itself. Across the street from the depot, a particular shop owner received a new consignment of fabric and other retail goods every fortnight. One day I asked a policeman if he could please ask the driver of the delivery truck (who was blocking the pavement) to move his vehicle. My request was met with such contempt that I quietly walked round the vehicle, which was facing traffic head on, in order to get to the bus depot. If the delivery men managed to cross the road with all their goods, they had to squeeze past the Hare Krishna marchands who had colonised a substantial part of the pavement to sell their sweets and cakes, to reach their client’s shop. Carbon monoxide fumes surging from the gargantuan diesel buses seemed to engulf pedestrians as they sampled the Hare Krishna sweet cakes and other savoury delights. Looking into the glass cases where these hot chilli and fried cakes are kept, I noticed one day, that most of them appeared a little grey, as though they had absorbed the diesel fumes coming from the other side of the 81

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street. Sometimes when I was feeling brave (and was in a hurry), I would walk away from the bus depot to the taxi rank where for a small fee, I could travel in a ‘taxi-train’ to a field site other than Flacq. The taxi-train is a taxi that takes several paying passengers who are travelling to the same town in one trip. The ideal is to fit four people on the back seat and two or three people in front. As Mauritians are generally small and slender it is not too difficult to fit four people in the back. The taxi-trains are in constant competition with the buses, siphoning passengers away from slow and time-consuming bus rides: a twenty-minute ride in a taxitrain could take up to one and half hours by bus. The taxi-trains, however, are not very safe. I remember one driver who conversed with the passengers about the virtues of driving within the speed limit; his speedometer was not working. Some taxi-train owners are rogue operators who do not have formal licences to run taxis. I often watched in amazement, as taxi-trains did u-turns at the appearance of a policeman. The taxi owners say that they have to do something while waiting for a wealthy tourist to arrive. Flacq’s proximity to some of the island’s major tourist resorts means that the taxis do not have to wait for long. Retail shops and pavement traders also benefit from the influx of tourists into the village. Some pavement traders are immigrants from Zimbabwe and other southern African countries. They compete with local tradespeople for clients and are often harassed by shop owners. Old-time craftsmen such as tailors and shoemakers attempt to earn a

Figure 5. Hare Krishna Vendors Close to the Bus Depot in 1999. 82

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living through their reputation as producers of quality. It appears that they are rapidly being replaced by new retail and fashion stores and a new shopping mall close to the bus depot. The new mall shows that Flacq is becoming a global village, as the shops within are retailers of world-fashion items and labels including Levi-Strauss, Wrangler, Dolce and Gabbana, Nokia, Hush Puppies and Yves St. Laurent. A cyber-café tucked into the far corner of the new mall provides the inhabitants of Flacq and its neighbouring villages with access to products and services worldwide. Despite these dramatic changes to the village landscape there is still evidence that traditional occupations and forms of employment prevail in Flacq and its sugar estates. For example, on the eastern edge of the village, there are several ‘camps’ still inhabited by the labourers who work for a nearby sugar estate. Across the road from them is a private road, marked ‘residents only’. This road leads to the homes of the local sugar estate’s cadres (senior staff members). There are still many Creoles who continue to work for the tablismans. Tablismans is the Kreol word for the sugar estates that have existed in Mauritius for the last 200 years, a shortened form of établisment, ‘estate’ in English. The word tablismans lends more authority to the sugar estates, by those who work there. Gradually these estates are also closing down (for example, Constance sugar estate and Beau Champs), forcing Creoles to look for work in the growing hotel industry. In the village itself, there are several hardware and retail stores still owned by Sino-Mauritians, generally

Figure 6. Women Labourers Leaving an Estate after Working for the Day. 83

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passed on from father to son, ensuring that they maintain a presence in the village. A similar situation is found at the top of the street where I stayed. At the end of every week, on my way to the village (sometimes in the company of my nephews), we would come across a Muslim boy who was a friend of theirs. The boy would be sitting on the ground with a pile of tangled yarn, and it was his task to unravel these strings, in preparation for business the following week. My nephew explained that the boy was going to inherit his father’s shop one day and thus, it was only fair that he do his ‘bit’ to help when he could, after class.

Creoles of Flacq The Creoles of Flacq are often associated with the countryside, sugarcane estates and their proprietors. Most of them are also identifiable as Créole Morisyen, meaning that they see themselves as Mauritian Creoles. In the basic social and cultural survey2 that I implemented in 2000 and 2001, 87 percent of the respondents from Flacq said that when conversing with other Mauritians they state their ethnicity as Creole. Participants in the survey were also aware of the slang terms used by others to describe the Creole ethnic group. In Flacq, 90 percent of those surveyed noted that the Creole ethnic group is often referred to as nasyon. Class distinctions are also apparent in Flacq: an attempt is made to distinguish between the creole de la campagne (rural) and the creole de la ville (urban). When I asked an interviewee in Flacq what distinguishes these two types of Creoles, he answered that the creole de la campagne wears clothing sewn by a seamstress, has family working as labourers or artisans on a sugar estate, occasionally hunts for small game to supplement the family meal, and tends to speak French badly. In contrast, the creole de la ville speaks French well or fluently, tends to buy mass-produced goods, may be a teacher, nurse or civil servant, and comes to the countryside to sample the game caught by his country cousin. The rapid urbanisation of Flacq from the 1970s onward and stoppage of work at several sugar estates means that there are fewer countryside Creoles left in the village. These changes have resulted in a higher number of Creoles living in Flacq becoming entrepreneurs: tailors, seamstresses, furniture makers, caterers and hairdressers. Young Creoles living in Flacq are also increasingly employed by the private sector, particularly in nearby hotels. Interethnic marriage (25 percent of the sample surveyed in Flacq were married to non-Creoles) also means that it is difficult to distinguish Creoles on the basis of phenotype from the IndoMauritians, and in some cases, from the gens de couleur. Intermarriage between Creoles and Indo-Mauritians who have converted to Christianity or between fairand dark-complexioned Creoles has contributed to the greater physical and social variety of Creoles in Flacq. I interviewed those who informants told me are Creoles and those who profess to be Creole, rather than attempting to identify informants on the basis of physical characteristics. 84

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When interviewed 71 percent of the Creoles expressed a preference for their family members to marry whites. When asked why (at a later stage), some argued that ‘whiteness’ brought prestige to the family and made it easier for children of such unions to get jobs when they became adults. Creoles interviewed in Flacq also seemed to have internalised negative messages about the group. When asked if there were any negative aspects in the Creole ethnic group, 75 percent answered yes, citing leisure pursuits and entertaining (42 percent), being grand noir or braggart (12 percent), laziness (17 percent) and alcohol abuse (12 percent) as the most significant negative features among Creoles. However, some of those spoken to linked such behaviour to the modernisation of the village. These interviewees argued the people in Flacq are increasingly affected by stress from overwork, which can result in people drinking alcohol to relax or entertaining others to ‘forget about work’. Stress and overwork also means that residents of Flacq are increasingly seeking medical attention for stomach ulcers, hypertension, hives or rashes, flu and nervous tension. Many of those interviewed had used or were using traditional herbs and medicines to treat these ailments.3 Some Creoles living in Flacq (and elsewhere) explained that, there are other, non-physical afflictions that also need to be dealt with from time to time. The means used to deal with these afflictions are not made public because they involve beliefs and practices that deny Creoles prestige.

Belief, Identity, Leadership and Power Non-orthodox Beliefs I was in Flacq with my first-born, who was only three months old, when I was approached by a family member who said that I should pin a medallion of Père Laval to my baby’s vest and make her wear a little bracelet of red ribbon to ward off the ‘evil eye’ or ‘envious heart’. That would take care of her illness (wheezing at night) and prevent her from experiencing other, more serious illnesses. A trip to the local paediatrician suggested that my baby had a nasal drip caused by a change of climate rather than malevolent forces. Nevertheless, I bought the medallion – and I wondered if I should pin it to her clothing. Curious about the suggestion of this family member, I asked about other countermeasures and explanations for misfortune and illness and found that Creole women were particularly concerned about the protection of their children from the evil eye and the envious heart. In this particular ritual, the child is made to stand while the father holds the linseed and motions seven circles to the right (using his right hand) around his head. The seeds are then thrown into a pot that is being heated on the stove and as it burns and distorts, it is said to transform into the shape of an eye or heart, thus indicating the source of the child’s misfortune, which will either be the ‘evil eye’ or ‘envious heart’. 85

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With time, it became evident that both men and women are concerned with such afflictions. Les passes (which consist of a range of rituals similar in process to the ones designed to identify the evil heart and envious eye), were mentioned as a means of dealing with these but was only used in dire circumstances. I was told that in most instances, people pray to God to ask for forgiveness, salvation and healing rather than using les passes. In general, people were reluctant to talk about their use of spiritual means of healing or their belief as ‘educated’ people often dismissed these beliefs and practices as ‘superstition’. The proliferation of these practices is regularly discussed in local newspapers.4 Gerard is aged 40, the father of two sons. With the birth of his sons, and particularly the ill health of his youngest son, Gerard’s father taught him how to cast out the evil eye and use local herbs and plants for several traditional herbal remedies. As a devout Catholic, Gerard has also opted to pray when his son is sick. For recurring illnesses, or what he perceived as ill fortune, Gerard used his father’s remedies, which were passed on by his paternal grandfather. These remedies included les passes. In January 1998 Gerard’s son was admitted into hospital with a strange lump behind his ear that was feared to be cancer. Gerard’s wife told me that her husband had sought the best medical care for their son, and also prayed. It seemed as though she were trying hard to convince me that she believed that it was the prayers that saved her child and not les passes. I had encountered the use of les passes before being told of it by Gerard and his wife. As a teenager visiting Mauritius, I had once accompanied a friend and her mother to a healer-diviner who ‘marked’ the physical manifestation of her skin disease to cure it. Various tools are used to ‘mark’ the topical manifestation of disease; needles, crucifixes and particular herbal preparations are used to score the skin or to rub it. Prayers are subsequently made, to fortify the healing power of the ‘marking’ procedure and the herbs applied. At that time, my friend lived in rural village where the Catholic Church had a measure of authority but did not entirely determine value systems. In Flacq, the Catholic Church has a major role to play in determining access to prestige, identity and power. This is why people like Gerard and his wife are not keen to talk about their belief in forms of healing that are often castigated as ‘black magic’ in public. To do so would mean depriving themselves of the prestige and identity that they have carefully acquired through the Church.

Prestige through Acquiescence Creoles interviewed in Flacq could identify family members involved in the management of church-run organisations. Most Flacquois (residents of Flacq) interviewed explained that they were personally involved in Church activities and organisations as participants. This subsection shows the extent to which the Christian Churches in Mauritius have provided Creoles with a specific type of 86

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leadership and power. In doing so, the Churches have also contributed to the shaping of Creole identity to the extent that in general conversations with ethnically different others, the Creoles are often referred to as Christians, rather than Creoles. The portrayal of Creole identity as a primarily religious one (see Moutou 1998) creates various problems and opportunities for Creoles. In the first instance, the mores and values of the Christian Churches are expected in the cultural and social expressions of Creoles and, in a society where there is increasing pressure for economic individualism and utilitarianism, Christian doctrine is commonly perceived as being redundant. However, being perceived as Christian is also beneficial to Creoles as it indicates their abandonment of paganism, primitiveness and blackness. In Flacq, Creoles are often trapped between their desire for social acceptance, recognition (which are offered through the Churches) and material progress. The latter requires strategies and actions that are not condoned in Christian practice. Sylvio Michel’s (1998) autobiographical account of a black consciousness movement, (Organisation Fraternel) in Mauritius describes the importance of Christianity for social and economic advancement in the lives of middle- and lower-class Creoles in the late 1960s. Michel’s story starts with his own return to Mauritius from a Catholic seminary in Europe. He poignantly describes his guilt about leaving the seminary and deceiving his parents, especially his mother who, he explains, spent a great deal of energy and money for his training as a Catholic priest. In the 1960s, the employment opportunities of Creole men were limited. Creole men either followed in their father’s footsteps and became artisans, mechanics or carpenters on the sugar plantations, or if their family had some wealth or was very friendly with the Church authorities at their local church, then it was possible to send their son overseas for religious studies. Powe’s (1982) study of the Ilois confirms this argument. Families had to be wealthy enough or they had to have the right family and social connections to help them send their children to private schools and for overseas study. A Creole family with some wealth and the right social connections could further their social prestige by calling on their patrons to support the future education of their child. The response of Michel’s mother to his unexpected return to Mauritius seems to confirm the view that for many Creoles, participation in the Church is in many instances about access to power and prestige rather than religious belief. This is not to say that some Creoles do not participate in Church organisations and activities for religious reasons: many did and continue to do so. However, for many Catholic mothers, to have a son who is a priest brings approval both in heaven and on earth; Michel’s failure to achieve his mother’s wish seemed to have denied her both forms of approval. In the 1990s, participation in Church-run organisations and charities still offers Creoles prestige and promotes their social acceptance into the broader Mauritian society. Church activities are highly organised in Flacq. Individuals are 87

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elected to instruct children (through catechism classes) for their first Holy Communion. Children are sent to extra prayer and Bible-reading classes: in some cases, almost every day after school. Young adults are placed in Christian groups based on their age category. Regular outings are organised by Christian leaders (who have been through similar induction processes) for young girls and boys to discuss their problems, aspirations and perception of self. Every year, an all-night prayer session is organised first for recently married couples and then for young unmarried people. These Christian and social events contribute to a more positive, public perception of Creoles. They suggest that the Creoles are organised, are increasing their morality and contributing to social advancement. The events also offer individuals a limited chance of leadership and power. This is especially evident in Flacq, where both young Creole men and women occasionally vie for leadership roles in church activities. This rivalry became apparent in choir leadership and in the organisation of major church events. Leadership appears to be an important reward for young men and women in churches in Flacq. Pamela and Sandrine, two young Creole women, regularly argue over who should do what for certain church events. Shortly after I met them, they had a huge row. Sandrine accused Pamela of being her usual loudmouthed self, ‘always thinking of how good she’s going to look in front of the parishioners, never mind what the choir members need’. Pamela, on the other hand, described Sandrine as being ‘second to the Almighty Himself ’ – in other words, Sandrine is a control-freak who wants all the leadership roles to herself. Sandrine was not present at the all-night prayer session later that year. It seemed to be Pamela’s ‘show’. In conjunction with the local nuns and priest, Pamela organised the young participants into small discussion groups, handed out savoury bread rolls for supper, and coordinated, directed and participated in some of the mini-plays put on by the younger parishioners. Sandrine was nowhere to be seen. Such rivalries suggest that Creoles have few leadership opportunities outside church run activities and associations. Historically, the Church has accommodated Creoles as parishioners and contributors to its activities. It is therefore a less intimidating context for Creoles in which to aspire for leadership. The Church also offers Creole families the opportunity for social advancement, because, unlike other ethnic groups, Creoles do not have strong cultural organisations necessary for maintaining myths of cultural purity. Thus, despite the accommodation of Creoles as leaders and participants in Christian churches, Creole leadership in the Church is often limited and attempts are made by parish priests to avoid making choices about leadership on the basis of cultural factors. Parish priests emphasise that they need to take care of parishioners irrespective of their ethnicity, a response5 that has, to a certain extent, disillusioned some Creoles. Some assumed that in return for their loyalty and service to the church and to the white communities, they would receive the kind of patronage and support that other ethnic groups seemed to be getting from their religious and social leaders. Creoles, in general, agree that the cultivation of particular support 88

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networks and patrons are important to social and economic survival in Mauritian society. This was also apparent in the story of Jerome, a young boy from Flacq. Jerome is one of the few Creoles at his school. He explained how the teachers often expect him to do badly because he is Creole. A few years ago his mother changed his tutor because she noticed that the man always had something bad to say about her son’s character even though the child was doing exceptionally well in other courses. After the change, Jerome’s grades improved dramatically and he became less withdrawn and more confident of his abilities. I noticed that the family placed tremendous pressure on Jerome to do well at school. Both his mother and father are aware of powerful patron-client relationships that exist in their community and outside it (see ‘Unequal Opportunities’ Week-end 3 October 1999). From an early stage, Jerome’s mother ensured that he was involved in Church activities and that he cultivated good relationships with individuals who have access to resources. From time to time she mentioned that a relatively ‘wealthy’ Dutch nun was fond of Jerome, and she encouraged her son to run errands for the nun. She reasoned that early participation in Church activities could put her son in a position to obtain favours and help when he needed it. Creoles interviewed in Flacq also complained that the Church treated them as commodities. They pointed out how the Church often refers to them as the ‘flock’ requiring direction, saving and teaching. Some Creoles also argued that they were treated like possessions. The return from Papua New Guinea of a Creole priest, Jocelyn Grégoire, rejuvenated Creoles’ interest in Christianity. But his return has also led to accusations of Creoles being taken away from certain parishes. The view of Creoles as commodities is consistent with early asocial views of commodities as alienable things. As members of a residual category, Creoles (as in the time of slavery) tend to be treated as ‘alienable things’ that can be bought or exchanged. But, if one refers to more social definitions of the term commodity (Appadurai 1986, Miller 1995, Carrier and Miller 1998), one finds that the clergy has to work very hard to retain Creoles because as living, breathing, social commodities they can move, think and be persuaded. Despite the agency of Creoles, the Church continues to profoundly influence Creole identity, particularly on the racial score. Peter Wade’s (1993) discussion of race and identity among the Chocoanos (in Colombia) has an important bearing on this study of the Creoles. He says that among the Chocoanos acceptance of orthodoxy is a means to prestige and what Wade calls ‘whitening’.6 Similarly, Creole participation in the Roman Catholic Church in Mauritius offers them an opportunity for advancement in the racial hierarchy of Mauritian society, in that it gives them a chance by singing in French, venerating French saints and associating with the gens de couleur, to escape their blackness. Religious associations, offering Creoles a means of social support, also have a ‘civilising’ effect on them in that, often, the aim of these associations is to ‘temper’ assumed, deeply embedded values among Creoles. In 1999 for example, Jerome pledged not to drink any alcohol for a year. Like Jerome, members of this particular religious association are expected to renew 89

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their pledges every year – thus, a new generation of Creoles are growing up conscious of the nefarious effects of alcohol and drugs. But by choosing not to drink alcohol, Jerome is distancing himself from the stereotype of Creole men as drinkers and big spenders. In a way, he is also distancing himself from blackness because such behaviours are assumed (by dominant groups) to be among the deeply embedded practices of black men in Mauritian society. I would argue that various factors influence drinking patterns in Flacq. Local (perhaps working class) notions of masculinity influence visits to drinking places. In Mauritius, there are more inns in working-class areas: these are visited by young men keen to establish their masculinity. Towns bordering sugar-producing factories (that historically produced cane rum or arrack for its workers) are also ‘known’ to contribute to high alcohol consumption. For Jerome, not drinking makes statements about his beliefs, class, masculinity and social life. In 1999, there were approximately 58,000 children and young people aged eighteen to thirty years old who had gone through catechism classes and 31,310 who participated in religious associations (‘Des chiffres en constat’ La Vie Catholique 12 November 1999). Observations and interviews with children and teenagers in the village of Flacq in 1999 show that these religious groups take up a considerable part of Creole children’s lives. For the most part they are taught to be humble, to accept difficulties and to be conscious of material poverty among others. As these are Christian organisations, they also tend to stress the need for children and teenagers to become Christian missionaries. For the more wealthy Creoles, they provide the opening for prestige and status in the future or the means to escape stereotyping. Thus some religious associations (for example ones that require their members to abstain from smoking or drinking) offer a particular means of achieving respect and dignity and contribute to the homogenisation of Creoles as Christians. However the ‘civilising’ and homogenising effect of such religious associations are often, in practice, influenced by other political considerations. This was apparent at an all-night prayer session organised for the youth in the village of Flacq in December 1999. The night was humid and tapering coconut trees were loaded with fruit, their branches hanging precariously over the chairs set up in little huddles in the parish grounds. As a participant, I was placed in a group of young people of differing class backgrounds. Three of the participants (two male and one female) were particularly against the idea that they should consider becoming advocates of Christianity in their daily lives. They said, ‘who is going to feed my mother, sister and uncle – if I become a priest?’ or ‘I don’t believe the bullshit you people have been trying to feed us, if being a religieux (a nun or a monk) is so great, how come you don’t look happy?’ They also said that, ‘belief is about endurance’, and they were ‘no longer prepared to endure’. Their responses seemed to antagonise other members of the group, who apparently accepted Christianity as the only path to social salvation and acceptance in Mauritian society. After this discussion with a nun who was 90

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responsible for ‘our’ group, we got up and followed others into the parish hall, to watch a short film that was being screened there. The film was about a priest who elected to be sent to the gas chambers in the place of a young Jewish boy in a Nazi concentration camp. It touched on the importance of sacrifice for others and emphasised the devastating impacts of stigmatisation and genocide. Later on that night, those were the very subjects that we spoke about in reference to the situation of Creoles. For a while, people seemed to forget that we were there to discuss issues of faith. Thus, Creoles’ acceptance of prestige and power through the Church is not absolute, ‘hidden acts and transcripts’ or ‘everyday forms of … resistance’ (Scott 1990: 29) are apparent. In the example mentioned above, participation in the politics of Creole identity construction offers Creoles a measure of prestige and power in Flacq, which the Church does not. Attempts to reconstruct and revalidate Creole identity are increasingly apparent in Creoles negotiating for the playing of traditional instruments in church, for the use of Kreol instead of French in hymns and for Kreol prayer groups. In short, Creoles are creolising the Church and indicating their valuing of creolization. In the following paragraphs I offer a discussion of the hybridisation of the Church and of what this offers to Creoles.

Resistance to Orthodoxy: the ‘Swinging Priest’ and the Rise of Charismatic Churches In 1999, many Creoles had turned away from the orthodox churches to participate in or join alternative religious congregations. In this subsection it is generally argued that these Churches or congregations provide Creoles with the means to explain and engage with their social and economic reality. I also suggest that a number of Creoles are turning away from the orthodox Churches to become members of charismatic congregations. Yet, the rejection of orthodox Christianity is not complete. By attending orthodox services but accepting unorthodox religious practices and beliefs, some Creoles living in Flacq are able to retain the kind of social approval that accompanies a publicly validated religion. In religious terms Creoles are categorised and define themselves as (1) orthodox Christians (Roman Catholic, Anglican, Methodist or Presbyterian Churches) (2) members of unorthodox Christian congregations (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses) or (3) adherents of religious practices and beliefs not approved by orthodox Christian churches or the mainstream unorthodox churches. Unorthodox religious beliefs are not just about resistance. They offer an alternative approach to phenomena that cannot be adequately explained or dealt with by orthodox means. Unexplained illness, misfortune and persistent poverty are issues that are not adequately explained by orthodox Churches. By turning to unorthodox belief systems and practices, Creoles are able to deal with these problems. 91

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In 1999, Creoles in Flacq and Roche Bois often talked about long sessions (charismatic Masses) and exorcisms and that similar exorcisms might take place at the gathering which I was going to attend and that sometimes the errant spirit does not go back to hell but enters the most vulnerable or sceptical soul in the room. Such talk was a means of enticing people to attend and those who had attended often sensationalised the events that had taken place there. So, people were attracted to charismatic sessions not just because these offered them a means of resistance against domination by the orthodox Churches, but also because these offered the possibility of something different. From the 1980s charismatic religious services have become increasingly popular in Mauritius, and even more so with the arrival of Jocelyn Grégoire’s who is likened to a ‘super-star’ and whose sessions are spoken of as ‘concerts’. At these sessions, adultery, gambling, alcoholism, physical and emotional abuse and black magic are discussed and individuals are invited to ‘confess’ in public. Such performances have mass appeal. But there are also aspects of Grégoire’s sessions that are political and those who participate in them obtain a different form of prestige and identity to that which is offered at orthodox Masses. In a statement highly reminiscent of Christ’s own about being the Son of God rather than the leader of the Jews, Grégoire has publicly denied that he is a new leader for the Creoles. He said, ‘I am only a Catholic priest, not the leader of the Creoles.’7 (Antoine, J.C. Week-end 25 November 2001.) Songs (mostly his own) at Grégoire’s sessions are in Kreol and in his mostly Kreol sermons, he often mentions current political issues and events. These factors have led to him being discussed as a ‘Creole leader’ in the media. Fieldnotes below describe my experience of a particular charismatic service by Grégoire. While this is not entirely typical of other charismatic services in Mauritius, those spoken to in Flacq explained that similar events take place elsewhere. Almost 4,000 Creoles gathered for a three-hour session in the village of Bel Air (a village close to Flacq), in mid-July 1999. When we arrived at the church, all the pews had been filled and outside people (mostly young men) were jostling to catch a glimpse of the altar or at least of the diminutive priest, who had acquired a reputation as a revolutionary and celebrity. Their discomfort seemed to evaporate as the priest took to the pulpit. The people began to relax, to settle into their seats and corners. He began to sing, drawing them in, asking them to repeat each phrase after him, ‘In our fear, in our suffering, in our sadness, in our loneliness, who can be against us if God is for us?’ As the service went on, it seemed as though he transformed into an American talk-show host, calling people from the crowd to question them about their life, their secrets, their needs. After a little while, he was a rock-star, then a comedian, then again he appeared as an ardent preacher. The people sweated, swayed in prayer and roared with laughter – the women covering their mouths in disbelief and amusement at his suggestive jokes. He seemed to bring the church to life and it seemed to reclaim its hold on the Creole parishioners. 92

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During Grégoire’s service, several people began to moan as we sang and prayed for spiritual cleansing. At one point a particularly high-pitched wail forced everyone to stop singing. A few metres ahead of us a woman, who appeared to be possessed, was convulsing and crying. Grégoire forced his way through the crowd to lay his hands upon her and to pray. My nephew looked at me and we shivered. Grégoire’s performance caused the crowd to sing and pray more fervently. It was clear that many of those who were there were keen to hear what he had to say; it seemed that their response was directly related to the fact that he was perceived as one of their own – ‘being Mauritian, he is not a stranger to our practices nor to our lives, as dark as they may seem.’8 (Bertrand. La Vie Catholique 22 August 1999). That night in the village of Bel Air, both women and men were present, and they spoke publicly about their lives and what they wanted to change, especially their belief in things considered as black magic. Furthermore, conversations about who attended what service, who met Grégoire personally, who is now on the path to salvation and who has his latest tape recording provide some with a different form of prestige and identity than what is offered by orthodox Churches. In 1999, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Mauritius, Maurice Piat, wrote an open letter to the national government, calling for the ‘rehabilitation of politics’ in Mauritius (Piat, M. Tribune 5 August 1999). The letter was read out aloud to the parishioners at Sainte Ursule in Flacq. On the way out of the church, people discussed the inflammatory content of the letter, some of them saying that it was ‘about time that the church get involved in these matters’. But the letter was not well-received by all Mauritians, who accused Piat of stirring up communal feelings. In Flacq, few Creoles mentioned Piat’s letter after conversations in the parish grounds – later on, some expressed the view that the Roman Catholic Church was getting involved just a little bit too late in the ‘game’ (La Vie Catholique 10 October 1999: 18).9

Modern Sources of Identity and Prestige Economic development in the village also seems to have sharpened the desire for social status and has made the achievement of both forms of prestige easier. Access to credit, in particular and purchasing goods at retail stores with no deposit and free delivery make it easier for Creoles to consume prestige goods today than in the 1950s, the time of my father’s generation. In Flacq and elsewhere, there were many Creole families whose consumption priorities centred on the acquisition of prestige goods rather than subsistence items. In some instances this won them the approval of their peers and the disapproval of some Hindus. In his discussion of other sources of prestige and identity, Wade argues that ‘particularly pronounced in urban centers are prestige hierarchies defined and controlled by the central regions, which deal in the currency of wealth, education, material possessions, a smart house, fashionable clothes’ (1993: 315). Participation 93

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in these hierarchies offer the Chocoanos of Wade’s study, a chance to escape their stigmatisation as black people in Colombia. Other sources of prestige are apparent in the Christian celebrations of Creoles. In October 1999, 120 children aged between eight and ten years old experienced the ritual of First Holy Communion in Flacq. That year, there were rumours that some parents had held three-day parties to celebrate the First Holy Communion of their children. Brioches have to be ordered weeks in advance and each family may have the task of handing out between two hundred and five hundred of them. Families of first communicants must cater for family members who have come from outside the village to celebrate. This often means cooking a great deal of food, and providing alcohol for the guests and music for them to dance the night away. Celebrations of a child’s First Holy Communion may be almost as expensive as weddings and parents have to plan in advance for this life event. Christian events like the First Holy Communion, is also a way for Creole families to achieve prestige. Generosity in the form of abundant food and alcohol serve to elevate the family in the eyes of others and Creoles. But it is not only generosity that offers a measure of prestige and dignity, kinship also offer such resources.

Dignity and Prestige in Housing and the Extended Family Unit A great number of Creoles are a part of extended family units and this is especially so in Flacq. The situation is largely due to the lack of physical space on the island. Sugarcane fields occupy a vast amount of land, and historically, human settlement has been largely limited to estates and their surrounding camps. Now, houses are found in recently established residential areas and suburbs. For the trading families of Indo- or Sino-Mauritian descent, accommodation is still a part of the trade store or shop. The situation is different for Creoles, as historically, they did not own land except for the little that was conceded to them at the abolition of slavery. Today, land is also expensive, and for many Creole families this means that it is difficult to buy land for housing construction. Most of the families encountered in 1999, were living in homes that have been a part of the family for nearly 30 years or, they were living in newly constructed houses on land that belonged to their grand-father or great-grandfather. The number of young couples renting apartments in city centres has increased since the 1980s but this did not appear to be the case for many young couples in Flacq. At the time of fieldwork, it appeared that many were living in their parents’ home and were contributing to the social and financial survival of the broader family unit. Houses are, however, more than just physical structures influenced by various histories. According to Carsten (1995: 2), the ‘house and the body are intimately linked. The house is an extension of the person; like an extra skin, carapace or second layer of clothes, it serves as much to reveal and display as it does to hide and protect’ and ‘if people construct houses and make them in their own image, 94

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so also do they use these houses and house-images to construct themselves as individuals and as groups’ (1995: 3). Among the Creoles in Flacq, I found that the house is a unit necessary for the production of individual and group identity and that increasingly Creole homes in Flacq have become units of production and consumption. However, many Creole homes in the village remain a locus for the achievement of prestige, dignity and identity. In the following paragraphs, I discuss these aspects and argue that in Flacq houses (as in the case of houses in modernising societies) convey prestige and power through their architecture, physical location and through the consumer goods within. Similarly, as in many human societies, kin members, either by their absence or presence have an important bearing on family prestige and identity. The extended family option is especially evident in Flacq. It is not uncommon to find more than twelve people living in several parts of a building that occupies a single plot. Contact between the various people in this broader unit depends on the financial situation of the family concerned. Wealthier Creole families tend to have less contact with others living on the same plot, mainly because the dwelling is formally divided into separate living units and each nuclear family or elderly person has his or her own space. The wealth of the family is also indicated by the presence of wooden doors separating rooms in the house. In a number of houses internal doors do not exist. This factor also contributes to decreased privacy and a higher level of social interaction within the house. Creoles interviewed said that they married for love rather than status. However, in a society such as Mauritius where race remains important to economic and social advancement, and where dominant groups continue to emphasise the value and importance of whiteness, it is difficult for Creoles not to see ‘whitening’ as central to their survival in social and practical terms. But ‘whitening’ occurs (as many anthropologists have noted) in various ways. Changes in behaviour, education and employment can make a dark-skinned person ‘appear’ whiter and thus, for economic and social reasons, the individual in question makes for a marriageable partner. It is not only racial considerations that count in the achievement of a measure of prestige and dignity among some Creoles increasingly: class, social experience and a range of other subjective factors are important to the achievement of a valued identity and prestige. Furthermore, in a modernising society such as Mauritius, where people have increasing access to credit, it is also possible to acquire prestige and status by purchasing goods or building a house that is more impressive than the house next-door. However, as already mentioned, space is limited in Mauritius and people tend to build two- or three-storey homes. Depending on the wealth of the family, each floor may house a new generation. For some, this has recently become possible particularly with the advent of housing loans provided by banks: young couples are now able to build their homes on top of their parent’s home. Thus, for as far as one can see, there are few houses with pitched roofs in Mauritius, 95

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because people never know when a son will need to build his house on top of the parent’s home or a sibling’s home.

The House is Power Competition between sons for the family house seems to be common in Mauritius. It could be that this is a recent phenomenon in that the expansion of the services, textile and tourism industries in the 1980s have contributed to a higher number of Creole women gaining employment. This means that men are becoming increasingly dependent on the extended family unit for economic sustenance, and the house itself has become an outward symbol of power for men. This is especially apparent in the ‘competitions’ in housing construction that ensue in Flacq and other, rapidly developing villages. Competition in housing construction is noticeable among some Creoles living in Flacq. It is not only a case of furnishing the house in order to build dignity. Creoles also appear to compete with one another to build the highest and most elaborate home, no matter how much the interest payments on housing loans are actually costing them. In one particular suburb in Flacq, the owner of a house looked out over the sugarcane fields below and said, ‘It won’t be long now until I can no longer see these fields.’ No less than twenty metres from the house, his neighbour is in the process of building the third floor for his son. The iron bars that would later form a part of the house beams were already obstructing our view over the fields. The man turned to me and said, ‘you know, he’s not doing this because he wants the view, he’s doing it because he wants his house to look better than mine.’ The furious pace of construction in Flacq and other towns on the island suggests that Mauritians have more access to financial resources than they did twenty years ago. Creoles in Flacq are using loans obtained from banks to build and extend their houses. However, it is important to note that not all Creoles have access to loans from banks. Some are borrowing money from less reputable lending institutions and are compelled to pay more interest on their loans. On a practical level such construction is helping to alleviate problems of privacy within the house. The loans are also making Creoles conscious of the need to manage their finances more judiciously, while on a social level Creoles are attaining the kind of prestige and respect that are desirable in a rapidly modernising society. For example, among most Creoles encountered in Flacq, the acquisition of household items and appliances also confers status and prestige. Other sources of prestige and power (such as land, property and businesses), generally accessible to wealthier non-Creoles have not traditionally been accessible to Creoles. The stereotype is that most Creoles attempt to achieve a measure of prestige and dignity no matter how small, indicating perhaps, their desperation to counter negative stereotypes by looking good or appearing powerful, even for a short while. 96

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Figure 7. A Creole Business Owner and His Son in Flacq. Thus the house and its modern contents signify to ethnically different others that Creoles are modern citizen subjects who have transcended poverty. However, in modernising societies such as Mauritius, people do not simply buy goods to achieve prestige. Modernisation creates specific conditions that make people perceive the need for specific goods and services. Creoles living in Flacq (like Mauritians elsewhere) also buy modern goods to suit their modernised lifestyles. Like other Mauritians in the village, Creoles in Flacq are often forced to work doubly hard to service their loans and some (such as those living in the River Camp) do not have the necessary collateral to obtain a loan. Increasingly, Creoles in Flacq are starting their own home-based businesses. These are influencing Creole identity and are challenging stereotypes of Creoles.

The Impact of Home-based Businesses on Identity and Income Shortly after I had left Mauritius in 2002, I received a letter from Jerome’s mother in which she told me that she had been advised (by the family doctor) to rest, because she was on the point of having a nervous breakdown from overwork and worrying about the future. In a letter, she told me that she was, ‘trying to get ahead too quickly.’10 In the survey, respondents mentioned three major sources of stress: the education of their children, their income, and work. Out of sixty-eight respondents in Flacq, forty-two said that they had recently (in the last six months 97

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of 2000) suffered from hypertension, fatigue and depression caused mostly by work. Most of the respondents had also suffered from various stomach complaints (classic evidence of tension), caused possibly by eating fast food available from mobile canteens and street vendors. In 2001, the Ministry of Health in Mauritius enforced regular inspections of food (sold in restaurants and by street vendors) by its health officials in an attempt to eradicate illness caused by food poisoning. Stress-related illnesses and long hours of work are also caused partly by the change of consumption patterns in Flacq. The advent of Mammouth stores has increased this even though it did not necessarily initiate Creole purchase on credit – in my interviews with those who had been young adults in the 1950s and 1960s, I learned that Creole families often obtained food and other groceries on credit at the shops in their local community. In many instances, Creole families fell into debt because they could not pay their accounts at the local Chinese store. One informant recalled how her mother would force them to eat their supper by saying, ‘Do you think I can just “cosyup” to the Chinaman to get this food?’11 But, at this point in the history of Mauritius, many families were poor and many had to buy food on credit if they did not keep livestock or grow vegetables. Among landless Creole families this was certainly the case, while most families attempted to make ends meet by foraging for wild roots and berries, and fishing, or hunting tenrec and other wild game. However, before the establishment of supermarkets, textile industries and sophisticated retail shops, there existed a number of cottage industries among Creoles. These supplied families with clothing, footwear, medicine and a variety of goods and services. Tailors, seamstresses and shoemakers were respectable producers in the Creole communities of the 1960s. For furnishing their homes, there were skilled carpenters and craftsmen who would make tables, beds and the obligatory panetière and sideboard – essentially a low cupboard with a unit for crockery. For wealthier families, a glass cabinet known as an argentier would also be made. Traditionally, it is a prospective bridegroom’s duty to order and pay for the furniture for a new home. His hard work and savings indicates to the bride’s family that he will be a good provider for their daughter. In some instances there were no monetary transactions. Family ties and friendships put craftsmen under an obligation to make items and exchange them for other goods or services. In the last twenty years, these home-based industries and their associated customs have deteriorated, primarily because of the availability of hire-purchase agreements and jobs in the formal sector. Such changes led to increased expenditure among Creole families: instead of exchanging goods and services or saving money to purchase items with cash, they began to furnish their homes with items acquired on credit. Instead of making clothes, raising livestock and doing laundry by hand, they started to buy clothing, food and a variety of domestic appliances. These changes also occurred because many Creole women found employment in the EPZ and in the retail industry. Initially these changes were not obvious, but with time, many Creoles fell into debt. For some, this situation was 98

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still evident in 1999, as many informants complained that they could not afford to pay the instalments of their hire-purchase agreements. In addition, there are those who buy items on credit in spite of the fact that they have not paid their basic household bills. After a few months of non-payment, the trucks belonging to the retail outlet fetches the items from their homes. I came across tailors, seamstresses and shoemakers in Flacq who complained that things had changed dramatically in the last fifteen years. One man explained that he wanted to pass his tailoring business on to his son but did not think that there was a future in it for him. In Curepipe, another tailor seemed to keep up appearances by telling all those who came to his shop that he had been very busy but that he would get to work on their item of clothing that very afternoon. Over the months, several visits to his shop revealed that the same items of clothing were hanging up on the wall, in the same semi-completed state that they had been in, when I first met him. The setting up of textile industries in the EPZ led to the production of clothing and footwear for both an export and local market. As these are manufactured goods, they were often perceived as being better than homemade ones. More important, they were easily acquired in shops and did not require fitting sessions. Such goods essentially met the growing demand for consumables and satisfied changing fashions because they did not last for long. By contrast, items produced by home-based entrepreneurs, such as the suits produced by reputable tailors, were invariably more expensive, and lasted longer although they did not meet rapidly changing fashions and thus could not immediately signify material and social progress. But Creoles are not the only ones concerned with the almost immediate prestige and power that comes from buying material things. In the last five years, several major food stores have opened in Mauritius, heralding the advent of the grand-surfaces (supermarkets). I saw many non-Creoles buying subsistence and prestige goods from the malls and designer shops that have emerged in Mauritius. These stores have goods and cultural environments that offer many Mauritians (Creoles included) a different form of prestige and status. For many, going to the supermarket constitutes an ‘outing’, where one can see others and be seen, and being able to buy food with a credit-card does not necessarily signal that one is in debt, but that one is creditworthy enough to get a credit-card. This could explain why those Mauritians who used a credit-card at tills also seemed to elicit a faster friendlier response (such as smiles and greetings) from till-operators than those who fumbled in their wallets for cash. Similarly, buying from a grand-surface as opposed to the local grocers sends the signal that one is economically and socially mobile. As one woman in Flacq replied when a rival asked why was she ‘getting so fat?’ She said, ‘It’s because my husband now buys us fresh red meat from Continent (a new supermarket)!’ In Flacq, I interviewed a Creole shop owner who argued that some Creoles are still concerned with achieving social prestige in their interaction with FrancoMauritians and other Creoles. He explained how, in some instances, Creoles 99

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would come to his shop and spend a lot of money, even though he knew that this particular family had very little money; yet they would cross the road and buy goods on credit from the Chinese grocers. He argued that it is as though Creoles are seeking to impress him because he is Creole and might tell others about the shopper’s financial situation. The same shoppers appear not to be concerned about how the Chinese grocers perceive them, maybe because they have been buying things on credit there for generations or because the Chinese are perceived to be politically unimportant ‘others’. The former are the racially and culturally powerful in Mauritian society.

The Revival of Home Industries – Sewing and ‘Z’oranges’ Post-1999 From 1999 to 2002, I also noticed that some Creoles were beginning to produce from home once more. The proliferation of family businesses is part of human social adaptation to a flexible global economy (Creed 2000). In an ethnically hierarchical society like Mauritius among Creoles it is also a means to avoid ethnic conflict. In Flacq I came across various people who were fending for themselves. These individuals can be divided into three categories: (1) those who are actively promoting their own products and services, (2) those who work after ‘work’, and (3) those who are concerned about subsistence. In Flacq and Roche Bois there are a number of Creoles who fall into the first category of promoting their own product and services. Most of these people work from home, and it is as though they are choosing not to compete with ethnically different ‘others’ in public places. Seamstresses, hairdressers and caterers are examples of these types of entrepreneur. For them it is imperative to cultivate relationships that will promote the prosperity of their businesses, and in many instances this involves close contact with people from other ethnic groups. An informant mentioned that it is a lot easier to deal with ‘funny behaviour’ from a non-Creole client when this person is at her home, and she has learned to speak to each client in a particular way that will either make them feel comfortable or (if they are aggressive) let them know that she will not stand for abuse. On several occasions I observed the relationship between this seamstress and her clients and noted that she behaved differently with each client, taking into account their family concerns, their love lives and their social position. The seamstress also made religious and cultural outfits for her non-Creole clients. By working from home, she was able to provide a service and products that would have been restricted if she had had a shop in town. In this way, the non-Creole clients do not have to acknowledge to their friends and families that they are buying things from a Creole, and they are generally not exposed to public scrutiny by visiting a shop that is in the middle of the village. For many Creole men in Flacq, it has become imperative to work overtime and to work for more than one company in order to sustain their families. After finishing their formal 100

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tasks for the day, some Creole men take on work from other companies and complete these at home. In Flacq, these extra bits of work are known as z’oranges, meaning ‘oranges’. Thus, one might hear a Creole man saying that he needs ‘to water the tree’, because the fruit is not growing or that ‘the soil is dry and infertile’. By taking on work from other companies, some Creole men put their formal jobs at risk. Nevertheless, it is the income derived from z’oranges that enables certain Creole families to get by in a difficult social and economic climate. Unable to secure loans to set up their own businesses because they do not possess sufficient collateral, these men are forced to work in low-paying jobs. However, they use the contacts that they obtain through these jobs to earn an extra income and this also helps them to remain the breadwinner in the family. But it is not only acts of generosity and the consumption of material goods that offer Creoles alternative sources of identity and dignity. In Flacq (and elsewhere), the creation of civil associations are also diversifying identity and sources of power.

Education and Civil Associations Among the Creoles of Flacq, civil associations and education play important roles in providing Creoles with alternative sources of identity and prestige. In Flacq, most Creole families make the effort to ensure that their children have access to resources that will contribute to their placement in the ‘star’ schools and or in tertiary institutions. There is as several authors (Bunwaree 1998 and Griffiths 1998) have noted, a great deal of competition in education. The struggle to obtain a good education and to avoid economic and social stereotyping was especially evident in the Creole families I encountered in Flacq. Jerome and his eight-year-old brother Jacques were constantly being scolded by their parents for not paying enough attention to their studies: they both attended extra lessons four times a week. In the year leading up to his CPE exams (which he completed at the age of eleven), Jerome was not allowed to watch television and had to attend lessons after school every single day. From time to time, his father would pull him aside and jokingly say, ‘the chains have been broken, it’s up to you to pull your leg away from them.’ Then, his face would turn serious again and one could see that he was worried about whether his son would ‘make it out there’. When I asked Jerome’s father what he meant by the chains being broken, he explained that his ancestors had been slaves and he was worried that his son would also become a ‘slave’ in the present context of Mauritius. In other words, he was concerned that his son should attain a better life than that experienced by his grandfather and father. Having not obtained enough credits after completing his last year of school, Jerome was taking private lessons in 2004 in a bid to improve his chances of getting a bursary for tertiary education or getting a ‘decent’ job. Talking with Jerome’s mother in the presence of her children, she would often criticise some of her own blood relatives and affines who, she said, were promoting 101

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the image of Creoles as lazy and un-enterprising. It often seemed as though Jerome’s mother ensured that her children heard these tales so that they could learn what not to do. She also tried to earn money by working long hours as a seamstress. I often heard the grinding noises of her sewing machine late into the night and observed various women visiting the house to select and try on their outfits. Increasingly in Flacq (and Roche Bois and Karina), women are getting involved in civil associations to assist in the education and socialisation of their children.12 In the last decade, these associations have blended social activity and political activism. These provide children with social guidance, education and even economic resources. Monique, a mother of three children, was actively involved in several civil associations. Monique’s husband was at the house when I arrived to interview her, but he did not seem to mind that I was taking up his wife’s ‘home’ time. Monique explained that when she was younger, she was involved in several non-religious associations, and so her husband understood her continued interest in this form of social work. She went on to explain that most civil associations (organised by Creoles) are educational in nature. They assist Creole children by providing extra lessons at a reduced fee to primary pupils and secondary school students, and they provide adult literacy classes in communities where Creoles are perceived to be isolated. Some civil groups also plan outings for Creole women and children. When I asked Monique why is it that Creoles are working for Creoles, she answered,’ We have to take care of our own.’13 She also said ‘In the past, communalism was undercover’ but today, it is out in the open; her Indo-Mauritian neighbours are in contact with government ministers and are getting favours from them for the advancement of their children and families. She also argued that, until recently, Creoles did not play the ‘political game’, they remained ‘quiet and accepted their place in Mauritian society.’ Yet, she argued that, at that time, Creoles were solidèr (unified). ‘Today’, she said, ‘everyone must watch out for himself.’14 Monique mentioned several civil associations to me (see Laville 2000 for more detail) these are helping to deal with the challenges of life in a modernising society. A majority of these associations are ethnically based, leading to Creoles being accused of communalism. Jack, a Creole man, told me that most of these associations are not prefaced with the word ‘Creole’. To do so would mean cutting off any chance of funding from the private sector. This rule does not apply to the associations of other ethnic groups, who benefit from the coincidence of the group’s name with a particular religious belief. Carroll and Carroll (1999) state that democratic governments are often opposed to particularistic civil organisations, but, ‘When group life is based upon ethnic, religious or tribal identities, politics becomes a battle to maximize the interests of each group to the detriment of society as a whole’ (1999: 3).

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Conclusion Flacq is a village that has experienced significant (if somewhat uneven) modernisation in the last thirty years, and this process has influenced the ways in which Creoles perceive and respond to social interaction and identity formation. Modernisation has also impacted on ethnic interaction and marriage in Flacq, such that there were many people encountered who professed to be Creole but did not conform to the dominant stereotype of Creoles as poor or working-class negroid people living in Mauritius. Intermarriage and social interaction affect the ways in which people respond to their positioning in local cultural hierarchies. Those Creoles interviewed were responding in various ways to their positioning by dominant groups in Mauritian society. Some were keen to accept the homogenisation of their identity as Christians and sought to obtain prestige and dignity through Church activities and associations. In the absence of a singular homeland from which to obtain social and cultural prestige, Creoles have turned to the Roman Catholic Church for these resources. This partly explains why some Creoles in Flacq (and elsewhere on the island) are also unhappy about the fact that the Church has not acted as a cultural institution for their support, because some Creoles perceive the orthodox Churches as their spiritual and cultural home. Dominant groups also tend to define Creoles as Christians. This definition assists in the homogenisation of the group and in the maintenance of social and cultural order. When Creoles choose to creolise their faith or reject orthodoxy they are challenging the established cultural hierarchy, dominant values and are contributing to the heterogenisation of society. This explains why Creoles are often portrayed as ‘wasteful’. They do not necessarily adhere to the ideal values of the majority Hindu group. In the late 1990s, social change in the form of industrialisation and globalisation has influenced people’s perceptions of culture and identity. Among some Creoles living in Flacq (particularly the younger generation), prestige and identity can be attained through mass consumption, commodities and in social interaction beyond ‘traditional’ cultural spheres. This is apparent in Creoles’ participation in Grégoire’s charismatic sessions and in Creoles’ quest for material things. It is important to note that it is not only Creoles who believe that prestige and dignity can be achieved through possessing status goods. Many other Mauritians are also buying status goods and are getting into debt to build beautiful houses. However, people do not simply buy things to obtain prestige. Ironically, the bigger, more spacious, home set in a beautiful location is also seen as necessary for one’s mental health. The diversification of the Mauritian economy also means that most Mauritians have been compelled to change their daily habits. There is no time to sew one’s own clothes, to catch fish, to take care of one’s own children. Thus, clothing stores, supermarkets and crèches now provide Mauritians with such goods and services. Advertising, hire-purchase contracts, loans and credit make it easier for all 103

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Mauritians to consume on a grand scale. For middle-class Hindu and FrancoMauritians in Mauritius the situation of flux and heterogenisation thwarts attempts ‘to construct a stable sense of identity’ (Miller 1994: 70). For Creoles, this is offering some the option of becoming ‘modern’ subjects ‘free’ from the constraints of race and ethnicity. It is also a situation that is offering Creoles a chance to subvert the negative discourse on hybridity. Thus, in Flacq, more Creoles are beginning to see themselves in gender, class and age terms. They are also (as I show further on) adopting transnational identities. These are mounting consistent challenges to dominant values and practices and contributing to the discursiveness of hegemony in Mauritian society. Sadly, this is not possible for all Creoles, as not all are experiencing the level of modernisation evident in Flacq, and not all Creoles have the resources to engage with their rapidly changing environment.

Notes 1. At the time of the interview in October 1999, Milan Appollon a young Creole was twenty-four year old and a resident of Flacq. Unmarried, Milan had just started a part-time job as an art teacher at a local school. Similar to Jerome and several other young Creole men in the village, he was actively involved in community football and the local Roman Catholic Church. 2. In all, sixty-eight Creoles (Forty-one women and twenty-seven men) were interviewed in Flacq. The average age of the respondents was thirty-five years, the youngest being twenty and the oldest fifty-six. 3. For example, influenza is treated with rousailles leaves, coughs with citronella, hypertension with cathepigne and moringa leaves, indigestion and nausea with yapana leaves and mint. 4. See ‘Mouvement d’aide aux victimes de la sorcellerie. Au diable les sorciers!’ Week-end 25 November 2001. 5. See ‘Rencontre autour la letter pastorale, réveillez-vous la base!’ Jauffret and Adolphe, La Vie Catholique 5 November 1999. 6. Blanqueamiento. 7. ‘Je ne suis qu’un prêtre Catholique, pas le leader des Créoles’. 8. ‘D’origine Mauricienne, il n’est pas étranger à nos pratiques,à notre vie, aussi sombre soientelles’. 9. ‘Le social à l’agenda de l’assemblée synodale ce samedi 9 octobre’. La Vie Catholique 10 October 1999: 18. 10. ‘Mo ti pé galope trop vite ar la vie’. 11. ‘Eski to croire mo kapav nek rire ar Chinois pou gagne sa?’ This is an interesting contrast to the English/American version of ‘Think of the starving children in China’. 12. See ‘Engagées’. La Vie Catholique November 1999: 15. 13. ‘Nu aussi nu bizin zwé nu filme’. 14. ‘Bef dans disab sakenn guette so lizié’.

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C HAPTER 5 R E - VIEWING THE PAST IN K ARINA




Unlike Flacq, Karina is a tranquil village set in a lush landscape of sugarcane, rolling hills and island-blue sky. Against this vision of Karina as a rural, rustic place, Flacq residents focus on their own village as a place in the process of urbanisation. The opposition of rural and urban in Karina is, as Aisha Khan (1997) suggests for her field site in Trinidad: ‘an essential component in a larger identity discourse.’ (1997: 39), where notions of culture, race and class are differently valued and form a part of a cultural hierarchy that shapes experience. In this dichotomy, urbanites are perceived as progressive agents less likely to be affected by traditional forms of identity. They are also perceived as being more active in their attempts to occupy political spaces close to the apex of the local cultural hierarchy. In contrast, rural people are stereotypically perceived as backward, conservative, slow to change, and are usually people associated with camps. When asked what constitutes a camp, people in Flacq and Port Louis said in general that camps are ethnically homogeneous, were work pools and form a part of the plantation economy of Mauritius. These settlements also consist[ed] of several extended families. They were also said to be places that are hostile to outsiders, and where endogamy might be practised. I found that the residents of Karina were keen to maintain this view of their camp, partly because it conferred upon them a particular homogeneous identity and helped to defend the settlement from what they perceived as Hindu incursion. Thus, far from outsiders’ perception of it as an isolated settlement with rural and conservative people who do not know how to manage their resources, the camp was often spoken of by the inhabitants as one of the last places where Creoles knew of their ancestry and where Creoles had attempted to hold onto land that 105

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rightfully belonged to them. The stress on Karina as a Creole settlement also served to emphasise the cultural homogeneity of its inhabitants, which in turn emphasises the rural/urban dichotomy. However, as I suggest in this chapter, the ‘rural/urban dyad’ (Khan 1997) is problematic in Mauritius, because the process of urbanisation has been rapid and uneven. This is apparent in the life experiences of Creoles living in Flacq, where communal identity is still strong even though there has been a level of modernisation and the emergence of a range of subjective identities, such as class and gender. Also, the proximity of settlements means that many places are not beyond the reach of urban or rural influence. Nevertheless, the portrayal of certain places as rural is still apparent and is important in the constitution of identity. By keeping these spaces separate in actual and symbolic terms, individuals and groups attempt to create separate and unequal fields of power. In Mauritius, as in Trinidad, one finds that these separations have led to the creation of racialised landscapes ‘in which the “racial” identities of ethnic groups are identified with particular types of place as a result of perceptions of cultural heritage and island social history.’ (Khan 1997: 41). The establishment of racialised landscapes is apparent in the differentiation of camps from places of labour (fields and factories) and places of primary power and whiteness (the plantation owner’s house and immediate surrounds). Camps are also differentiated in terms of the kind of labour supplied, ethnicity, and the type of land occupation. Historical research (Carter 1998, Teelock 1998, Vaughan 2001) reveals that one type consists of land provided by the landowner for slaves and labourers to reside on. Another type of camp consists of land conceded to exslaves or labourers after the abolition of slavery and indenture. A third type consists of land occupied by ex-slaves and labourers after the abolition of slavery and indenture. Increasingly, the third type of settlement is also found among present-day Mauritians. Thus, shortly after the abolition of slavery, the descendants of slaves set up villages and communities not only along the coastline but also on land conceded to them. Various contractual agreements (Teelock 1998) between ex-slaves and their previous masters and the Roman Catholic Church also appear to have been the norm, so that the descendants of slaves maintained social and economic interaction with their previous masters. Camps are also heterogeneous spaces. However, historically, many of them contained inhabitants of a particular ethnicity or those from a particular region in India. For various reasons (such as sharing similar values and practices, poverty and land ownership), the descendants of those who had originally populated such places tended to stay in the area. In 2000, members of dominant groups within camps can leave these areas if they marry out, find work in another district or obtain another place to live. However, one finds that some camps inhabitants do not do so. They continue to live in camps and oppose its heterogenisation. In what follows, I argue that Karina residents promote boundary maintenance and identity through the appropriation of a ruralised identity that is used to signify homogeneous 106

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experience. Furthermore, stories of affliction, common descent, and of the past do not simply indicate differences between the residents of Karina and outsiders, they also show the extent to which people living in particular locales like Karina, have experienced change in the last thirty years. By 2002, it seemed that Karina residents had accepted the inevitability of change in and beyond their community. More young people were seeking work in Flacq and beyond. People living in Flacq and elsewhere were also visiting friends and families in Karina more often. While I was away from Mauritius, regular correspondence with a friend in Karina indicated that the settlement had developed more links with outlying villages and people – in particular, with Creoles from Flacq. As I show in this chapter, Karina residents are engaging with modernity and identity in various ways, some by establishing educational and organisational ties with Creoles living in Flacq, obtaining employment in hotels along the east coast or, by consuming or trading ganja.

The Location of Karina Today, Karina forms part of the Camp Ithier Village Council Area (VCA). It lies some fifteen kilometres from Flacq and in 1999 (as part of Camp Ithier) it was ranked 65 (out of 145 VCAs) on the Mauritius Development Index1 (News on Sunday July 25–31, 1999), which means that in social, economic and infrastructural terms the area is fairly well developed. According to the Housing and Population Census 2000, Volume I: Housing and Living Conditions (2000), there are a total of 4,032 people living in the VCA. A large number of this population are Hindu (3,226) while only 743 are Christian.2 Other religious groups are poorly represented, with only four Tamil Hindus, ten Telegu Hindus, fourty-four Vedic and no Marathi Hindus in the area. A substantial number of the Hindus in the area (2,201) are Bhojpuri speakers, suggesting that they are the descendants of plantation workers. An increasing number of Hindus are also using Kreol as their lingua franca, as the CSO statistics indicate 1,372 Kreol speakers in Camp Ithier. Most of the people surveyed in Camp Ithier were living in non-rented houses, in Karina, which can be explained by the existence of a common property system where outsider and insider access to village land is controlled and few people have to rent living space. Most of the families in Karina live in extended households with nucleated units. As discussed in the previous chapter, extended households are common (for financial and spatial reasons), but many households contain several nucleated units to accommodate newly-weds or older family members. In Karina, spatial considerations are even more important than in Flacq, mainly because the boundary of the settlement is circumscribed and there is little room for expansion. Yet, the residents did (at the time of research) appear to have access to more land than the residents of Flacq and therefore had not built houses one on top of the 107

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other. Nevertheless, the residents are concerned to maintain physical boundaries, and also ethnic boundaries. To this end, the residents have encouraged endogamy. Stories from my relatives suggest that camps were historically distinguishable from other settlements by their practice of endogamy. Male residents beat outsider men, if they attempted to court women in certain camps. This practice has not necessarily helped to stem overcrowding in the settlement and in 1999 the average number of children per family was five, with a maximum of twelve children. The population was varied, ranging from children aged two or three years to pensioners of seventy-five or more. Unlike the River Camp,3 Karina has a fair mix of women and men and, until recently, young people had not been lured to live in Flacq or elsewhere, probably because most of those whom I encountered were living for free on communally owned land. If they chose to live in Flacq, they would have to rent a place to stay. This means that the employed residents of Karina have to commute to their place of work. Most residents of Karina who are employed work outside the settlement in nearby textile factories, construction companies or the remaining sugarcane factories in the region. There are also a great number of inhabitants who are formally unemployed, and among them, many women who work from home. There seems to be little in the way of entrepreneurial development in Karina. At the time of research there was only one shop at the entrance to the settlement that sold a range of goods, from paint to food and alcohol. My first impression of Karina was its isolation from Flacq and neighbouring communities. Travelling to Karina is often a problem as the taxi-train takes time to gather enough passengers to warrant the trip. Furthermore, the camp’s reputation as a place where Indo-Mauritians are not welcome means that few drivers are willing to take a passenger right up to the entrance. In some instances, I was fortunate to encounter Creole taxi-drivers in Flacq and they were willing to take me into the settlement – but most of the time, I had arguments with taxi drivers who refused to take me to the entrance and preferred to drop me off at the edge of the buffer zone between Karina and Camp Ithier proper. The residents of Karina argue that the only way they have managed to prevent Hindus and Muslims from taking over their land is by refusing to sell, rent or provide land to outsiders. In the following paragraphs I discuss the challenges of doing research in Karina, the impact of these challenges on my analysis, and on my introduction to Creoles there.

Research in Karina I came to know about Karina through a friend at the University of Mauritius. She had been impressed by the paper presented at a university seminar by a young man from Karina on the subject of culture, land and endogamy. Being an anthropologist (perhaps influenced by statements that the most original and successful ethnographies are those that can demonstrate the existence of organic 108

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culture within the study population), I thought I would attempt to find some organic, or at least archaic, cultural traits among Creoles. When I met him for the first time, Jean-Marc was a bit wary of my reasons for going to Karina and we decided to meet in Flacq at a snack outlet close to the bus depot. This seemed fine to me, as I had not wanted neighbours or family to gossip that I had met a ‘new’ man. I informed all the usual talkers that I was going to meet a friend in town and that he was a researcher too. My mentioning that he was a ‘researcher’ seemed to satisfy them that he was not a potential lover. Jean-Marc had done some genealogical research on his family and was keen to reclaim the land that his grandmother said the family had lost. But I also think he wanted to prove that his family were the descendants of the French landowner, Marcelin Charlot. Throughout the time I spent in Karina, he did not show me the genealogy chart that he had made and I did not ask to see it, perhaps because I was aware of my status as an outsider but also because I was more interested in the possibility of encountering pristine Creole culture in a settlement that was bounded, where there were specific kinship and inheritance rules and where Creoles might have retained cultural practices from the time of slavery. This view of culture as static and bounded was appealing during the early part of research also because, as a Creole whose own identity has been denigrated, I initially felt obliged to say that the Creoles have ‘culture’ too. Thus, when Jean-Marc said that he knew my cousin and that his aunt, the local healer, had, with prayer and touch, removed a chicken-bone from my cousin’s throat, he relaxed and I relaxed, thinking that I had found a true anthropological site. At this early stage in fieldwork, in my mind, Flacq was too stratified, too porous and heterogeneous to become a place worthy of research. We walked to the edge of Flacq to catch a taxi-train to Karina and in the course of the day, I learned that my father had worked with JeanMarc’s father at the Constance sugar estate in the early 1960s, and that my father’s brother had once been beaten and thrown out of the village because he tried to court a Karina girl. Jean-Marc said that it was a good thing that I was a ‘girl’, otherwise he would not have considered bringing me to Karina.

The Charlot Family The first story that I was told about Karina concerns the origins of the inhabitants. According to Jean-Marc and his grandmother Edith (better known as Mandit), the inhabitants of Karina are the direct descendants of the FrancoMauritian landowner Marcelin Charlot, and there are approximately 110 families who profess to be a part of the Charlot clan. The clan has a history of endogamy and in the last century there have been a number of first-cousin marriages. However, after drawing up a genealogical chart for a segment of the Charlot family, I discovered that since the 1960s first-cousin marriages have not been the norm and that endogamy is on the wane in the clan. Some Karina Creoles are 109

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fair-skinned with light coloured eyes, suggesting that they are of more European than Afro-Malagasy descent. Others are not very different from Creoles living in Flacq: over the last thirty years, Karina Creoles have married Flacq residents or Creoles living further away. It is not clear from the stories of Mandit and Jean-Marc whether the Charlot families living in Karina today are the descendants of slaves and indentured labourers who worked on Marcelin Charlot’s fields and inherited the land after the landowner’s death, or the result of relationships between the FrancoMauritian family and his workers, or both. Mandit says that present-day Charlots are the direct descendants of Marcelin Charlot, that her husband, Emmanuel Charlot, was Marcelin Charlot’s great-grandchild, and that she too was born of a Charlot family. Edith’s mother, Aurélie Charlot, married Charles Chevalier Laitier (an outsider) and her sisters remarried into the Charlot name, thus reinforcing clan bonds. In more recent times, Mandit’s grandchild Clenford has married her sister Roselle-Mi’s grandchild Aline. Both have the same surname. Mandit has paid close attention to the Charlot line because it is important to the family’s control of land ownership and tenure in the camp.

Land Tenure and Legend In Karina, the matriarch of the Charlot clan, Mandit, has significant negotiating power, as do the women in Besson’s (1993) community. But, as some residents become wealthy or more politically visible in the settlement, they too acquire more negotiating power and contribute to discussions on who should be given land and why. I also found (as did Besson in the settlement of Martha Brae) that in Karina there is a ‘system of unrestricted cognatic descent [which] maximizes descent ties generating ever-increasing overlapping landholding family lines’ (Besson 1993: 22). In recent years, this unrestricted system has been under pressure, as there appears to have been an important influx of people into Karina, mostly because many young people are choosing to marry outsiders and bring them to live in the camp. The existence of exogamous marriages suggests that the common property system in Karina is fairly flexible and that at various times, residents benefit from either the fixity or flexibility of the system. Attempts to stem the disintegration of the common property system in Karina is achieved by encouraging certain beliefs concerning clan-specific afflictions brought on by outsiders’ occupation of Karina land. According to Mandit, Marcelin Charlot died after a long illness in which his legs became diseased and he wasted away, unable to walk or move from his house. When I first arrived in Karina, Jean-Marc showed me the houses of those who had betrayed the Charlots’ primary ancestor by selling land to outsiders. He explained that the men of the household were wasting away and that no doctor could heal them. Jean-Marc told me that Marcelin Charlot cursed these men and their families and that their 110

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demise is apparent in the disease that affects their legs and eventually cripples them. When I asked if we could go to see these people, I was told that it was not a good idea lest we incur the wrath of their ancestor and also experience the curse. There are other possible explanations for leg ailments in Karina – particularly if one considers Western bio-medical epidemiology. Mauritius has one of the highest rates of secondary diabetes in the world. The poor management of the disease by those who are affected leads to the rapid deterioration of the eyes, kidney and other major organs of the body. In Flacq, for example, I constantly heard stories about middle-aged Mauritians having their toe, leg or arm amputated because they failed to control their diabetes. Poor levels of follow-up care may also lead to patients dying after having gone through an amputation. It is possible that the inhabitants of Karina have, in the course of generations, become vulnerable to a host of non-communicable diseases that are a result of living in a more modernised society. Thus, those suffering from leg ailments could be suffering from arthritis, diabetes’ complications, gout and so on – all of which may affect the limbs in some way. Nevertheless, the curse of Karina is a potent belief among the inhabitants and it prevents members from selling or renting land. Later on in the course of research, I learned that the reason why people cannot sell land in Karina is because only two families out of one hundred and ten actually have title deeds. Land cannot be sold or rented out unless other members of the family agree, and they rarely do. Given local pressure to maintain a physical and social boundary around Karina, and increasing exogamy and a high birth rate in the 1960s, Karina today is bursting at the seams. The edges of the settlement have houses that are spaciously laid out but the further into the camp you go, the more dense the houses appear to be. At the time of research there was growing tension among residents as to whether men who bring wives from outside should be allowed to live in the community. Mandit told me that Jean-Marc was assured of a place in Karina because he is a member of the primary lineage of Marcelin Charlot. As for the others’ children, she was not so sure – they would just have to fight it out. If the parents of a particular Charlot member do not have enough land on which to build a home for his or her family, that person can ask others of the clan for permission to build on their allocated plot. In ideal circumstances, all those concerned would agree, but in recent times these negotiations have not gone well, mainly because of an increasing lack of space. While space is an important concern for the Charlot family and the residents of Karina in general, it seems to me that the stories of clan-specific affliction, communal tenure and descent from Marcelin Charlot are not always about identity but also about land. Stories of times past told by Creoles living in Karina were ways not only for residents to tell me about change but were also a means of showing how distinct they saw themselves as being, from outsiders such as those living in Camp Ithier.

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Stories That Bind Us Mandit, Jean-Marc, Clenford, Aline, Elliette and the local healer reminisced about the past in Karina. Their stories emphasise the importance of tradition to homogenisation, the extent to which life has changed for Karina residents and the socio-economic pressures that they currently experience, partly because they are Creole. The stories told by Karina residents are also informed by their memories of the past, and as Nuttall and Coetzee (1998: 76) remind us, memory ‘is always as much about the present as it is about the past.’ The following stories told by Karina residents tell us about hardships, racialised identities and belonging in a particular landscape. In other words, the stories are about the constitution of Creole identity in a particular location.

Mandit’s Story Mandit told me about her husband Emmanuel Charlot, who worked at Constance sugar estate and used to brew a form of rum known as ti lambik. In those days, she said, the brewing of ti lambik was illegal but was also another way to make money. The rum is brewed in large vats that are difficult to conceal from the public eye. It is made using leftover sugarcane (after harvesting) and other ingredients (closely guarded secrets) are used to give the specific taste of one’s brew. All the Creoles drank it and came from afar to buy it from the residents of Karina. According to Mandit, ti lambik was natural, with no preservatives or chemicals, and people who drank it did not suffer any side effects. Over time, however Karina was associated with crime because of the brewing of ti lambik and arrests made in the camp. Once the men had gone to jail and women were struggling to keep their families alive, women too resorted to brewing, and thus Karina managed to sustain itself in difficult times. Mandit says that gradually, the Malabars (a colloquial name for Indian plantation labourers), found out how to brew ti lambik and they too began to produce it for sale so that those Creoles who supplemented their income by brewing lost this income. In Mandit’s story, there is emphasis on the difficulties of life in the past. Men had to brew ti lambik to make extra money but this was an illegal enterprise and when arrested, men risked the lives of their families. Mandit’s story also highlights internalised ethnic boundaries. A distinction is made between Malabars and Creoles, and Mandit stresses how, even then, Indians were ‘invaders’, taking over the production and sale of ti lambik. According to Mandit, ti lambik also fuelled parties in Karina, where mostly Creoles were invited. Thus she emphasised that for Creoles, ti lambik was not just a means for survival but also a means for entertainment. This suggests that, when those of Indian descent chose to produce ti lambik, they were doing so for economic reasons alone, which is not what Creoles were doing. Mandit elaborated on how different ti lambik production was 112

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for Creole men. She took great pleasure in telling about how notorious and brave the men of the village were – how they took risks to earn extra money and to be real men. This suggests that the brewing and sale of ti lambik was also closely tied to the achievement of masculinity. Mandit’s second story of entertainment and elopement in days gone by also focus on the particular articulation of identity (and in one sense, male identity) in the village. In this story Mandit explains how, every New Year, the Creoles of Karina would start a party at one house and take the party to another house, using it as a means of greeting for the New Year. Such parties involved the playing of traditional sega instruments, the singing and composing of sega songs, and the sharing of food and drink. In the course of such a party, a young man would ‘steal’ a girl4 or young couples would ‘disappear’ into the sugarcane fields bordering the village. In ‘stealing’ the girl, the young man indicates his masculinity by challenging the authority of the parents and demonstrating his notoriety (to his peers) or the extent to which he is a rascal. At the end of the party, someone might notice that so-and-so has gone and, the people would say that zotte fine marié, they had got married. Lovers would disappear into nearby fields and forests, emerging several days later; once ‘married’ they would be permitted to set up home in the camp and ask elders for land. Only close friends and community residents participated in these parties, reinforcing the boundary between insiders and outsiders. Furthermore, those who had got married at such parties were more likely to marry insiders or individuals linked to them by blood, thus reinforcing the social and biological homogeneity of Karina. Today such elopements are rare, mainly because (as with the Creoles of Flacq), prestige is achieved through elaborate and public ceremonies. Besides, a modernising society requires that one has state-sanctioned documentation for life events such as birth, marriage and death.

Elliette’s Story The livelihood of Karina residents was sustained also by horticultural activities. While telling me about her childhood, Elliette described the kind of work that children and adults were expected to do in the 1960s. Children would plant manioc and maize, collect water and take care of younger siblings. Elliette was born in 1957. She is part of a family of eight children. They lived a rather isolated life in the camp and her greatest pleasure was to go out into the uncultivated fields to collect grass for the animals and play with her friends. Sometimes they even managed to walk to the beach, have a swim and walk home slowly to dry off so that their parents would not suspect they had been in the sea. Of course, the drying sea salt on their skin made them appear grey and their mothers always knew that they had been in the sea. Part of the day included fetching water from the reservoir at Mare La Chaux, fetching wood (twice a week) from the woodlands around Belle Mare, and 113

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helping with washing clothes at a nearby river. Each child had five items of clothing made for the entire year, one for Christmas, one for New Year, and three for wear in the house. Elliette told me that, ‘children today won’t accept having only five new items of clothing a year, they are not used to making do with a few things.’ People in the camp only got television sets in 1971 and so, for most of her childhood and early adulthood, families would get together after dinner to play board games, sing and share food. Elliette’s story emphasises the common poverty of the mostly Creole children living in Karina in the 1960s. And, it was clear that things had changed for Karina residents in general since then. Most people were living in concrete houses, had access to running water in their homes and bought their food from supermarkets and la foire (open air markets) in Flacq.

Clenford and Aline Clenford and Aline are first cousins who got married in the 1980s. When I interviewed them about their experiences in Karina, Clenford started by telling me about his present hardships, which he felt existed because he is Creole. He quickly lapsed into telling me about the past and glossed over the difficulties of past forms of subsistence. Adults, he said, planted carrots, tobacco and tomatoes, and raised chickens, ducks and goats. As in Roche Bois, there were no enclosures, so animals roamed freely and had to be chased back to their owners later on in the day. According to Clenford, a great number of Karina men worked in the garages of regional sugar estates and others became maçons (masons) in the construction industry. Children spent much of their time outside the house in a ruralised context, playing games such as demister, in which a stone is placed in a tin and the person who holds the tin goes out into the sugarcane fields, shakes the tin to indicate where they are and others must track them. They also made their own toys out of sardine cans, paper and whatever else was available. Lovers indicated their feelings for each other by presenting certain flowers and with handkerchiefs folded in particular ways. The flower Kiss Me Quick (Portulaca pilosa) means for example, ‘I love you’, whereas an offer of Gueule de loup (Antirrhinum majus) means ‘You’re wasting your time’. Clenford’s portrayal of the past as homogeneous was apparent in the way that he started each story, ‘lontemps Creoles …’ (Long ago Creoles …) Clenford and Aline’s stories suggest that Creoles lived in harmony and that the natural environment was powerful and life-shaping (Khan 1997: 41). People living in the camp developed particular strategies in dealing with illness, hunger and poverty so that life could continue. The stories also contribute to outsiders’ perception that identity is not only homogeneous but also authentic and longestablished in Karina.

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Authenticity through Healing Karina is not as isolated as it first appears: even though it does not have many shops and traders on its streets, people come there for a variety of reasons. Creole clients from Flacq come to Karina to have their cars repaired and tombstones made for their deceased family members, and Creole teachers (also from Flacq), come to offer sewing and literacy classes to adult women. Creole social activists go there to inform people of their civil rights, as Creoles in Flacq believe that the inhabitants of Karina are generally isolated from social and economic developments taking place in the greater village of Flacq. As in Flacq, Karina residents are keen for dominant groups to see their modernity. To this end, many interviewees denounced having visited a healer diviner or having been assisted by one. Despite the generally negative view of healer diviners in Karina, residents prided themselves on having a particular healer diviner who, they felt, was not a charlatan. They proudly said that people from afar to come and see her and ask for help. She is skilled at les passes, the curing of all forms of childhood illnesses, misfortune and spirit possession and explained her healing powers to me: I can remove and heal fraîcheurs, fièvres and foulures (cold, fever, sprains) and I can tell when someone is a victim of black magic. After laying hands on a sick person, it seems as though I take on that person’s illness – if only for a short while. During that time, I have to be alone, I speak to no one and stay at home until I feel better.

The healer does not ask for money but rather gifts, and this accentuates her authenticity and ‘uncontaminated’ nature. And, the fact that she has inherited powers that enable her to cure also emphasise her spirituality versus the more secular nature of people living in Flacq. When wealthy people visit Karina to see the local healer, they also reinforce the symbolic boundary between town and country or urban and rural areas. Karina residents were keen to portray the image of their village as ‘pure’ and ‘natural’. Those who are wealthier for example, often spoke about the fact that they are living in the ‘countryside’. Outsiders coming to the village also tend to reinforce the symbolic boundary between town and country, by consuming an alternative form of healing derived from a presumed organic landscape where medications are ‘fresh’ (recently collected) and natural or unaltered. The type of treatment received is contrasted to that which is obtained in town, where contact between patient and doctor is minimal, medication is not necessarily fresh although expiry dates state otherwise, and symptoms rather than causes are treated. The emphasis on alternative healing in a rustic context, also serve to homogenise the identity of those living there. As previously stated, people living in Karina had words of praise for their local healer: however they were reluctant to admit that they consulted her for advice 115

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and healing. Ching and Creed (1997) shed light on the different responses of urbanites and rural people to rusticity: they argue that ‘urban dwellers who are free from the stigma of rusticity can wax eloquently about the countryside or embrace it as a retreat without undermining their own cultural superiority – going to the country with a fully formed urban identity is not the same as being from the country’ (1997: 20). Among the residents of Karina it is all right to emphasise and idealise past ruralness and rusticity as this served to homogenise past experience. Talking about such experiences in the present context was also acceptable because the stories indicated that time had gone by and that the people had become modernised or urbanised since then. Still to consult with healer-diviners, raise pigs and goats, and prevent your children from going to school was not acceptable and indicated social backwardness. Thus, when Ingrid’s daughter fell ill and she secretly consulted the local healer for help, she made sure that only her closest family members knew of it, for fear of being perceived as a rural and superstitious woman. Children, the local healer said, are often victims of black magic, especially when the parents are envied. This seemed to be the case a few days after I spoke to her, when Ingrid’s daughter appeared to be the victim of black magic and suffered violent seizures. The local healer tried to help her but could only ascertain that the ‘poison’ sent to the child had not been meant for her but for her mother. Several days before consulting the healer, the concerned mother had taken her child to hospital where the child underwent various forms of medical assessment including a brain scan to rule out the possibility of epilepsy. Nothing was found to be wrong. After a couple of days, I saw the young girl sitting with her mother in their tiny grassless garden. I crossed the street to greet them and to find out how the girl was feeling. The mother seemed reluctant to explain how the girl had overcome her illness. Later on I learned that the young girl had been taken to a docteur sans soulier5 and that she had been spiritually cleansed of the illness. A year later I went back to Karina to see Mandit and spoke to Ingrid again. I asked why she had not said anything about this type of doctor. She told me, ‘We don’t believe in such things, we are an honest, God-fearing people and only rely on prayers to help us out of situations we don’t understand.’ It is possible that Ingrid wanted to be perceived as modernised, for in Mauritius modernity is indicative not only of progress but also of whiteness. In Ingrid’s case (as was the case of many Creoles who I came to know), both modernity and tradition are apparent in her social behaviour, clearly indicating that Western modernisation is a discursive process that must engage with the experiences and representations of ‘subaltern’ peoples and cultures. In Karina the blending of modernity and tradition and vacillation between these two ‘poles’ was apparent in the residents’ ambivalence to alternative healing and stories of the past. Specifically, I noticed ambivalence about their enactment of and embedding in rural life. One of the main reasons for ambivalence is that the views of privileged outsiders are highly valued. However, among these privileged people (especially those coming from neighbouring Flacq or from the more ‘developed’ towns of 116

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Figure 8. ‘We Are a God-fearing People’: Ingrid and the Shrine in Her Yard.

Rose Hill and Quatre-Bornes), there are those who perceive Karina residents as traditional and authentic whereas others treat them as being socially and economically backward. Responding to negative stereotyping, Karina residents attempt to articulate a positive rural identity through stories of the past. They subvert the negative portrayal of ruralness by accepting their stereotyping as a rural people and recast this as a positive identity, which indicates their homogeneity and authenticity. This portrayal finds favour with urbanites, comfortable with the fact that they are modern. Karina residents’ acceptance of a ruralised identity is especially apparent among those born before the 1970s and who cannot (for historical, cultural and economic reasons) escape the fact that they are embedded in the rural landscape. Their rural upbringing, their way of speaking Kreol, and their social conservativeness become apparent when they speak, in how they behave, and in what they wear. Traditionalisation in the form of stories about the past, alternative healing and occasional hunting allows Creoles in Karina to present an image of themselves as a homogeneous group. This is important not only because dominant (Hindu and Franco-Mauritian) groups treat homogeneity as a necessary element in the achievement of culture, but also because it provides Karina Creoles with a sense of solidarity and community in a broadly alienating social context. Thus the stories told by the Karina residents also form a part of their creative responses to racial and social exclusion. When Mandit tells me the story of the Charlot’s primary ancestor, Marcelin Charlot, she is not only emphasising the existence of 117

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whiteness in her family; the stories of hardship, arrest and hunger also tell me about endurance in the face of what Kahn (2001: 402) calls ‘the worst dilemmas posed by modernization – violence, extreme inequalities, environmental destruction, deprivation, racial exclusion’ (2001: 664). In what follows, I discuss the constant pressure experienced by the residents of Karina to engage with the ‘universalising and hegemonic discourses’ of Western modernity and increasingly, those of Hindu nationalism. As that discussion shows, not all Karina Creoles can make use of traditionalisation to obtain a secure and meaningful identity. While some residents of Karina seek to construct a homogeneous ethnic identity through narratives of the past, the identity of others is more profoundly influenced by their encounters with the present. These encounters are structured when the Creoles of Karina engage more intensely with the values, practices and social formations beyond the settlement.

Constant Pressure Since the mid-1980s, the country’s development of the EPZ, the expansion of the hotel industry, and government review of gender relations in the public sphere have contributed to the empowerment of women in Mauritius (Nababsing and Kothari 1998). Cases of domestic abuse and violence reported on by the Ministry of Women, Development, the Welfare of Children and the Family in 1998 strongly suggest that the empowerment of women has contributed to jealousy and low self-esteem among Mauritian men and that in some cases this has led to an increase in domestic violence. One might argue that these feelings and actions caused in part by Creole women obtaining regular employment and their contributing more substantially to the family income. In Safa’s (1986) study of women’s work in the Puerto Rican working class she notes that women ‘of working-class families tend to be seen as supplementary wage earners, dependent on men as the primary breadwinners’ and that ‘many come from strong patriarchal rural traditions, where they readily transfer the authority of their fathers or husbands to the company manager’ (Safa 1986: 84–94). I also found in Karina that women’s work was seen as a supplement to the family income, and men complained about the erosion of their authority in the home. Processes of differentiation caused by the integration of the principles of Western modernity by the first government of Mauritius in 1968 and then by the Labour government of 1982 and 2000 have contributed to new strata and factions in Karina. In particular, the development of the textile industries on the east coast has meant that a number of women and girls in Karina are now earning an income. Social and economic reforms implemented by various governments have also favoured the development and emancipation of women in places such as Karina, creating a group of young, empowered women. By contrast, the contraction of men’s traditional spheres of employment (construction, sugarcane 118

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factories, artisanship and fishing), and what appears to be a lack of attention by government to the plight of men, is leading to a number of social problems.

The Encounter with Education Among Karina boys and men, various external factors such as poverty, parents’ illiteracy, peer pressure and fathers leaving their families lead to the noncompletion of secondary education and unemployment. Kersely, a boy aged fifteen had to leave school because his mother could not afford to pay for his books. Kersely’s father left Karina two years ago and never came back, and his mother has been struggling ever since to sustain the family. Kersley said that he would have to go to Flacq next year, when he turned sixteen to find work, but does not know what kind of work he would get, since he had not completed his Form Four. In an interview with Mrs Nardoo, a teacher who has worked in an east coast school and in the school just outside Karina for seven years, I was told that people in Karina are often aggressive toward strangers and particularly towards IndoMauritians, whom they see as unscrupulous people who want their land. In a bid to prevent outsiders from taking their land and in the hope that they would not have time to make friends with ethnically different ‘others’ or have the

Figure 9. School Children from Karina. 119

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opportunity to marry non-Creoles, many parents in Karina chose not to send their children to school. But poor education levels in Karina are not solely attributed to parental choice. In the 1990s the increasing practice of private tuition (seen as a necessity in the Mauritian education system) is a source of despair for poor parents who cannot afford to give their children the ‘necessary’ competitive advantage. Historical patterns of labour also contribute to existing perceptions of work and education. In the early 1960s Creole and Indian children were sent out to work either as domestics in the homes of rich Franco-Mauritians or as apprentices to mechanics, shoemakers, boilermakers, fitters and turners. These children (now parents themselves) may not understand the long-term value of education. Alcoholism also plays a role in the non-attendance of children. The school just outside Karina is attended by 90 percent of Karina’s children under the age of thirteen. Mrs Nardoo explained that out of approximately forty children per class, there are about ten Creoles. She said that during her time at the school, the Karina children were well dressed and had enough food to eat during break-time but some were badly affected by their fathers’ drinking, absence or imprisonment, and that these factors also played a role in children dropping out of school early, attending school irregularly or not doing their work. In the past, the location of the school also affected non-attendance. The school is located on the border of Karina on what the residents consider as Karina land, but in official government documentation this land is classified as Camp Ithier land, inhabited mostly by Hindus. Mrs Nardoo explained that conflicts around land often erupted at Parents and Teachers’ Association (PTA) meetings, as a result of which some mothers withdrew their children from the school. Mothers from Karina complain that the teachers (mostly Hindu) at the school mistreat their children and ignore them in class if they have difficulty with certain tasks or concepts. Mrs Nardoo said that many of the younger teachers at the school are indeed racist and have no patience with children who appear to be ‘difficult’. She traced these problems to insufficient and poor training of teachers. In the past, also, the Mauritius Institute of Education recruited and trained Advanced Level, General Certificate of Education (A-Level) holders for two years before they were placed in schools. Today there is an Advanced Certificate in Education that leads to a Teacher’s Diploma. After completing the one-year diploma course, individuals are allowed to practise as teachers. In one school in Flacq, teachers were recruited on the basis of their relation to the rector. Of the staff, 75 percent were either his affines or blood relatives. Given their negative experience of the school environment, problems at home, and their observation of nepotism, Creoles in Karina often attempt to retreat into the camp to limit their encounter with outsiders. For men, whose masculinity is linked (in the patriarchy of Mauritian society) to work in the public sphere, this retreat is not

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always possible. This means that socially men are compelled to interact more intensely with Western modernity than women are, although there appear to be few forms of social and economic support for men when their encounters with modernity become difficult or impossible. As suggested earlier, the rise of liberal feminism in Mauritius and its appearance in government policy has meant that women in Karina experience more social and economic support than men. In my opinion this has led to a decline in male power, particularly among the working classes.

Dealing with the Decline of Male Power In Mauritius, male prestige is increasingly linked to men’s ability to buy highstatus consumer goods and to sustain such consumption for their family. Many unemployed or irregularly employed men in Karina are experiencing the kind of frustration that could lead to domestic and public violence.6 The potential for violence is compounded by the social marginalisation of men who smoke ganja and consume large quantities of alcohol. Young men in Karina argue that they drink and smoke not only because they are frustrated but also because they are bored. There are no forms of entertainment other than an occasional game of soccer on a patch of land on the edge of the camp or a card or domino game in their makeshift shelters. Clenford also pointed out that both state and civil society provided structures for the social and economic integration of women. He noted various religious and non-religious associations for women and the young in Karina and said that nothing existed for adult men. In Karina, there is the Groupe Prière pour Dames (the Prayer Group for Women), l’Aile Feminine (the Women’s Wing), Groupe des Jeunes (Youth Group) and Groupe Couple (the Couple’s Group). The latter group is the only one in which men participate, but even this group is aimed at recently married couples and so it excludes men who have been married for a long time. Furthermore, men’s work hours often make it difficult for them to get together on a regular basis. Construction workers, for example, may be expected to work overtime on a particular site, while factory workers often have maintenance work to do in certain seasons. Some men explained that they hunted small game for entertainment but only occasionally. In general, men said that they felt angry and despondent, that those men who had regular jobs rarely came together with those who were unemployed to help the latter out, and that women were getting all the attention of the government. Despite these frustrations, men in Karina were attempting to construct alternative forms of power and identity for themselves. These efforts were especially evident in the continued emphasis on hunting as a social activity, and in some instances, the use of hunting as a metaphor for ganja cultivation and harvesting.

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Hunting On mornings when they do not work, young men in Karina hunt l’hièvres (hares) in neighbouring fields, and at night when they are not working overtime, they form small bands and hunt tang (tenrecs). Hunting is a means for Creole men to take risks and test their masculinity. The men often hunt illegally and may be caught and arrested for trespassing.7 Hunting in small bands also promotes social bonding between men. In the past, male prestige was closely linked to hunting ability. Like fishermen, Creole hunters staked out specific spots as being good for tenrecs. They designed traps and selected baits for both tenrecs and hares, and those who were most skilled at these tasks gained other men’s respect. In present-day Karina, as in Flacq, male prestige and identity is closely linked to the ability to earn money and maintain a level of conspicuous consumption in the family. Men do not socialise with other men except perhaps to consume alcohol and smoke ganja. But, as I argue for Chamarel, alcohol consumption should not be seen simply as a means of retreat – the type of alcohol, place where it is consumed, and the company in which it is consumed have an important influence on the meaning of consumption and on the identity of consumers.

Smoking A similar argument can be made about the ganja smoking in Karina. The company, place and even type8 of ganja smoked have an important bearing on the meaning of consumption and identity. In Karina I noticed that some of the younger unmarried men met in makeshift shelters on the edge of the camp where they drank, smoked and played cards. I did not see men smoking in their homes or on streets. Clenford’s explanation for the use of prohibited drugs (mainly ganja) and alcohol among Karina men is that they have no work and there is no entertainment at all in the settlement. He also said that the groups consist mainly of friends who have had similar experiences outside Karina. This was confirmed in my conversations with some of the young men and boys in Karina. Eric, JeanLouis, Noel and David, all in their twenties and living in Karina, said that, ‘we stick together because we enjoy one another’s company, plus we help each other out and we’re there for each other when others aren’t.’ All of them have worked temporarily in Flacq but did not stay there long, citing different reasons for leaving. Eric and Jean-Louis both stopped working when their construction job finished. Noel lost his job when he got into a fight with his Hindu employer. David left work when he could no longer stand the other Indo-Mauritian men constantly making jokes about him being Creole. Young men who are partially educated and experience marginalisation when they attempt to get work in mostly Hindu and Muslim dominated enterprises quickly become frustrated with their situation. Clenford attributed his failures in 122

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the construction industry to Hindus ‘trying to squeeze [him] out of the business by getting [him] to do bricklaying and other basic, heavy tasks when [he] has supervised groups of labourers before.’ Eric, Jean-Louis, David and Noel all smoke ganja. When I asked where they get money to buy it, I was told that they grow it in secret plots in the sugarcane fields and sell part of the crop to outsiders who come to the edge of the camp. Part of the money from these transactions is used to buy alcohol. Clenford explained that a lot of these young men do not try to get jobs in town because the pay there is very little and the hours are long. Many of the young men are also unable to get better-paying jobs because they have not completed their secondary school certificate. Other young Karina men said with a smile that they like to go hunting. I thought it might be that these young men are using hunting as a metaphor for ganja cultivation and that when they say they are going hunting they are actually going to harvest or check on their crops. Hares and tenrecs are no longer easily found in the wild: urbanisation, the increase in motorised transport and the disappearance of scrubland means that these animals are now rare. Besides, the cultivation and sale of ganja requires cooperative effort and promotes the (sometimes) contradictory elements of competition, cooperation, leadership and force, which are a part of a patriarchal male identity. Thus, when these young men sell the herb they not only obtain money for subsistence and prestige goods, they also attempt to claim a masculine identity that they have been deprived of in colonialisation and modernisation. Victoria Malkin’s (2001) analysis of the links between narcotics trafficking, migration and modernity in Mexico sheds some light on the complexities of ganja use in places like Karina. She says that in rural parts of Mexico ‘narcotrafficking is not only linked to material progress but also interwoven into an image of modernity that includes individual consumption, leisure and diversión (fun) – concepts that contribute to the individualization of the self that challenges a coherent family ideology [and] older forms of social control’ (2001: 116). For men in particular, she notes that the ‘disappearance of economic mobility and the conviction that an honest job will get you nowhere mean that moral sanctions against narcotrafficking are conflicted, in particular for the poorest, who lack assets and networks’ (2001: 114) and for ‘most rural men, jobs are too temporary and poorly paid to permit them to fulfil the idealized role of a breadwinner. Earning respect through being a provider is nearly impossible, even though social codes still see this as one principal way of ‘being a man’(2001: 117). I noted that in Karina, ganja use is linked to the desire for fun and entertainment but that (in Chamarel) it has also become an important means for survival, engagement with modernity, and the achievement of masculinity. Thus, while ethnicity and ancestral origin remains an important factor in determining life experience, the particular experience of subjective identities such as age and gender are also important and are influencing the ways in which Creoles respond to categorisation by ‘others’. The desire for specific types of diversión is strong 123

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among young Karina people, and I would argue that this and current perceptions of masculinity are heavily influenced by Western hegemonic values. The settlement had no sports field in 1999, no children’s playground and no church. To attend a church service, residents had to walk approximately fifteen kilometres to an adjacent village. The old and infirm in Karina received Holy Communion once a month when a priest or religieux came. Admittedly, the young men in the village could have used any of the basic sports facilities of nearby village council areas, but ethnic animosity and conflict have made it difficult for them to do so. Clenford said that not a single Creole was elected to the local village council that serves three villages including Karina. The residents of Karina feel that the lack of Creole representation on the village council means that it will be difficult for the needs of their village to be considered or for residents to use council facilities. In 1999 I assisted Jack, a community representative in Karina, to apply for funds from government and the European Union office in Mauritius to build a community centre on land that the residents had been given by a Catholic church in a neighbouring village. When I went back to visit friends in Karina in 2001, I saw that a double-storey community centre had been built and furnished, and that the residents had helped to create a playground in front. While this project may not have contributed to an improvement in interethnic communication, it is an attempt to provide different forms of entertainment and now serves as a centre for various vocational training and literacy classes. In short, the residents of Karina are (like Mauritians elsewhere) succumbing to a ‘Western’-inspired vision of modernity and development. Staying away from the immediate home environment symbolises their separation from femaleness, while moving around in ‘crews’ suggests their attachment to a male world. In Karina l found that similar ideologies influence notions of masculinity. When young Karina men move around in groups, when they collect and sell ganja they are not, as Eriksen (1986) suggests, necessarily concerned with the establishment of an ethic of equality. They compete with each other to achieve what I see as a mixture of respectability (by selling the herb and getting money for subsistence and pleasure) and reputation (by achieving notoriety as a smoker or dealer).

Working The life history of Clency Charlot gives some insight into the difficulties experienced by Karina men in their attempts to become modern wage earners and acquire a modernised masculinity. As previously mentioned, rustic activities such as hunting and fishing have in many instances become difficult because most of the land nearby has been privatised, and urbanisation along the borders of the sugarcane fields also means that hares and tenrecs are now few and far between. Clency’s difficult encounters with modernisation, wage labour and ethnic 124

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discrimination also suggest that men come back to Karina because there it is possible (through the local communal tenure system) for them to obtain a sense of control, agency and masculinity through land ownership and a return home. Clency was born in 1960. He has five brothers and one sister. He remembers that when he turned five, his father was working as a driver at Fuel a sugar estate in the Flacq district. As a young man, Clency was not interested in the sugar industry. He told me that ‘sugar work is for the older generation’ and that he found a job as an electrician at an Indian shop in Flacq. But it soon became obvious that the owner was promoting his Indian colleagues above him, no matter how hard Clency worked. So he left the shop, much to his mother’s chagrin, as she had great plans for her sons. Her dream was that each son should be a qualified artisan so that they could sustain the community of Karina. But in the course of early adulthood none of them managed to keep their jobs. At twenty-five he went to live in Curepipe and tried to work as a maçon, a mason in the construction industry. He stayed there for seven years. Eventually work dried up and he went on to work as a driver in Belle Mare, then as a garde pêcheurs (boat guard), but none of these jobs worked out. His (mostly Hindu) employers gave him trouble because, (he said), he is ‘fair and has light eyes’ and they relished making him work long and hard. Clency says that his brother is working in a local hotel but he won’t be promoted because he does not have a literacy certificate. He suspects that others who may not be Creole and do not have

Figure 10. Clency and His Panel-beating Business. 125

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a literacy certificate are being promoted because they have family members in supervisory positions. As for him, it is too late to learn a new job, so he is sticking to what his father taught him and has opened a small panel-beating operation in his backyard. Most of his clients come from Flacq and the majority of them are Creoles. When I asked Clency if he plans to marry, he told me that he does plan to marry one day. That is why he came back to Karina, to secure a piece of land. Clency’s return to Karina signifies a return to authenticity and the rootedness that it offers to those born there. But in part it also indicates failure, failure to engage with modernity and with progress. The only way in which Clency redeems himself is through his panel-beating operation, which signifies engagement with modernity. The situation of Karina women differs to that of men. While women are ‘confined’ to the settlement as a domestic space, they are increasingly the ones who are being employed on a regular basis and are the ones encouraged (particularly by the state, non-governmental organizations) to move beyond the home and become breadwinners. In Karina, Flacq and Roche Bois the industrialisation of Mauritius has had significant impact on the ethnic identification and associations of women. In part, it has contributed to greater interethnic communication although it is evident (particularly in Port Louis) that companies employ most of their employees from specific ethnic groups, believing that certain ethnic groups are either better at certain jobs or that they will accept less payment.

Modernity? Aspirations for Emigration and Identity in Karina Emigration While the men in Karina are experiencing impoverishment, powerlessness and marginalisation, the women are challenging traditional notions of womanhood and are in some ways experiencing empowerment and enrichment. Before the advent of significant industrial development in Mauritius, one of the ways in which women could achieve empowerment and enrichment was through marriage, in particular marriage to a white foreigner. I asked some of the unmarried women in Karina whether they would prefer to marry a Creole or a foreigner. Out of ten respondents, seven said that they would rather marry a foreigner. These women and girls explained that Creole men do not work or find it difficult to get good jobs. As a result, women who become their wives suffer because their families are subject to poverty and hardship. The women also pointed out that relatives who had married foreigners are wealthier and happier than those who had married Creole men. Some of the younger interviewees argued that Creole men have no ambition and, compared to Asian and white men in the country, did not seem to be doing much to improve their situation. To prove their point, a couple of young girls showed me a tent that 126

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had been erected at the entrance to Karina, and explained that many of their male friends spent the whole day smoking ganja and playing cards in this tent rather than looking for work. Among Creoles, children play an important role both for the biological continuity of the family and the improvement of its social status. In many Creole families, young women are encouraged to marry white foreigners for both economic and biological reasons. It is not uncommon to observe a number of family photographs in the living room of Creole homes depicting overseas families and their light-skinned children. Informants in Flacq, for example, often complain that their family in Mauritius prefer the photographs of these overseas families to the local families’ presence in the village and in the family home. The reason for this preference is clear. A product of slavery and colonialism, Creoles have learned to revere that which is foreign, especially that which comes from Europe. Furthermore, ideas about racial superiority and improvement have deeply affected the psyche of Creole women and men to the extent that bearing the children of white foreigners has become a desirable goal. Such ideas are reinforced in the local context, where whites have traditionally obtained access to power and prestige and where skin colour determines one’s relative access to resources and even one’s life chances. In Lovell and Wood’s (1998) discussion of the link between skin colour and life chances, the authors note that in Brazil (a multiethnic society like Mauritius) children ‘born to Afro-Brazilian mothers experience higher mortality rates than white children [and that] children born to Afro-Brazilian women … enter school later, leave school earlier, and at all ages display a lower probability of being in school’ (1998: 105). The authors also state that ‘once in the labor market … wage differentials persist even after controlling for education and job experience [this] suggests that urban labor markets in Brazil are characterized by color-based wage discrimination.’ (1998: 106). Similar experiences in Flacq, Karina and (to a lesser extent) Roche Bois, have meant that a greater number of women are encouraged to leave Mauritius and to marry foreign men so that they can ‘whiten’ and improve the life chances of their children. The ‘whitening’ imperative is consistent with the patriarchal structure of Creole families. Boys and men must remain behind to maintain the family name and land through virilocal residence and patrilineal inheritance. By this arrangement, both men and women achieve value for the family: while it is up to the men to continue the ‘purity’ of the Creole family by marrying local women, it is up to the women to uplift the family (within the broader social structure), by ‘marrying white’ in order to bring prestige and power to those who are ‘left behind’. However, by leaving the community and ‘marrying white’, women in Karina and elsewhere contribute to the further impoverishment of their home communities. Since the mid-1980s, more employment has become available for women in Mauritius whereas the spheres in which Creole men have traditionally been employed have shrunk (Nababsing and Kothari 1998). In the last twenty 127

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years, the mass exodus of Creoles, and in particular women, from Mauritius has left (some argue) a political and economic vacuum in the country. The emigration of mostly middle-class and professional Creoles from the 1960s to the 1980s has been blamed for the present social and political marginalisation of Creoles, who are generally perceived as a group without leadership, heroes or socio-economic networks; all of which are presumed to originate from a locally rooted bourgeoisie. But, as I argue further on, Creole emigration does not necessarily lead to impoverishment on the island. Some Creole families and professionals living overseas are establishing transnational networks that contribute to the emotional, cultural and financial sustenance of Creole families on the island. However, it also seems that these networks rarely benefit the poorest of the poor, as they are unlikely to have relatives in Europe, Canada or Australia unless they have family members who married foreigners. In an interview with a man in Karina, I learned that many of his family members are living in Europe, Canada and Australia. In Karina, Mandit’s daughter, who is married to a French man, has two children who occasionally visit their family in Karina. I met one of them, Véronique. Although she spoke French, it appeared that she was making an effort to understand Kreol. Mandit explained that her daughter wants to return to Karina with her family and is hoping to find a plot in the settlement on which to build her house. Upon her return she will be of retirement age and can claim both a Mauritian national pension and a French pension. This money will help not only her immediate family but also the extended family living in Karina. It is possible that her French-speaking daughter Véronique will not find it difficult to get a job or to marry someone of means because she is fair-skinned and has been educated overseas. Monique Dinan’s (1985) analysis of Mauritian emigration suggests that many Mauritians have emigrated to countries and regions including Great Britain, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Canada, the United States of America, South Africa, Africa (in general), the Middle East, and Reunion island. She suggests that the reasons for emigration vary, but one of the more common explanations given (for those who are not of Indian descent) is that in the years leading up to independence from colonial rule, there were fears of Hindu domination. This view is generally derived from the campaign speeches of Gäetan Duval, the 1968 leader of PMSD, who emphasised the threat of Hindu social control and terror, if Mauritians voted for independence. Duval argued that, under Hindu rule, non-Indians would be forced to adopt the ethnic markers of Hindus, including dress, religion and social practices. Since 1968, however, a great number of Mauritians (Creoles included) have chosen to emigrate for other reasons. In many instances, Mauritians emigrate in order to obtain a foreign spouse and a better standard of living than they have known in Mauritius. The majority of Creoles, who marry foreign men or women, tend to marry whites. In terms of race and prestige such marriages provide Creoles and their families with 128

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both social and economic advantages. Not only are they marrying citizens of affluent countries, but individuals whose phenotype provides them with social and political leverage in a racially conscious society. And, while many of those who leave Mauritius choose to live overseas, stories about their newly acquired families find their way back ‘home’ and provide those who are left behind with the kind of social prestige that they would not have had if their family members had not married foreigners. Furthermore, for large Creole families in the 1970s, emigration via marriage appeared to be the only way out of poverty. Marriage to foreigners reduced financial pressures on the family and in the long term, created an additional source of income from overseas. Overseas marriages are especially important to low-skilled and poor people, as it allows those who do not have professional qualifications to leave the country. Thus, a great number of working-class women (and not just professional women) left the island in the years following independence. According to Michel (1998: 26), many Creoles experienced hardship in the emigration process, ‘The Creoles, tempted by the prospect of adventure, did not have the same privileges or treatment in the consular offices. Possessors of black skin and woolly hair, and speaking neither English nor French, they had the bad luck of being who they were, Creoles.’9 Those left behind do not always experience marginalisation. Creoles interviewed in Karina in 1999 indicated that strong ties are maintained between emigrants and their families in Mauritius, and that these ties help Mauritian residents in both the short and long term. Temporary benefits are especially evident in the months of July and December, when many emigrants come to Mauritius for a holiday. It is at this time that one can observe the distribution of gifts from emigrants. Depending on the wealth of their overseas relatives, Creole families are offered clothing and treated to special excursions and lavish dinners at restaurants. The need to please those who remain in Mauritius is partly due to a perception (partly promoted by emigrants) that emigrants have more privileges, earn more and lead better lives in their host country. Thus, the distribution of gifts is also symbolic of the emigrant’s newly acquired status, one that differs from their previous status in Mauritius in material and social terms. Gift-giving is also and important means of signalling modernity. The type of gifts offered, the fact that it comes from Europe (even though cut-out labels in the clothing suggest that the item is from a second-hand shop) and is given by the recently returned emigrant – indicate to others that the family is making progress in real and symbolic terms. The transferability of prestige (evident also in Flacq) is apparent in Karina where, those privileged by gifts from their emigrant families, eventually pass on such goods to poorer relatives. This form of secondary distribution enables the initial recipients to obtain prestige and to associate with poorer Creoles, and at the same time, it facilitates their dissociation from these family members by their act of charity. Admittedly, not all Creole emigrants contribute to the financial support of their families in Mauritius. 129

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But a retired Creole couple in Karina, for example, receive a substantial sum of money every month from their children who now live in Europe. Today the regular income that they receive pays for their house rates, electricity, telephone, groceries and clothing. Every other year, one of the children comes home to visit their parents in Mauritius and they bring money, clothing and other items for their cousins, aunts and other family members. In Karina, it appears that many women aspire to ‘marrying white’. Given their isolation from broader society, this is not always possible. Despite this, some women have managed to obtain foreign spouses and in many instances this has improved their status and the status of their families back home. When Véronique walks with Catherine (Jean-Marc’s cousin) in the camp, they wear their shortest mini-skirts and Catherine appears to be more beautiful, poised, worldly. Whether the other residents in town notice or not, I am not sure – but I certainly notice the classe that association with Véronique brings to Catherine.

Working Women Since the mid-1980s, more women than before, from Karina and neighbouring camps are being employed in textile, manufacturing and food industries. A number are also finding employment as cleaners, receptionists, waitresses and entertainers in the tourism industry. Some, including Joyce, are putting their creative talents to use by making crocheted napkins, silk flower arrangements and knitted goods that are sold in upmarket tourist shops on the east coast. These entrepreneurial activities benefit women who are illiterate and who are, for various reasons, compelled to stay at home. One needs to take a closer look at the situation of women in these ‘new’ spheres of work and ask how else these changes are impacting on women in Karina. I met several young women from Karina who are working in neighbouring textile factories. One said ‘It’s great that I’m now working but working in those factories is not easy, the hours are long and if your shift ends and your replacement does not arrive, you end up doing a double shift which means that you can work for twelve to fourteen hours non-stop.’ Adding to this, another woman said, ‘When I get back home I still have to wash clothes, iron and cook food for the family. On most days at ten o’clock at night I’m still hanging clothes up so that they can be dry before the sun rises.’ Women are also generally expected by the family to supervise the education of the children, one woman said that, ‘after supper, while others are watching television I find out who has what homework to do and help them with it. These days the maths that some of the primary school children are doing is so difficult that I can’t really help them, so I’m going have to do some overtime work this year so that I can pay for their extra private lessons.’ Another talked about the work context, saying that, ‘the supervisors can be very cruel. Where I work there are a number of Taiwanese10 130

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girls and they can barely speak Kreol. If one of us falls sick the supervisor takes us to the sick bay for about ten minutes and then we are forced to get back to work. One girl had a very sore elbow joint from doing a repetitive task and they simply rubbed some ointment on her arm, bandaged it and told her to get back to work even when she said she wanted to stop.’ The words of these women suggest that women are not necessarily benefiting from work in these industries. In many instances they experience exploitation and oppression in the factory environment, and they are compelled to come home after work to take care of the household. The amount of work required of textile workers is evident elsewhere. Writing about the Caribbean, Reddock (1993) tells us that textile and garment industries are highly competitive and require a high level of production to keep up with changing clothes fashions. In 2001 several important textile industries went out of business in Mauritius leaving thousands of women and men unemployed. The owners of these factories cited increased local and international competition, labour costs and stringent labour regulations as reasons for the closure or relocation of their businesses. A number of factories have, since 1999, relocated to Madagascar where labour regulations are not well established and workers are less free to negotiate wages. However, political turmoil in Madagascar from 2001 to 2002 probably means that the relocated industries are not doing well. For example, Jerome’s uncle travels frequently to Antananarivo, where he is setting up a satellite operation for the production and sale of security systems. In early 2001 he was travelling to Madagascar up to seven times a year. Poor working conditions, long hours and oppressive environments are also apparent in the experiences of women working in the hotels. As the chapter on Chamarel and Le Morne will show, much emphasis is placed on the provision of excellent service in Mauritian hotels. To achieve this, all members of personnel have to be well turned out, punctual, consistently polite to guests, submissive to individuals with authority in the hotel system, and they have to follow hotel rules and regulations. As in the textile industries but more so in the hotels in Karina it is mostly young, unmarried women who are employed. There are various reasons for this; a most important one is that ‘younger workers are more docile and can be paid less’ (Yelvington 1993: 267). And as one of my interviewees from Chamarel also argues, new ‘workers are categorized as ‘temporary’ and required to serve a sixmonth probationary period during which they can be fired without warning and are paid at a lower rate.’ Despite this grim scenario, women from Karina said that workers did attempt to challenge the authority of supervisors in various ways, by pretending not to understand instructions, working slowly in their absence, or regularly claiming to be sick so that they could get a few minutes’ break. Some of the fairer-skinned women also used flirting as a means to obtain privileges and promotions. This is especially apparent in the hotels where women are also generally promoted to more public and prestigious positions on the basis of their fairer skin colour, straighter hair and ability to speak French. This aspect 131

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of women’s employment in Mauritius is consistent with an argument that it is not only the fact of ethnicity that shapes one’s experience of identity in Mauritius: phenotypical features such as hair texture, skin colour and language abilities contribute to differentiation within gender groups. Hair is a principal site of struggle for millions of women in former colonial plantation systems because the work one can aspire to is frequently shaped by hair. Darker-skinned women living in Karina tended not to occupy supervisory positions and complained that they earned less and experienced more discrimination in the workplace, at hospitals and village council offices. Unlike those in Flacq, women workers from Karina also do not have access to a crèche where they can leave their babies or toddlers. For those darker-skinned women who do not earn enough to put their children in a crèche in Flacq or elsewhere, this means that they have to stay at home or ask for the help of a family or friend. These women depend heavily on networks of support (usually family members) to take care of their children in their absence. Patriarchal norms in the village also mean that sometimes women cannot leave their children in the care of others but are socially compelled to take care of their children. The high number of marriages is not just because Mauritius has a fairly young population but also because for many young Creole women concerned with maintaining the ethos of respectability, marriage is a necessary precursor to childbearing. In Karina (unlike Flacq), once women have babies they tend to stay at home for a few years until the children are old enough to attend school. In that time, unmarried singles enter the workforce and repeat the cycle once again. Difficulties experienced in the textile factories indicate that it is not easy for Creole women to engage with modernity and overcome prejudice. While women are being offered more opportunities than men to engage with modernity and to eschew ruralness, they also appear to be constrained by dominant patriarchal values and practices in the workplace and in the home.

Conclusion Women’s experiences and identity in Karina are also differentiated. They argued that subjective differences such as economic situation, age, skin colour, hair texture, education, particular work environment, and husband’s or father’s attitude influence their potential to be and feel modern and that, these factors also influenced their experience of being Creole. Such arguments are consistent with Mohanty’s (1970) view that one cannot homogenise the experiences of women in colonialised societies because colonisation is a discursive process (1970: 79). By contrast, I found that the identity and experiences of men living in Karina were more homogeneous even though they have also experienced colonisation as a discursive process. Unlike women, they had fewer resources to contribute to the differentiation of their identity and experience. Thus the hegemonic forces of 132

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modernisation and colonisation affected them more negatively, making mostly young men seek respectability (a scarce resource) and reputation within small groups confined within the settlement. The isolation of young men makes them appear more rural and less modern. Unlike young women from these camps they are less stylish, appear less charming and are less confident. At wedding ceremonies women say that, ‘they don’t know how to talk to a woman, how to make her want to dance with them more often.’ Young men from Karina have to try very hard to obtain potential spouses, for (outside of work) it is at weddings that many Mauritians (Creoles included) find them. With regard to land acquisition and tenure, Karina men are also increasingly disadvantaged. The flexibility of communal land tenure, the fact that women are obtaining more money, more often than men are means that, women are increasingly participating in negotiations around land acquisitions. Some are also negotiating for their husbands to come and live with them in Karina, challenging the practice of virilocal residence. This is contributing to overcrowding and smaller land allocations in the settlement. Even those women who marry white foreigners are ensuring that they keep a space (a room, land or house) for their possible return to the community. In the 1960s and 1970s this did not happen, as those women who emigrated seemed not to consider the possibility of returning to what was then an impoverished country. In conclusion, the nature of ethnic identity in Karina is profoundly influenced by its demarcation as a particular space, one that is on the one hand, rural, rustic and isolated, and on the other hand a space that is experiencing the effects of modernisation. The ensuing perception and treatment of the inhabitants as mostly rural, rustic people has both positive and negative consequences. On the one hand it enables some residents to participate in Mauritius’ dominant discourse on culture through an emphasis on a homogeneous past articulated through common ancestry and shared territory. On the other, it leads to the stereotyping of Karina residents as socially backward and conservative. However, the younger generation of Karina residents are attempting to challenge this view by engaging with the public articulation of their settlement in diverse ways, depending on the resources that they have and on that which is made available to them. For some of the young men in Karina, this involves maintaining reputation and notoriety within their social group by cultivating and selling ganja and achieving respectability within the community and family by buying food and prestige goods for the home. Among Karina women, I found that broader social and economic changes were allowing them to express their subjective identities more profoundly than men. But hegemonic valuations of class, race and gender persist in Karina and beyond, endowing certain individuals with more power and influence. More specifically, Western liberal feminist discourses (as expressed by the state via radio and social policy implementation) have in some ways contributed to the social liberation and redefinition of women as part of a gender group rather than an ethnic group in Karina. 133

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Prevailing colonialist valuations of skin colour, class, hair texture and language continue to influence Karina women’s experiences of work and the home environment. In the following chapter, I examine the situation of Creoles in another location also circumscribed as a particular space that influences identity. Roche Bois occupies a nebulous space between rurality and urbanity and increasingly, the state is attempting to make the residents of Roche Bois become more urban and modernised. These efforts have, as I discuss below, elicited varying responses, ranging from evoking subjective identities (for example class and gender) to transnational notions of identity.

Notes 1. The Relative Development Index (RDI) variables used for the ranking of VCAs is based on twelve variables including the percentage of households that have piped water, electricity, flush toilet, concrete dwellings; the number of rooms for living purposes per person; the number of those owning their dwelling; literacy and certification levels; schools enrolment ratios; literacy rate of those over twelve years old; percentage of formally employed; and percentage of those employed who are a part of the professional sector (i.e. legislators, managers, doctors, teachers). 2. The figures are 351 Roman Catholics, 369 Other Christian, and 23 Assemblies of God. 3. The choice of the word ‘camp’ in reference to the River Camp should not be confused with the meaning of the term in this chapter. The ‘camp’ in the River Camp refers to the temporary nature of residence in the settlement. 4. Very rarely against her will, Karina residents used the word ‘steal’ to express the fact that the girl had disappeared without the family knowing. 5. Literally, a ‘doctor without shoes’. In Mauritius they are also known as longanistes or witchdoctors. 6. In a live interview on national radio, the Minister of Health stated that 20 percent of Mauritians suffer from mental illness and that a substantial proportion of this number are clinically depressed. This suggests that not all men will resort to violent outbursts: some are clinically depressed. 7. While hunting tenrec one night Jerome (from Flacq) was nearly caught trespassing in a neighbour’s garden. His father had begged him to leave the bushes earlier, but he preferred to hide behind a banana tree saying that it gave him a sensation (thrill). 8. I did not find out the types of ganja and exactly how men smoke or consume it. However, the type and style of smoking indicate certain aspects of identity, in particular the smoker’s proximity to Rastafarian belief. 9. ‘Les Créoles tentés par l’aventure, n’ont pas eu les mêmes privilèges et même acceuil dans les bureaux consulaires. Peau noire, cheveux frisés, sans diplômes universitaires, ne baraguinant ni l’anglais ni le francais, ils ont eu la malchance d’être ce qu’ils sont, des créoles.’ 10. Since the industrial boom in the 1980s, Mauritius has been employing increasing numbers of foreign workers for its factories. These workers are generally from mainland China, Taiwan, Madagascar and Mozambique. It appears that many of these workers experience more oppressive working conditions than Mauritians and are having an impact on identity politics on the island.

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[E]xiles or emigrants or expatriates … are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge … that our physical alienation … almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands. Imaginary Homelands Salman Rushdie (1991: 10)

In her epilogue on migrants of identity, Karen Fog Olwig (in Rapport and Dawson 1998: 226) argues that ‘home is a rather contested domain: an arena where differing interests struggle to define their own spaces within which to localize and cultivate … identity.’ She also calls for a distinction ‘between home as a locus involving specific relations of social and economic rights and obligations, and home as a more abstract entity that is primarily expressed through various types of narratives and other forms of symbolic interchange’ (1998: 235). In this chapter, I use Olwig’s argument of home as a discursive space, and Rapport and Dawson’s (1998) view that the analysis of identity can occur in terms of conceptualisations of home, to explain processes of identity formation among the Creoles living in Roche Bois and the River Camp. My argument is inspired by encounters and interviews with the mostly Rodriguais and Ilois segment of the Creole population living in these settlements, situated on the periphery of Port Louis. Among the Rodriguais and Ilois encountered there, the concept ‘home’ occupied both a physical and cognitive space that allowed residents to shape their identity. However, discourses of identity in are, as Anthias 135

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and Lazaridis (2000: 21) argues, affected by the ‘continuing imperatives of nationhood’ and in Mauritius this is apparent when citizens are expected in various ways, to emphasise their origins or homeland in representing their group in society in order to accommodate the local concept of ‘unity in diversity’. However, nationhood is equally influenced by, ‘increasing economic and cultural globalism’ (2000: 21), this means that evocations of the homeland are not easily or smoothly achieved. I argue that migrant experiences impact on identity in Roche Bois and the River Camp. I also argue that emigrants, exiles and refugees do not always obtain the ‘urge to reclaim, to look back’ simply because they are ‘haunted by some sense of loss’. The urge to look back and attempt to reclaim the past is heavily influenced by local, hegemonic notions of culture. For working-class and middle-class Rodriguais and Ilois engagements with hegemonic notions of culture through ‘homeland discourses’ (Cohen 1997a) is facilitated by their access to various sources of prestige acquired during their long residence in Mauritius. It is however, difficult for those Rodriguais who have recently arrived in Mauritius to romanticise Rodrigues and to accept a bounded Rodriguais identity that makes for political and cultural currency in Mauritius. These difficulties are evident among Rodriguais living in the River Camp. However, even the settled Rodriguais and Ilois families have to encounter geographical and political categorisation by the state, outsiders and residents. Roche Bois in particular is often spoken of by outsiders as a ‘no go’ area, where the threat of violence is high and where social problems such as drug abuse and prostitution are prevalent. In the media and in development literature it is often discussed as a working-class settlement or the crucible of Creole identity. Outsiders encouraged me to do research there, if I wanted to see ‘real’ Creoles. In other words, they tend to assume that ‘real’ Creoles are people who either live in places where there are drug abuse and prostitution problems or, are the kind of people who live in such places. These perceptions have material and social consequences.

Roche Bois and the River Camp The Creation of Roche Bois and the Emergence of the River Camp It is possible that Roche Bois has been a part of Port Louis since the latter’s creation in the middle of the eighteenth century under the government of Mahé de Labourdonnais (Toussaint 1977). The settlement is closely associated with the workings of the port, and until the 1980s many of its male residents worked at the docks as stevedores and labourers. Growing up in Port Louis in the 1940s, my mother recalled the ‘wild nature’ of Roche Bois: pigs roamed everywhere because people did not fence off their properties. She said that people starved, did not have adequate clothing, and died young. While my mother was growing up, Roche Bois was an informal settlement mostly of migrants recently arrived from Rodrigues (a 136

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dependency of Mauritius). In 1965 the passage of Cyclone Carol changed the lives of Roche Bois residents. The cyclone destroyed most of the houses in the port area including the homes of those living in Roche Bois. Afterwards, the government built flats and some houses to accommodate those who had lost their homes. Since then, when talking about Roche Bois, outsiders mention the fact that Creoles living there had ‘everything done for them,’ and use this as an explanation for their assumed passivity. As the following discussion shows, however, there is much entrepreneurial and social activity in Roche Bois and the people living there are not necessarily passive. Roche Bois is situated in the Port Louis district, which consists of 127,855 inhabitants (Housing and Population Census 2000, Volume II: Demographic and Fertility Characteristics 2000: 90) and lies within five kilometres north of the capital city. The growth of the settlement and industrialisation on the borders of the city in the last forty years means that Roche Bois is now closer to Port Louis than it was before. It currently overlaps wards five and six of the district and is officially stated as having approximately 24,899 residents. According to the housing and population census mentioned above, only 95 out of 6,241 households encountered (in other words 1.5 percent), were renting out a part of their homes. Casual observation suggests that there are more people than that figure renting out. However, the CSO findings also suggest that the general economic situation of the people has improved since 1970, as more people own their homes today than thirty years ago. In the River Camp most of those encountered were either seasonally employed or unemployed. More respondents (80 percent) living in Roche Bois owned the homes in which they are living in contrast to the 12 percent of homeowners in the River Camp. Interestingly, for the residents of the River Camp (who in my view are effectively homeowners), possessing a building with concrete walls and a ‘proper’ roof constitutes a ‘house’. Many argued that a building with corrugated walls and a corrugated roof did not constitute a house. Participant observation also revealed that there are many entrepreneurs in Roche Bois: some operate small shops selling vegetables or grocery items. Others have ‘yard’ businesses where they raise live animals that they sell to butchers and still others operate catering and seamstress services from home. Roche Bois also consists of mainly Creole speakers, reinforcing its association with Creoles. Of the total resident population of Roche Bois, 22,195 people responded that the main language that they spoke at home is Creole. Smaller proportions of the population spoke Bhojpuri (787), French (170), Hindi (40) and Tamil (66). However, a glance at the statistics on religious grouping suggests that Roche Bois is more ethnically diverse than language identifiers suggest. For example, only 8,607 residents are Roman Catholic, while 1,431 are Tamil Hindu, 8,302 are Muslim, 1,680 follow other Hindu faiths and there are 193 Buddhists. Given this scenario, it is difficult to state that most of Roche Bois is home to Creoles of Afro-Malagasy descent. By the mid-1980s, Roche Bois was provided with infrastructure in the form of tarred roads, a school, church and crèche. The 137

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construction in the 1980s of the national road leading into the city brought Roche Bois closer to the island’s financial centre. But Roche Bois is still a poor location. On the Mauritius Poverty Index, produced by the Central Statistical Office in 1999 (see Selvon, S. News On Sunday 25 July 1999), it falls within a ward that is listed 83 out of 145 locations on the island. The island of Rodrigues, the homeland of many Roche Bois inhabitants, is ranked last on this index. The accuracy of the Mauritius Poverty Index is debatable in that places such as the River Camp may not feature in assessments of formal areas. In my opinion, if the River Camp were to be included in the compilation of this index, ward six would appear much lower down the scale. In a conversation with an official from the Rodrigues Ministry I learned that there are approximately 37,000 Rodriguais currently living in Mauritius and that even this may be a low estimate considering that the Rodriguais do not need to participate in formal immigration procedures to come to Mauritius. The River Camp seems to have emerged in the mid-1980s, shortly after the construction of the national road. The settlement is right next to this road and part of it features a road bridge over a shallow river. The River Camp forms a part of a growing number of similar settlements close to centres of tourist or industrial development. In a comment on the situation of Rodriguais on such lands, Antoine (Week-end 8 août 1999) argues that the Mauritian government makes an unfair distinction between Mauritian and Rodriguais settlers on these lands as the latter are not potential voters1 and are therefore seen as being of no use. On countless occasions, residents complained that, they are not seen as important because they are not Mauritian. The River Camp is a settlement that has been in existence for more than fifteen years. Compared to the residents of Roche Bois, most of those living in the River Camp are recent arrivals to Mauritius and residents are young. The existence of extended family arrangements has contributed to difficulties in establishing the actual number of people living in the settlement. The fact that some inhabitants work at night, others attend school in the daytime, others still work as seasonal and temporary workers elsewhere, and there is frequent migration to and from Rodrigues also means that there is constant movement in the area, making it difficult to establish the exact number and gender profile of residents. However, observation suggests that the population living there is largely female and are recent arrivals. Most of those encountered in the course of research had been in the River Camp for less than five years. The person who has lived there the longest has been there for twelve years. By contrast, some people encountered in Roche Bois have been there for more than forty years. Given its newness and the fact that it is situated on state land, government was initially reluctant to provide any infrastructure and until 2000 there was no clean running water or electricity. Some people had illegal electricity connections and paid for clean water from those living on the edge of Roche Bois. People who come home late from work or arrive in the early hours of the 138

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morning, have had to find their way in the dark. During the cyclone season, the river has a tendency to flood, and many residents have been left stranded for days on end without clean water, food and shelter.

The Creoles of Roche Bois and the River Camp The Creoles encountered in Roche Bois were either born in Rodrigues or had recently arrived from there. Some of the descendants of the Ilois were also living in Roche Bois although most of those originally exiled from the Chagos Islands were living in Cassis, another settlement on the edge of Port Louis. The women living in the River Camp work as packers, box-stampers, fish processors and machinists in the tuna, textile and biscuit factories of Port Louis. Men from the River Camp are employed as deep-sea fishermen, dockers and truck drivers in the city. Such work is not permanent – a cause of great concern for the men who felt duty-bound to be the breadwinner of the family. By contrast, in Roche Bois there is a fair mix of old and young people who appear to be continually employed either in via their own small enterprises or in the tourism and manufacturing industries. All the women surveyed in Roche Bois were earning between 2,000 and 5,000 Mauritian Rupees – between 74 and 185 U.S. Dollars a month in mid1999. By contrast, those women from the River Camp, who worked in nearby

Figure 11. The River Camp. 139

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factories, earned as little as 800 Mauritian Rupees (approximately 29 U.S. Dollars a month in mid-1999) each month. In present-day Mauritius there are still people who speak about the catastrophic Cyclone Carol as a historical event that changed the course of many lives and contributed to the phenomenon of le malaise Créole, saying that the government is largely responsible for this phenomenon because it did not encourage Creoles to fend for themselves. In contrast to the on-going migrations of Rodriguais to Mauritius, the Ilois arrived in Mauritius at a crucial and specific point in Mauritian history. In 1965, as Mauritius struggled to become an independent state in the wake of local ethnic riots and political division on the issue of decolonisation, Britain demanded that Diego Garcia and other smaller islands in the Chagos archipelago be excised from Mauritius in return for Mauritian independence. Presently, given their experiences and history, both the Rodriguais and the Ilois invoke notions of home to claim a space within the Mauritian cultural hierarchy. However, they have to do this in a context where there are varying impositions of identity. Furthermore, the Rodriguais and Ilois live in places that outsiders (middle-class Mauritians and conservative members of the Franco-Mauritian and Hindu groups) describe in particularly negative ways. In a study of the predicament of coloured people in apartheid South African society Reddy (2001: 71) suggests that the naming of people and places is invariably political as it opens up ‘opportunities’ for stereotyping and informs social and development policy for areas inhabited by certain ‘types’ of people.

The Politics of Naming The Ideal of an Urban Space In 1970 the Mauritian government recommended that pigs be kept in enclosures. Since then, those who keep animals in their yard have also been encouraged to obtain medicine, horticultural advice and sometimes training from state institutions to assist in the maintenance of their animals. Before this time, animals roamed freely in the settlement foraging for food wherever possible. An older lady, who has lived in Mauritius since the 1930s, explained that shortly after the government decreed that pigs should be kept enclosed, old vegetables, cake and bread were no longer being dropped off at dumpsites. Local companies obtained them from sellers at the Port Louis market, processed these foods, and re-sold them to livestock owners in Roche Bois. These initiatives aimed at creating a more environment-friendly Roche Bois and contributing to its ‘proper’ urbanisation. Marie’s ‘mother’ explained that those who were very poor had to give up their pigs and other animals because they could not afford the feed. Thus, only the wealthier, more established Rodriguais and Ilois could continue with 140

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keeping yard animals and drawing benefits from the sale and slaughter of these animals. In the 1970s the Roche Bois population grew rapidly through migration and lower neonatal and adult mortality rates. This meant that people had to live in close proximity with animals, increasing the potential for disease to spread. Also at this time, ‘new’ migrants were coming to Roche Bois and to other suburbs of Port Louis and the outlying villages of Chamarel and Le Morne, to search for work in the manufacturing and textile industries of the capital. Government faced the problem of bringing about orderly urbanisation, achieving a liveable environment for residents and encouraging much needed cheap labour. The newly established EPZ required workers who would be able to work long hours for minimum pay. Initially seeing Mauritius as the place for economic advancement, the Rodriguais accepted employment in the EPZ. Despite the move to Mauritius, emotional and financial ties with Rodrigues were not necessarily severed. As argued in this chapter, the keeping of yard animals is often seen as fundamental aspect in the expression of Rodriguais identity. Unfortunately, this practice is opposed to the government’s plans to ‘suburbanise’ Roche Bois.

Migrant Locations However, government is not only concerned with urbanising Roche Bois. In the late 1990s it also wants to actively discourage migration as it sees migrants not only as a resource but also as a social and economic burden.2 Until the change in government in 2000, migrant settlements were often cast as temporary. This meant that residents were compelled to go without access to clean water and safe electricity, basic needs for survival. At the time of research, it was clear that outsiders conflated the actual demarcation of Roche Bois as an urban space and perceptions or naming of Roche Bois as a specific space. While there is more room for contestation and negotiation of identity in the latter (apparent in the ways in which women migrants attempt to define themselves despite stereotyping), in the former, residents appear to have little choice in how government defines and ‘treats’ the area. Until the mid-1990s the Mauritian state did not seem to have a problem with Rodriguais women migrating to Mauritius. This is because these women are stereotyped (in media and by Rodriguais themselves) as strong, hardworking and accepting of patriarchal authority. Media depictions of Rodriguais peasant women toiling in their gardens or tending their domestic animals are popular in the Mauritian media. From these stories Mauritians gather that the Rodriguais are largely rural, that they like farming and are ‘close to nature’. These women are seen as ideal for heavy or repetitive tasks in factories because they do not fit the stereotype of women as ideal light-manufacture workers who have nimble fingers.

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Working Class People and Settlements The economic role of the residents of Roche Bois and the River Camp is also indicated in its consideration as a cité ouvrière, a working-class Creole settlement. This perception of Roche Bois in particular persists despite the evidence provided in CSO statistics, which suggest varied economic situations. Roche Bois is home to Mauritians of all classes, from the ranks of the klas-bourzwa, klas-travailleur and the ti-kreol class. The passage of time, intermarriage and social associations mean that some are now more Créole Morisyen than Rodriguais. By viewing and treating Roche Bois as a cité ouvrière, outsiders often fail to perceive variation in the settlement. The view of Roche Bois as a working class place is convenient for outsiders and the wealthy. If the population is perceived as nothing but a pool of labour then the only way in which it can progress is through employment in one of the many factories in and around Port Louis. However, not all outsiders described Roche Bois in the same way. Some spoke of it mostly as a migrant location and a Rodriguais cité (slum) and in some instances as a working-class settlement (emphasising the ti-Créole-ness of the residents) or an impoverished inner-city settlement. In 1999, shortly after the outbreak of riots in the capital city and elsewhere on the island, some of the Creole residents of Roche Bois (mostly young men and women) spoke of the settlement as the crucible of Creole identity.3 This is quite accurate but it is more so to say that it is a crucible of specific Creole identities, particularly Rodriguais and Ilois identity. The various names given by outsiders to Roche Bois and the River Camp suggest that there are competing views on where residents belong and what constitutes their identity. In these settlements residents are making use of ambiguities surrounding their identity and cultivate a homogeneous identity as a means of achieving prestige and political space within the Mauritian cultural hierarchy. In both Roche Bois and the River Camp, it is women who maintain social and cultural continuity through the creation of an imaginary homeland. They achieve this through the use of ‘props’ (pickles, fish, music) and practices (dancing, marriage rituals) that come from the homeland.

First Encounters: Pigs Keep Us Together A significant number of people living in Roche Bois raise and keep livestock. These animals are kept in what Pulsipher (in her study of West Indian communities) calls a ‘houseyard,’ which Pulsipher says is recognised as an important feature of West Indian life (1993: 51). As in her study, in Roche Bois houseyards have several residents, and residence ‘in a yard may be attained through a variety of circumstances ranging from close kinship…to a purely business transaction wherein a yard resident pays rent and is only peripherally 142

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involved in yard activities’ (1993: 51) And, as in Pulsipher’s study, the yards are female space.4 This was the case at Marie’s, Jeanne’s and the homes of other Rodriguaises in Roche Bois. In my view, the yards not only accommodate family and friends or other migrants but also act as a means to sustain a sense of home in the new context. Furthermore, the yards are also spaces within which accumulated ‘migratory cultural capital’ (Van Hear 1998: 51) can be circulated. Older residents obtain fresh memories of home that enable them to continue to sustain the notion of home in the new context, while recent arrivals learn from those ‘settled’ ‘how to develop and maintain contacts in receiving countries, and how to find accommodation, secure social security entitlements or gain employment’. The animals kept by the owners of the house also contribute to the family income and the sustenance of cultural ties that enable the Rodriguais to maintain a sense of home away from home. At the end of each year, the Rodriguais sell a proportion of their animals to local butchers who slaughter them in time for the Christmas and New Year celebrations. The possession of livestock has, until recently, allowed the inhabitants of Roche Bois to have something that they can rely on in times of hardship when temporary employment comes to an end, when children need more private lessons and books or when part-time work is not paying off. Almost all those interviewed in Roche Bois kept animals and most of them raised pigs. Pigs do not appear to have a spiritual value among the Rodriguais in Roche Bois, but they do sustain cultural and social networks, particularly with those in Rodrigues. This was especially evident in the case of Marie. Marie is not the first member of her family to have come to Mauritius. Her aunt came to work as a domestic worker for a Chinese family in the 1940s and had managed to rent a small place of her own before she (the aunt) got married. Marie married a Rodriguais man living in Roche Bois and lived with him in the River Camp for ten years before they managed to build a small, corrugated house on a plot that falls on the boundary between Roche Bois and the River Camp. Her husband started off as a mason and eventually built up his reputation as a building contractor, getting male migrants from Rodrigues to work as masons for him. Marie tells me, ‘He’s been a Berenger man all his life and sometimes this has helped – but if Berenger’s men are not in power then the “little people” like my husband suffer, all contracting jobs go to the Hindus.’ When I met Marie in 1999, she was selling special cookware, raising pigs and chickens, renting out her backyard to recent migrants from Rodrigues and taking care of her household. In her backyard there are two families who help Marie to take care of her pigs and run her household. On occasion, Anna (one of her tenants) comes inside the house to use the telephone. Marie told me, ‘I care for them [the tenants] you know. We have an understanding. They help me to take care of the pigs and the pigs take care of us.’ Two days before her departure, Marie told me that she had managed to sell the pigs to the butcher for a price that she was not happy with, but she could still go to Rodrigues and that 143

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was what mattered. She used the money obtained from the sale to buy things for people ‘at home’. One cannot arrive empty-handed – ‘Pigs make gifts and gifts keep us together’. Important studies (like Zontini 2001) suggest that women migrants in particular maintain family networks in their ‘home’ country. As reproducers of family (Anthias and Lazaridis 2000), women are also often perceived as responsible for the cultural survival of the family. Given what I observed as a high proportion of female migrants in Roche Bois and the River Camp, it is possible to argue that this is why there is so much of an emphasis on the maintenance of Rodriguais culture. However, as I suggested at the start of the chapter, specific socio-political processes also encourage the desire to build and maintain a bounded identity. By 1999, the government implemented new sanitation laws for residential areas. This means that those who do not possess livestock can call on a sanitation officer to force a neighbour who has animals, to remove them from the yard. Furthermore, livestock owners are now prohibited from slaughtering animals on their property, which means that they are compelled to sell their animals to local butcheries. As local butcheries have to make some profit in order to sustain their business and try to get the best deal that they can, pig breeders do not obtain much profit if they sell their pigs too early in the year. Government proposals to remove animals from houseyards have important consequences for traditional means of cultivating and maintaining identity among the Rodriguais. Without the yard and without animals it becomes difficult to sustain social and economic responsibilities in Rodrigues. It would be obtuse to argue that there are no existing difficulties for Rodriguais in their sustenance of social and economic responsibilities. There are conflicts between houseyard dwellers or between the Rodriguais and their neighbours in Roche Bois. However, conflicts within the houseyards are often reduced with the development of reciprocal relationships across class lines. Generally it is wealthier homeowners in Roche Bois who take in migrants (as tenants and servants) who have recently arrived on the island. Crossclass relationships (cemented by the fact that both are pig-breeders, are from Rodrigues and are mostly women) are also maintained between some of the residents of Roche Bois and the River Camp. In Roche Bois, conflicts sometimes arise between neighbours over the noisiness or smell of pigs or the pigs’ enclosure. Sometimes, these conflicts are not really about noise or smell but jealousy. If a neighbour has healthier, fatter pigs she is likely to get more money when she sells them to take money back home to the family in Rodrigues to demonstrate her success in Mauritius. Thus, pigs do not always keep the Rodriguais together: they can also drive them apart. This was apparent at one woman’s residence when her neighbour ‘just called the sanitation officer and the next day’ she had to get rid of her pigs. Keeping and raising pigs is therefore a complicated business: women have to balance relationships with their neighbours, whose help they might need in times of 144

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trouble, and at the same time ensure that they have healthy, heavy animals to sell so that they can please those at ‘home’. Shortly before the end of 1999, there were proposals to remove pigs completely from Roche Bois. Pig owners are being encouraged to rent sties, pay for feed and contribute to the upkeep of a designated pig farm far5 from Roche Bois. It is suggested that the farm will also be for the cultivation of fish and that a proportion of these fish will be converted to feed for the pigs. The fish will feed on pigs’ excrement. Muslim officials, nutritionists and livestock owners in Roche Bois are, for various reasons, contesting the proposal of such a pig farm – but many feel that they do not have the power to oppose the government. Nutritionists are concerned about the possible nutritional qualities of fish feeding on pig’s excrement. Muslim officials are concerned about the fact that fish will be allowed to feed on pig’s excrement and livestock owners are concerned about the distance of the farm to their home and the fact that they will not be able to afford to keep animals there because they have to rent a space for their pigs. Residents of Roche Bois argued that the complete removal of pigs from Roche Bois will cause further impoverishment in the settlement as it favours the centralisation of pig-breeding which will exclude those who cannot afford the rent, feed and cost of travel to the farm. Some argued that the proposal is a part of a broader strategy to restrict the size of the settlement so that the Port Louis Freeport Zone can be extended. Furthermore, Port Louis is undergoing a process of gentrification and Roche Bois is closest to the core of the city. The keeping of livestock is treated as incompatible with the operation of an urbanised, financial centre. Jeanne, a livestock owner who has turkeys, chickens and ducks on her property argued that, It is stupid not to accept the deal being offered by the government for the keeping of our animals elsewhere. Of course, you can’t really watch over your animals if they are far away. But, it is better to accept or you face losing your animals altogether. After a number of arguments, one of my neighbours called the sanitation officer and I had to slaughter my pigs. Now I just keep poultry, but these are not enough. My daughter and I sew wedding dresses and other outfits to sustain the family and so that we have enough for special occasions like going back to Rodrigues.

Another interviewee, Ella, who left Mauritius in the early 1960s to take up work as a psychiatric nurse in England, explained how pigs provide a sense of social continuity. During her time in England, Ella sent money home to her parents and siblings, who took care of the family’s pigs. They in turn were able to help families that were still living in Rodrigues. After several years of living in England, Ella married a man from Trinidad who had never looked after pigs as his family had a small coffee plantation and he grew up learning about the cultivation of coffee. When Ella retired, her husband returned to Roche Bois with her. For eleven years now, he had looked after the family’s pigs. He managed to go the market to get food for the animals even though he spoke virtually no Creole. When I visited 145

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Ella in 2004, I found that her husband had gone back to Trinidad and it did not seem as if he were going to return to Mauritius. Ella, like Marie, has a houseyard and she rents a part of it out to Rodriguais migrants. The migrants help Ella to clean her house and look after pigs, and she in turn provides them with a place to stay and offers advice when they ask. The keeping of pigs also facilitates the maintenance of contact between newcomers in the River Camp and residents in Roche Bois. Information about feed, medication, the best butchers and when to sell, is shared between these groups, creating and sustaining social and economic networks between the very poor and those who are wealthier. But people living in the River Camp are often at a disadvantage compared to those living in Roche Bois. When River Camp pigkeepers want to get medicine for their pigs they have to face Créole Morisyen and Indo-Mauritian feed-sellers, who may not treat them as well as those who are better dressed, speak some French or ‘appear’ more Asiatic. Uncomfortable encounters hamper the communication of instructions for the feeding and medication of pigs. As a result, their pigs are generally less fat, less healthy and obtain a smaller profit once sold to the butcher. Poor security in the River Camp also means that people ‘lose’ their animals more often than those living in Roche Bois. Lower levels of income security also add to the disadvantages experienced by River Camp dwellers. Hunger often means that they must slaughter and eat their own animals rather than sell them for profit. Some time after my initial fieldwork in Roche Bois and the River Camp, Marie and her friends came to visit me at my grandparents’ house in Flacq. They told me that they had just come back from an all-expenses-paid ‘training’ course for animal keepers in Greece. They had spent nearly eleven days touring the Mediterranean islands and had (on some days), participated in workshops, where they learned new skills in the keeping of poultry and pigs. I was told that the course and trip was organised by the Mauritian government and development cooperation representatives from Greece. Twenty-two Mauritians went to Greece, and from my conversations with Marie it seemed that not a single one came from the River Camp. Thus, even in terms of training and capacity-building efforts, those living in the River Camp who are interested in pig-breeding may not obtain resources and opportunities to develop their talents because development officials see them as a part of the extreme periphery.

Pickles and Polka: The Homeland Discourse and Cultural Networks in Roche Bois In Roche Bois, attempts to maintain a specifically Rodriguais identity are also evident in the maintenance of diacritical markers and value orientations that are of Rodriguais origin. One afternoon, Marie telephoned me and said that she had a surprise for me. I had to take a bus from Flacq to Port Louis and then another 146

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bus to Roche Bois in the blistering afternoon heat to find out what this surprise was about. As I came to know Roche Bois and its people, I began to make use of shortcuts into the settlement and on this particular day I squeezed through a narrow alley, where the path was only wide enough for one person to pass through at any time and was walled on either side. I reached Marie’s house in a few minutes. She was waiting for me at the doorway and I could hear whoops of laughter and the stamping of feet inside the house. There were about fifteen people dancing in the lounge and I was shown to a seat right next to a blaring radio cassette. After greeting all the guests in the traditional Creole way (the newcomer kisses every one on each cheek) I sat in the chair offered to me. The room resonated with the music blaring from the tapedeck. I made out the sounds of drums and accordions. Paired off, the guests performed an elaborate series of movements, circling the lounge, sweating and laughing. Marie emerged from the kitchen with something for me to drink and although I could barely hear what she was saying to me, it transpired that the group had been invited by the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation to participate in a televised show of dances and entertainment from the Indian Ocean islands. They were going to represent Rodrigues. Each song had its particular dance and these are known as mazock carré, kotisse 6 tonnes and polkarisse. Later on I learned that Rodrigues had, in the nineteenth century, a significant number of Scottish and English missionaries and that these families introduced these forms of dancing and music to the Rodriguais. The polkarisse for example, is sometimes referred to as the ‘polka’ – appears to retain certain elements of the polka but also seemed to have been changed by the Rodriguais. In between tape changes, the women discussed the different moves for each dance and one of them noted with a wry smile that Marie had made lemon chilli pickle for a friend and had made none for her. Among Rodriguais the sharing of homemade specialities appears to be a way in which emotional contact can be maintained with the home island. Those who go to Rodrigues every year, come back with the ingredients or the ready-made mixtures so that the pickles, curries and desserts can be as authentic as possible. The quest for authenticity is apparent among migrant populations the world over. In Roche Bois and the River Camp, the sharing of pickles, fish, pork, music and dancing brings the Rodriguais together and enables them to reproduce Rodriguais cultural life in Mauritius. More important, it provides them with a sense of uniqueness and a tangible identity among Creoles and non-Creoles. In several discussions on the identity strategies of migrant groups (see Cohen 1997b, van Hear 1999 and Papastergiadis 2000) it is noted that the notion of a homeland is crucial to identity construction and maintenance, particularly in multiethnic societies where one’s presumed essential identity is threatened by the imposition of others’ cultural values and practices (Eriksen 1993: 115). Robin Cohen (1997a: 106) argues that, ‘one of the common features of all diaspora is the idealization of the real or putative ancestral home and a 147

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collective commitment to its maintenance, restoration, safety and prosperity.’ Among the Rodriguais and the Ilois living in Roche Bois there are contradictory reasons for the invocation of homeland. On the one hand it is, as Cohen (1997a) suggests, a useful means of defence against the imposition of their negative categorisation as consumers, drug addicts or sexually immoral people. On the other hand, it contributes to dominant discourses of identity: to be valuable, to have a socially meaningful identity one must be able to indicate the group’s boundaries and core cultural preoccupations. Furthermore, as Cohen argues, a bounded identity is psychologically appealing, ‘the excluded may see having a homeland of their own as a deliverance from their travails in foreign lands; a homeland acquires a soteriological and sacred quality’ (1997a: 106). Thus like the Puerto Ricans in Brigg’s study (2002: 79), the Rodriguais see invocations of home as a way of dealing with homesickness. Whatever their reasons, invoking home allows both the Rodriguais and the Ilois to subscribe to prevailing cultural discourses particularly ones about rootedness and purity. It is highly likely that these homeland discourses are not just a form of emotional or psychological balm, they enable such Creole groups to participate in the dialectics of identity construction. In post-colonial societies such as Mauritius, homeland discourses are also a part of a range of colonial fictions that are maintained by people in these societies. As an immigrant society, Mauritius has many homeland discourses. Among the Franco-Mauritians, the French metropole is seen as a source of culture, fashion and intellect. Maintaining this is imperative but not easy to achieve, especially among those who lack material or intellectual resources. When Creoles make fun of Franco-Mauritians, they often point out that ‘those Mauritians can’t even pronounce French words properly’ and in fact, speak a ‘bastardised’ version of the language. Among the Ilois and the Rodriguais, ideas about ‘homeland’ and its cultural value are partly ‘fed’ by the powerful in Mauritian society. However, they are not necessarily ‘doomed to reproduce [colonial discourses] mindlessly’ (Comaroff 2001: 5). What they are doing, is to reproduce colonial discourses mindfully. This ‘mindful’ reproduction of identity is especially apparent in Roche Bois. Possession of a tangible identity and the ability to connect to a homeland is of great importance not just because most have ‘left’ a homeland behind by coming to live in Mauritius but also because possession of an essentialised identity is valued by the powerful. Having a homeland from which to draw the authentic elements of one’s identity signifies cultural purity and fixity (Cohen 1997a). The presumed power and ‘wholeness’ of the latter is contaminated and diminished by hybridity and indeterminacy – generally associated by Mauritians with the Créole Morisyen. Therefore, in Roche Bois and the River Camp, much effort is put into the cultivation of a homeland discourse. Acceptance into the Rodriguais community of Roche Bois is sometimes dependant on having a Rodriguais ancestor. Rodriguais are quick to identify individuals with Rodriguais surnames and are able to state 148

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whether a person has or had families originating from the island. Although my ancestors could not be identified as Rodriguais, I was often offered Rodriguais fare, almost as if I should learn about Rodriguais culture. I regularly (and happily) accepted supplies of lemon chilli and papaya pickle, offers of freshly fried fish from Rodrigues, and steaming white rice accompanied by green mango salad. On occasion, I enjoyed sweet potato and coconut tarts for ‘tea’. Attempts by the Rodriguais whom I encountered, to indicate their attachment to Rodrigues, was apparent at the dance practice held at Marie’s house and, is also evident in the many television and radio programmes on Rodrigues’ history and culture that are screened in Mauritius on a regular basis. To reinforce the idea that they ‘possess’ culture and that this culture is ‘fixed’ and ‘pure’, it appears that Rodriguais often reminisce about life on Rodrigues, emphasising the simplicity and the unrushed traditional way of doing things on the island. In other words, some Rodriguais, particularly those who were settled in Roche Bois, tended to romanticise Rodrigues. In such reminiscences, the term ‘purity’ takes on a double meaning: it follows Cohen’s (1997a) argument about particular origins and it suggests the absence of modernisation and its associated forces of pollution – industrialisation, and the disruption of patriarchal family structures through the employment of women and children, mechanisation and scheduled work and so on. The dance practice at Marie’s house and contact with other Rodriguais in Roche Bois also shows that the Rodriguais cultivate certain cultural and social practices that distinguish them from other Creoles in Mauritius. There is for instance, a higher level of corporate behaviour among the Rodriguais seen in the solidarity between Rodriguais women from the settlement of Roche Bois and the families living in the River Camp. This is in contrast to a higher level of individualism amongst the Créole Morisyen of Flacq and Karina, who tend to form cohesive units centred on the family rather than on the sub-ethnic group. Some of the Rodriguais interviewed in the River Camp explained that they had found it difficult to get along in Mauritius when they discovered that other Creoles were not too willing to help them in their troubles. These recent Rodriguais migrants argue that the Créole Morisyen is independent- minded and not too concerned about the social progress of the group as a whole. Older Rodriguais migrants, especially those who had been living in Mauritius for more than twenty years, explained that the Créole Morisyen is more materialistic than the Rodriguais, although the Créole Morisyen is less likely to own a business as she or he associates this type of activity with Asians. Older Rodriguais migrants also say that the Rodriguais are not averse to selling goods or setting up their own business. Rodriguais women also say that on Rodrigues they were actively involved in the selling or bartering of pigs, cattle, ducks and chickens. I saw myself that Rodriguais women are keen to make and sell handcrafted goods, such as embroidered mats and tablecloths, woven baskets and hats in Roche Bois. I also observed some Rodriguais women continuing to make traditional articles 149

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although a greater number are turning to sewing and catering to support the household. These activities suggest that the homeland is known and cultivated in Roche Bois. However, fieldwork in Roche Bois shows that social differentiation within the Rodriguais population in Roche Bois means that ‘home’ and the ‘homeland’ means different things to different people. At first glance it appears that, unlike the Créole Morisyen, the Rodriguais have no need to look to Africa as a homeland. In October 1999, as part of the celebrations of Creole culture and language worldwide, Creole Culture Week was launched in Rodrigues and the Ministry of Rodrigues in Mauritius produced a guidebook entitled Costé, Nou Ena Nou Valer – Draw Near, We Are Valuable. The celebrations indicated to Mauritians that the Rodriguais have a distinct cultural identity. But not all Rodriguais accept the revaluation of Rodrigues as a haven and many are aware of the poverty and difficult experiences of the Rodriguais living there. As Charlotte from the River Camp said when I asked her if life is better in Rodrigues than ‘here in the River Camp’: ‘But, I haven’t gone back there for more than two years now, so I can’t really say if it is better there or not.’6 Her statement was followed by a silence and a demeanour that seemed to suggest that she did not want to go back to Rodrigues because life was not good there. In Roche Bois the notion of homeland is also constructed out of anti-state discourses, particularly the rise of Rastafarian musicians and, more recently, rap groups. In terms of their beliefs, Rastafarians see the Mauritian state as the instrument of Babylon and, hence a purveyor of falsehoods and promoter of exploitation. At the same time, Ethiopia, the quintessential homeland of Rastafarians worldwide, becomes the homeland of those Creoles who pledge their spirit to Jah. In so doing, they affirm their place in an African diaspora rather than their origins in Rodrigues or the Chagos. In Roche Bois and particularly among the young, it has become a vital means of challenging state-inspired notions of culture and identity. When young Rodriguais and Ilois subscribe to Rastafarian ideology and reggae or rap music they are also invoking transnational forms and concepts of identity. These enable them to engage with a wide range of historical and contemporary political discourses. Through seggae for example, performers including Gerard Bacorillal and Reginald Topize (also known as Kaya) have contributed to increased political consciousness among the young Creoles living in Roche Bois and its neighbouring communities. They have encouraged young Creoles to view themselves as part of an African diaspora through which they could value their African-ness. It seemed to me that even the present efforts made by the state to revalue Rodrigues are motivated by various negative considerations, including perhaps a campaign to discourage the Rodriguais from coming to Mauritius and to encourage those who have recently arrived to return to Rodrigues. But attempts to get the Rodriguais to go back do not seem to be working. What is happening is that many are not physically returning but are using the discourse being promoted to return psychologically. 150

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The Rodriguais and other Creoles living in Roche Bois are quickly learning that they can make use of a wide range of identities to obtain advantages in the Mauritian social framework. These identities can help them resist, accept or stand clear of dominant discourses on identity, depending on the circumstances in which these responses are required. The Ilois appear to be making similar but more comprehensive efforts to keep and draw cultural and political from benefits their homeland. But the evocation of a homeland discourse is not uncomplicated. When people of Rodriguais origin arrive in Mauritius, they are compelled (by the state and dominant groups) to form part of the Creole category. This means that they may receive similar treatment by some members of dominant groups and assumptions may be made about their values and practices. From 1999 to 2002, there were several news articles on the Mauritian state’s relationship with Rodrigues; people living in the River Camp explained how, at hospitals and government offices (where many Hindus work), they were often treated worse than the Créole Morisyen. With regard to the relationship between Mauritius and Rodrigues, it was often argued by Rodriguais that Rodrigues was a ‘colony’ of Mauritius and that the Mauritian state had deliberately not invested in the island because it wanted to maintain a steady flow of cheap labour for its industries. Several Rodriguais (in Mauritius in general) argued that it was imperative for Rodrigues to obtain a measure of autonomy from Mauritius so that it could develop its own economy. Interviews with Créole Morisyen revealed that some viewed the Rodriguais negatively, saying that they were like Africans because they are rural, dark-skinned people. Some Créole Morisyen argued that the rurality of the Rodriguais also indicated their backwardness. Attempts to appear progressive and exposure to modernised forms of consumption has meant that some Rodriguais in Roche Bois are also consuming modern goods and services on a grand scale. In the River Camp, some bought ‘prestige’ goods such as music systems, satellite dishes and expensive crockery. Similarly, there were, expensive weddings among some Rodriguais families in Roche Bois: The church was heavily decorated, and a mini-band and a famous musician had been hired to play the wedding march and the hymns. A variety of instruments were used by the band, including a violin, flute and a synthesizer. The sermon was rapid, and was interrupted only by several flashing cameras and the filming of the ceremony by three video cameras. The priest seemed to be unperturbed by the flashing lights and accommodated the cameramen by pausing every now and then in the course of the service, to allow them to take specific photographs. A special deejay had been hired to play the music. It also appeared that no expense had been spared with the drinks and snacks. We had barely finished the first round of ham sandwiches when the next batch arrived. These were followed by various alcoholic drinks and even those who ordinarily did not drink whisky downed the yellow liquid in copious amounts.

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Figure 12. Africa, Ethiopia and Black America on the Wall. Such weddings indicated that where status or respect is a very scarce resource, the extravagant feast and overt consumption is a way of using scarce material resources in order to optimise the return in terms of status. The scarcity of status and prestige was especially apparent in the River Camp, a transitional zone that consists mostly of Rodriguais migrants who have been in Mauritius for less than fifteen years.

Poverty as Identity in the River Camp My first impressions of the River Camp were bleak and cynical, the extract from my fieldnotes reads as follows: There are no Asians or whites living in the River Camp. It is a desolate place. Rickety wood and rusted corrugated dwellings perch high on mounds of unstable earth. I learned that building on these raised mounds prevented the houses from being swept away when the river bursts its banks during the rainy season – these precautions do not mean, however, that families are safe from periodic floods. Many families find themselves stranded on these mounds of earth as the water levels rise around their home. Each house has its own enclosure, but doors are generally left open and children (kept at home by more cautious parents) often peer from behind razor-sharp wire gates. Several appear to be of school-going age but are running around naked, playing in the thick dust.

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Further encounters with the inhabitants of the River Camp revealed that the majority of the adults living in the River Camp are single mothers who were either without jobs or working in poorly paid jobs. Claudette, a single mother of seven children was earning 1,300 Mauritian Rupees a month, which according to the foreign exchange rate in July 1999, was 54 U.S. Dollars. Her employer warned her that her salary could be reduced if she was absent for any reason and that the company offers no sick, annual or maternity leave. Exorbitant rentals in Roche Bois make it difficult for women like Claudette to leave the River Camp. When I first met Claudette, she looked exhausted and explained that she was working nightshifts in a local tuna factory where she is employed to scale fish. As her work shift ends at five in the morning, she arrives home in the morning to clean the house, cook lunch and then sleep a bit before waking up for the new nightshift. On many days, Claudette only gets to sleep for three hours, because she has to wake up to do household chores and to prepare the younger children for school. Claudette often enlists the help of her older children. Two of them contribute to the financial support of the family and on occasion they have bought items for the house, which she tells us her neighbours do not have. Although the walls of Claudette’s house consisted of corrugated iron sheeting (like other dwellings in the settlement) hers has a fresh coat of paint, her immediate yard is cleanly swept and she has an item of furniture considered by the local inhabitants as a sign of her wealth – an argentier, that is a glass and wood cabinet filled with little trinkets, champagne and wine glasses and a tea set. For many Creole women whose families are able to pay for an elaborate wedding ceremony, the argentier serves as a showcase cabinet for the glassware received from the wedding guests and for items which the bride gathered prior to her wedding as part of her trousseau. Thus, for Claudette to have an argentier was a sign of her wealth compared to other residents of the River Camp. Claudette did not explain where her husband or partner was. Claudette volunteered only that her older children help the family to survive by working part-time in one of the city’s tuna factories. Looking around (we were standing in Claudette’s yard), I noticed that certain dwellings appear to be in a better condition: they have less rusted corrugated walls and roofs. Visiting these homes later on, I notice that they are neater inside and display more items of furniture and crockery. I also learned that these homes tend to have older children who support the family financially and, in many instances it is they who provide money to buy the decorative and luxury goods in the home. Most of those interviewed were working in the biggest tuna fishing and processing plant on the island, Tropica, as box stampers, packers and fish scrapers. They explained that their jobs were often exhausting, and sometimes dirty, and there was no form of annual or sick leave, especially because many of them were temporary workers. Shirley, a mother of eight children, the youngest of which was three months, had retired since the birth of her latest daughter. Only two of her children were sixteen years old and these two worked to sustain themselves and the other 153

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children in the family. Their father was absent and Shirley did not to want to talk about him. When asked whether, if she had the chance, she would like to start a small business of her own, She answered us by saying ‘How would I be able to do that?!’7 Nicole, another woman expressed a similar sense of helplessness. She explained that her husband would be the one to go to town to fetch the papers necessary for the enrolment of her youngest daughter in a local primary school. When Marie (previously mentioned) insisted that she go herself, because her husband would return from work at a time when the municipal offices were closed, Nicole explained that she did not really know Port Louis, and that her husband would know what to do, whereas she did not and she could not travel with all the children. Later on, she said, ‘I can’t go to these places, they would never help me.’ Yolande, another single mother, lived with her four children in a two-roomed dwelling, about fifty metres from the river. When I met her, the youngest child, a three-month-old baby was lying on the only bed in the house and an older sibling (of about five years) was in and out of the room, playing with the baby and then dashing out to play with her friends. Yolande knew her immediate neighbours but had never left her children in their care. When asked (while assessing the need for a crèche in the area), whether they would consider leaving their children in the care of a responsible inhabitant in the settlement. Most of the women said ‘no’ and that they did not know their neighbours well enough to leave their children with them. Yolande was also reluctant to participate in the crèche project, saying that she had ‘no skills’. A sense of apathy about the future could be due to despondency and lack of self-esteem among residents. Many of the Rodriguais women argued that they felt they did not ‘belong’ in Mauritius. Several explained how they were turned away from factories because they appeared to be Creoles of Rodriguais origin: they were told to ‘go back to Rodrigues’. Others were told that they needed a primary school certificate for the most simple of tasks, such as cleaning toilets. When asked why someone had not thought of starting a babysitting business, they explained that because people earned so little anyway, it would be difficult for the owner of the business to obtain a regular income from the enterprise – plus, some added, even those who earn would eventually ‘not pay’ and the manager of the childcare facility would have to wrangle with these people to get the money owed. Another young woman in the settlement, Daniella, was new in the River Camp. She used to live in Vacoas, a fairly prosperous suburb in the district of Plaine Wilhelms, which is not a part of Port Louis. Six years ago she had married a Mauritian man who eventually abandoned her and their two children. Alone and without any resources of her own, she had moved to the River Camp to live with her brother. When I met her she had been living there for almost five months. Daniella did not let us enter the house and her brother came out and asked what we wanted from them. He told Daniella to get into the house and explained that they would not be answering any questions. We spent time talking with Daniella about her children and found out that she is not working because 154

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she cannot afford childcare. To survive, she lives with her brother and takes care of his house in return for food and shelter for herself and her children. Daniella is twenty-three years old, illiterate and unemployed. Marie advised her to come to the church, to register her eldest child with the Mother Teresa night school. This is a free service, and she could get night shift work if she left the younger child in the company of a neighbour or a friend. It did not look as though Daniella were willing to do this and, having seen the way in which her brother had kept her from talking to us in the first place, I wondered if he would allow her to work and stay in his home. In the following weeks I came across other women who were confined to the house, mostly because they had young children to take care of. I found that these women were most vulnerable in economic terms because they are completely dependent on the goodwill of their male partners. However, these are not the only vulnerable women. In many instances young girls are encouraged to leave Rodrigues by their families, as Mauritius is perceived as a place where there is a chance for socio-economic mobility. Some of these girls become sex-workers. Stories about sex work sometimes appear in news articles and in government reports. In the field, stories about sex work emerged one afternoon when Jeanne came to visit Marie at her house. I happened to be ‘hanging out’, waiting for Marie so that we could go to the Camp together. Jeanne mentioned a young girl called Sylvia, who was doing ‘that business’ and they agreed that they had to stop her from doing this before the other young girls followed her example. It turned out that Sylvia was only fifteen years old and her friend, Adeline, who was two years younger and is also involved in sex work. With the Free Port nearby (about five kilometres away), prostitution has become a lucrative business for girls as young as thirteen in settlements such as the River Camp. Sylvia, unlike Mariette, (another 15-year-old working in a textile factory in Port Louis) earns a great deal more than 800 Mauritian Rupees a month. Mariette works night shifts and lives with her sister and her sister’s two small children. She is a thin, tired-looking girl who arrived from Rodrigues six months earlier. Her salary of 800 Mauritian Rupees a month supplements the household income. She explained that each time she is absent for whatever reason, her employer deducts about 50 Mauritian Rupees from her pay. Mariette’s meagre salary means that she cannot afford to be ill or take time off for herself. On some mornings, I saw Mariette taking care of her sister’s children or cleaning the house instead of sleeping in preparation for the night’s work. Workers such as Mariette are not necessarily in the River Camp because they are products of dysfunctional families, but because of the Mauritian state’s need for a mostly ‘young, female workforce … without the attendant complications of pregnancy, nursing, or young children.’ (Briggs 2002: 79). The River Camp is a settlement with a majority of women, who are trying to eke out a living. For these women, reminiscing about Rodrigues is not a primary occupation, but day-to-day survival is. For these women, work is as the poet, Martin Espada (in Briggs 2002: 79) says, ‘unreliable, exhausting, boring, and unforgiving of days 155

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when one needed to stay home with sick children or just to sleep in.’ It also appears that there is little contact between neighbours. This is mainly because most women work in the night and do not have the time in the day to build networks that enable them to build meaningful relationships with neighbours. Plus, the fact that the River Camp is a place of movement and change means that it is difficult to maintain links. This does not mean that there are no friendships in the River Camp. Travelling in groups at night from the factories requires a certain level of organisation among women. This was especially so when I met them because then there was no electricity in the River Camp except for a few lights on the settlement’s periphery. Most women do not return from work on their own, as it may be dangerous for them to do so. It also seemed to me that the asocial behaviour of women is due to the fact that they have to work long hours and are expected (by husband and children) to tend to the house once they return home. It is, however, quite likely that exchange and distribution occurred more easily among women who formed strong bonds of friendship in the work environment. Thus the evocation of a homeland discourse was only really possible among those who were not so poor. The River Camp is not a place that enables inhabitants to have control over their lives. More so than those living in Roche Bois, they have to engage with the impositions, intrusions and constructions of outsiders in an attempt to obtain a better life. Their engagement involves competing powerful interests and responses that make for a complex reality (Friedman 1997: 268–69).

Class Factors Rodriguais migrants living in the River Camp also have to encounter class differentiation once in Mauritius, and this makes it difficult for them to reconnect with the homeland together with those living in Roche Bois. At a meeting held in the River Camp to decide the nature of development intervention in the settlement, various classes of Rodriguais (from Roche Bois and beyond) were present and it was generally members of the klas bourzwa (middleclass) who were concerned about the state of the settlement and were eager to bring ‘development’ to the area. It seemed that for them the residents of the River Camp are an ever-present reminder of their own humble beginnings on the island. So, few people there (apart from those working with the Roche Bois Women’s Commission) spoke positively about the River Camp and residents of there are made to feel as though they are of the underclass or that they are the absolute poor. According to Townsend (cited in Alcock 1997: 69), absolute poverty is where the necessities for subsistence are lacking and if these elements are not provided then those who are experiencing absolute poverty will die. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is about having less than others, in relation 156

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to whom one feels deprived; it also ‘prevents people from participating in activities that are customary in the society in which they live.’ The term ‘underclass’ has had a particular effect on the media and policymakers in Mauritius. The situation of the Rodriguais is seen as ‘The Rodriguais Bomb’8 suggesting that there is a disaster in the making. As Sherradan and Brown (1984: 391) state in their discussion of the term, ‘The word [underclass] says, Hey! This is serious! This is a fundamental problem!’ This is precisely how outsiders tend to see the people of the River Camp, as ‘problems’ about which something should be done. Little attention is paid to long-term solutions. In the River Camp most people are poor. They lack the basic necessities for a comfortable life. Children living there are often ill; do not receive adequate education or health care. But as I have argued above, poverty is more than physical hardship. Being of the River Camp, residents have to endure their portrayal by outsiders as members of an underclass. In many instances, those who live in places such as the River Camp are used in the media as examples of the socially ‘excluded’. People living in the River Camp were also seen (by the local priest in particular) as a group in a transition zone. As a transition zone, it is expected that, with time, people will move out into better areas where there are more services. This is why the priest at the local parish was initially concerned about setting up a crèche in the settlement. It was feared that the settlement would take on a more permanent character, whereas it was hoped that the state would provide the inhabitants with an alternative form of accommodation suited for dense settlement. Furthermore, the portrayal of the River Camp as an impermanent, poor, Rodriguais settlement means that policymakers adopt a specific approach to the settlement when formulating policy or identifying areas for infrastructure and social development. With regard to the River Camp this has meant that, until 2001, there was no clean running water nor access to safe electricity in the camp. Until the end of the first phase of fieldwork (end of 2000), women living in the River Camp did not have access to formal childcare facilities and as a result, many could not work or seek training opportunities so that they could contribute to the support of their family. By January 2001, a general election had taken place in Mauritius and, in the process of political campaigning by the two major opposing parties (PMSD and PTr) the inhabitants of the River Camp obtained two taps (for more than sixty people) and access to electricity (for most houses) administered by the Port Louis municipality. Those who were not connected legally had established what appeared to be unsafe connections, and were paying a fee to the supplier. Dominant groups (middle-class Hindus and historically advantaged FrancoMauritians) in Mauritius often portray Creoles living in places such as the River Camp as examples of those among whom, the assumed deeply embedded values of Creoles are most apparent. Although this was not explicitly articulated, these Mauritians (and wealthier Creoles) often argued that those living in places such as the River Camp have values and behave in ways that keep them in such places. 157

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But as Mercia Wilsworth’s early study (1980: 33) of apartheid and its effects on black identity and community reminds us, ‘the tendency to equate poverty with culture is not new.’ From what I saw, people living in the River Camp did not passively accept these interpretations of their identity and behaviour they devised new strategies where possible to engage with the range of impositions.

Culture of Poverty? In her critique of the culture of poverty theory, Laura Briggs (2002: 77) argues that, ‘“the culture of poverty” had the benefit of separating the problem of families’ poverty from labor and housing markets, rooting it instead in sex and marriage.’ In 1999, there was a concerted effort to rid Roche Bois of drug abuse and prostitution.9 A 1998 government study of the sexual commercial exploitation of children in Mauritius and Rodrigues, says that ‘The networks of prostitution generally work in tandem with drug networks and other illegal networks, drugs is one means most commonly used to attract or to keep people in prostitution’10 (Ministry of Women, Family Welfare and Child Development 1998: 52). And, while the authors explain the presence of Rodriguais girls working as prostitutes in Mauritius in socio-political terms, saying that, ‘Often isolated and without social support (familial or peer group), they are quickly taken up by pimps. With regard to their original motivation to come to Mauritius, there are two reasons: either these girls are looking for work or they have left Rodrigues because of social pressure (following an unplanned pregnancy for example)’11 (1998: 52). The report also indicates that in Rodrigues the sexual activities of young girls are attributed to their precocious nature rather than issues of social and economic inequality, which implies that Rodriguais women are naturally precocious and that this behaviour is deeply embedded or primordial. The authors also highlight the importance of shame among the Rodriguais, arguing that bearing children out of wedlock is a source of shame and is one of the main reasons why these girls come to Mauritius. The report does not pay sufficient attention to broader political and economic factors that encourage such women to come to Mauritius although it does point out that those failing their final primary school examinations are likely to partake in early sexual relations. A major weakness of the report is its primordialising of sexuality: noting that, in Rodrigues, there is ‘moral laxness’,12 and that women and men tend to change sexual partners more frequently than is apparent in Mauritius. The authors do not explore the circumstances under which people cohabit or the reasons why they change partners. Thus, as already argued, social researchers tend to focus on sex, family ‘patterns’ and behaviour (in other words, symptoms) rather than the root causes of poverty and social problems. People in the River Camp and Roche Bois are aware of the root causes and are attempting to address them. An interviewee told me that Muslims in the greater 158

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Port Louis area and particularly those from Plaine Verte (a mostly Muslim suburb of Port Louis) often come to Roche Bois to deliver drugs to local dealers. These drugs are not cheap: they cost about 250 Mauritian Rupees (approximately 10 U.S. Dollars in mid-1999), for a finger packet of ganja and more for hard drugs. This statement suggests that despite their quest for an alternative experience and identity, Creoles living in Roche Bois are often caught up in enduring systems of inequality and power. If a young woman from Rodrigues has already been dishonoured by the fact that she has borne a child out of wedlock, she might take a chance and sleep with a man for money. If a young man cannot find work because he does not have the necessary cultural or economic capital, he might take a risk and become a dealer to meet personal and family needs. Public discussions of the Rodriguais in particular (and of Creoles in general) tend to emphasise that they are bound to participate in negative social behaviour, because ‘it is in their nature’ to do so. From this perspective (and as Briggs argues) ‘insular poverty [is attributed] not to colonialism or unemployment but to things like large families, poor birth control use, oedipal complexes, machismo, modesty complexes in women and steamy tropical childhoods’ (2002: 78), things that are seen as being the fault of those suffering from such problems. Thus, those living in the River Camp tend not to engage (on their own terms) with homeland discourses in Roche Bois: their concerns are more immediate. But as Bayat (2000) argues, they continually ‘challenge [dominant] notions of order … and urban governance espoused by the Third World political elites.’ (2000: 546). They do this by developing their own strategies and discourses, sometimes pretending to be poorer than they are, offering their votes in exchange for specific services (such as clean water and electricity) during election time, and exploiting other ‘wealthier’ neighbours in the settlement. In the following I discuss the effects of the February 1999 riots on Creole identity in Roche Bois, arguing that, in general, the articulation of African diaspora identities has only really been possible for the wealthier people in Roche Bois. The 1999 riots seemed to turn the Rodriguais’ attention to their new home – although three years later, with the state’s reinvigorated concern with ‘roots’ and identity, most Rodriguais began to re-focus their attention on Rodrigues as their homeland.

The Diversification of Identity Rastafarianism and Modernity in Roche Bois In the aftermath of the February 1999 riots,13 many Creoles in Roche Bois hoped that their situation would change for the better. Some compared Kaya (the seggae singer who died at the start of the riots) to John the Baptist, a messenger and forerunner of the saviour they so desperately wish for. In a news article published six months after the riots, an inhabitant exclaimed, ‘Nothing has changed here!’14 159

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suggesting that a primary cause of the riots was frustration with the poverty and social marginalisation experienced by Creoles living in Roche Bois. Adding to this, a local priest argued that the emergence of anti-Creole racism before (and after) February 1999 fuelled the rioting. Jean-Claude Lau, a Mauritian sociologist lists rumours, the concentration of a particular ethnic group in areas where rioting was worse and the experience of exclusion, poverty and frustration, as important catalysts of the riots. Lau also notes that Kaya was a positive social role model for Creoles and that his ‘murder’ signalled a total disregard for Creole leadership. A young interviewee argued that, Kaya’s ‘songs are about peace and tolerance. By killing him they have killed a Creole hero – one who accepts others.’ In the months following the riots, there emerged various interpretations of Kaya’s death and stories about what had happened in certain (ethnically intolerant) villages and enclaves. Explanations varied across age and ethnic groups. Older Creoles living in Roche Bois tended to describe Kaya as yet another victim of the ‘system’. They argued that many Creoles have died (or been brutalised) in police custody and that Kaya’s death was simply ‘the last straw’. Younger interviewees saw Kaya as a symbol of liberation and peace. His death indicated that the Mauritian state was becoming less tolerant and more violent. Among the younger generation of Ilois and Rodriguais who are interested in Rastafarianism (see Miles 1999) the death of Kaya offered further evidence of the repressive nature of the Western-oriented state. This event has fuelled such groups’ intent to forge transnational identities and affiliations, which enable them to reject established (conformist) homeland discourses and transcend state impositions of identity. However, there are also a large number of teenagers and young employed men and women in Roche Bois who are not Rastafarian and do not subscribe to these beliefs. The proximity of Roche Bois to the capital city, the participation of young people in the urban economy and their encounters with modernisation mean that many seek to redefine themselves as modern individuals rather than ethnics or Rastafarians. Half of those interviewed in Roche Bois (not all Rodriguais), said that they had worn their hair in braids or dreadlocks in the past year and had done so to indicate their African ancestry or their association with the Rastafari. But those same individuals also stated that they enjoyed European music and preferred European fashions and clothing. When asked why they liked both African and European items of dress and hairstyling, one of them said, ‘You can be anything you want to be. Our mothers and fathers like to think of home [Rodrigues] because their chances of going back to live there are now very small. For us, it’s a real possibility. Some of us remember what it is like there. There are no real sports fields, shops are few, work is difficult to find unless you want to work in the fields, and people don’t earn a lot of money. Here, [in Mauritius], you can be anything and you can be anyone, if you try hard enough.’ In other words, one does not have to be a Rastafarian to reject dominant impositions of identity. By being brave enough to invoke a hybridised identity or choosing to remain 160

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flexible in one’s cultural and social choices one can transcend negative, essentialist discourses on identity.

Civil Organisations In Roche Bois (and Flacq) cosmopolitan attitudes are also being nourished by concerted efforts to provide children and young adults with the kind of social support that will enable them to become confident, productive and socially aware adults. In Roche Bois, civil organisations in the form of church groups, NGOs, women’s groups and age-set groups are more fully developed than in the less densely populated Karina and perhaps more secular than similar civic groupings in Flacq. The abundance of civil groupings in Roche Bois allow for greater horizontal political organisation: power is obtained and expressed in social and cultural networking among Creoles and those who are drawn into these networks rather than being expressed or obtained via state institutions or the private sector. In Roche Bois, civil organisations emerged in the 1980s and were closely linked to the objectives of the Catholic Church. A Catholic priest, Père Dallet, was instrumental in creating organisations such as the Communauté de Base (Community Base) and Renouveau Charismatique (Charismatic Renewal). Social groups for the young such as the Service d’Acceuil, Brancardier and Légions de Marie (Legions of the Virgin Mary) are also religious in nature although agegraded groups such as Bambinos, Louvetaux and Venture15 also emerged. Today, organisations such as the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network (SANGONET), the Mauritius Programme for Roche Bois, Commission Femmes (Women’s Commission) and Accompagnement Scolaire work with government and other institutions to bring about social and economic reform in Roche Bois. The Accompagnment Scolaire members, for example, are contracted to work with the local programme Anou Diboute Ensam (Let Us Stand Together) devised by the European Union delegation to follow up on children in Roche Bois schools, especially those in primary schools from standard four to six. The aim is to monitor children who are regularly absent from school and visit parents to find out why. The volunteers working for this initiative also advise parents on how to access social support and in some cases facilitate contact between parents and those offering these services. Through phone-in radio programmes, women and girls are further able to obtain access to social services and advice. Houses of safety, and volunteers working through the churches in Roche Bois and in Flacq, help young people to access a range of positive role models and experiences. Admittedly, the focus on women and girls means that females are seen as the source of ‘problems’ in such places, and the concerns of men and boys are not really catered for. However, it also meant that some women became more cosmopolitan, and more tolerant and accepting of others because they had access to a wider range of resources and 161

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Figure 13. Taking Education Seriously: A Mother Collects Her Children from School. power (given the feminisation of industry) and had experienced a greater measure of liberation through processes of democratisation. Thus Teresa, a woman heavily involved with Christian and civil groups in Roche Bois, was confident enough to tell me that because of such organisations, she had ‘come a long way’.

Micro-businesses The introduction of social and economic development initiatives in Roche Bois has also helped adults become self-sufficient through entrepreneurship. Microloan and entrepreneurial projects sponsored by a government organisation, the Small and Medium Initiatives Development Organisation (SMIDO), has financed several small projects. Jeanne and her friends have also benefited from other micro-loans particularly in the purchase of chickens, ducks and turkeys but the loans are often too small to promote profit-making. In 2001 several people in Roche Bois had set up stalls to sell vegetables and basic groceries. Three women had started their own egg businesses. They had bought egg-laying chickens and were receiving free feed from a government agency. These women were supplementing their income from the sale of eggs and had cut down on the number of hours spent working in a local factory. This gave them more time at home and more time to spend with their children. 162

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Figure 14. A Soup Table in Roche Bois.

Figure 15. The March against Prostitution and Drugs in Roche Bois. 163

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More women and men in Roche Bois are also reflecting on what they would like their community to be like and are concerned to change stereotypes of Creoles living there. In 1999 the residents of Roche Bois marched across the streets of the settlement in protest against the proliferation of drugs and prostitution in their community. The residents were particularly concerned about the prostitution of children, and they were also encouraged to participate in the march. This strongly suggests that the residents of Roche Bois in particular are involved in the reconstruction not only of their community but also of their identity because by marching against prostitution and drugs, they are showing other Mauritians exactly the ‘kind’ of people who live in Roche Bois: people who cherish their children, the right to safety and the right to dignity. Similar concerns are being expressed by the Ilois, some of whom live in Roche Bois.

Ilois Homeland Maintenance In November 2001, several Ilois families staged a sit-in outside the offices of the British Consulate in Port Louis. They called on the British government to honour the decision of the Mauritius Supreme Court in 2000 to allow the Ilois to return to islands neighbouring Diego Garcia. The legal representatives of the Chagos Refugee Group (CRG) accused the British government of violating the Magna Carta in excising the islands from Mauritius and forcibly removing those who were living there. But since the end of 2000, the Ilois have not seen any initiatives by the British government to assist them in their return to the islands. Several years later, the events of 9/11 (2001) and the British government’s use of the phrase ‘War on Terror’, it is becoming less likely that the Ilois will be able to return to live in the Chagos archipelago, as their presence poses a security risk for themselves and the U.S. military. Thus for the Ilois in Roche Bois and other parts of Port Louis, the return movement (Van Hear 1998) is largely psychological rather than actual. Nevertheless, the Ilois continue to use their history of forced removal for cultural and political capital and to show others that they are capable, intelligent and worthy human beings. They do this by staging public protests, participating in televised interviews, agreeing to be interviewed for academic and political purposes, aligning themselves with popular movements and politicians, and composing songs that lament the loss of their lands. Such public political acts are not new. In 1981 the Ilois women took to the streets of Port Louis in protest against the situation of the Ilois in Mauritius. Added to public protest are narratives that emphasise a history of suffering and partly reify a homogeneous local Ilois experience. Stories of their exile from the Chagos form part of these important narratives. Bancoult, the leader of the CRG says that the stress of forced removal, the loss of their land and livestock, and the difficulties experienced in their adaptation to Mauritius, contributed to the early death of his father. In the stories he argues that he lost not only members of his family, but 164

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also a traditional way of living. Older Ilois women, like the Rodriguais, narrated their experiences of ‘home’ and presented the common suffering of the Ilois: On Peros Banhos, we grew sweet potatoes, the children went fishing with their father, the grandmothers took care of the plantation owner’s babies, our young women cultivated the land and looked after the livestock … We left Peros Banhos in the dead of night, so much confusion in the dark! Again, the women and the men were separated. It was terrible below deck. We didn’t know what we would find in Mauritius, we wanted to believe in the promises that had been made.

Another said: On Peros, women had many things to do. Although we often worked harder than the men – we worked the land, we looked after the animals (chickens, donkeys and pigs) and we took care of the children. There was a rhythm to life, even though work on the coconut plantation was hard. We worked all week long. The men collected the coconuts, they shelled them (sometimes women shelled the coconuts too!) and put them on the carts and the donkeys would slowly make their way back to the plantation. On Saturday, after work, we would get together, drink, tell stories and dance. We danced a special way, not like the Creoles in Mauritius. Women were not allowed to show their midriff at all. Oh, the men would still look all the same!

Stories such as these have been useful in the legal battle for the right to return to the Chagos islands, for they represent the Ilois not just as plantation workers (which is what the historical records suggest) but as autochthones and citizens of the Chagos archipelago. Because of their suffering, the Ilois have been intelligent enough to construct and retain the idea of a homeland in the Chagos archipelago. Articles on their forced removal from the archipelago often appear in local newspapers and individuals are interviewed on their feelings about having lost their homeland. In 1999, a sega song about the Ilois’ forced removal and the sadness they experience about their inability to look after their ancestors’ graves, became quite popular in Mauritius and was often heard on the radio. While the Créole Morisyen are sometimes accused of ethnocentrism or communalism if they choose to create a social or cultural group and use the word Creole in naming it, the Ilois are not criticised for doing the same. Their suffering has been documented and many of the Ilois elders are alive to act as credible witnesses to the injustice that the community experienced in their exile from the Chagos islands. Thus, the construction of Ilois identity appears to have been accepted by government and by other powerful ethnic groups in Mauritius. What makes the Ilois claim for a homeland and for culture boundedness more acceptable to the dominant majority, is that the Ilois appear culturally distinct. They tend to keep to themselves in Cassis and other Port Louis suburbs, they often emphasise their Chagos heritage and argue that they are different from local Creoles. Political exchanges between the Ilois and the state have meant that 165

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they have been able to form various lobby groups such as the Comité Ilois Organisation Fraternelle and the Chagos Refugee Group. Political issues concerning the Ilois have also been made more public than issues affecting the Créole Morisyen or the Rodriguais.16 On several occasions in 1999 and 2000 the Ilois Welfare Bill was discussed in the Mauritian parliament. Observation of (televised) parliamentary sessions reveals that the Ilois issue is often used for dramatic effect to badger the party in power and these public discussions further emphasise the cultural distinctiveness of the Ilois. One afternoon, I was introduced to what an afternoon might be like on a Saturday at a traditional Ilois house on Diego Garcia. As in the homes of accommodating Rodriguais, I was treated to traditional fare, this time in the form of a savoury dish called ciraz poulet. After the meal, the women got up and danced and after that, Bancoult put a video on to show me a British documentary from the 1950s entitled The Peaks of Limuria. It showed images of Ilois women and men labouring on the plantations, the lush vegetation of the islands, the birds and the deep blue sea. As I prepared to leave the Ilois family’s house after an afternoon of dancing and conversation, one of the eldest women in the group told me about her house at the bottom of a hill on Perhos Banos. She recalled seeing successive military troops (one week the Russians, the following week the Americans) uprooting the flag of the opposition and planting their national flag on the hill, claiming the island to be theirs. The afternoon confirmed that by publicising their history and suffering, the Ilois are contributing to the maintenance of their homeland and the homogenisation of their identity. Thus the Ilois, like some middle-class Rodriguais, have a chance to obtain cultural capital by invoking their homeland. Unlike the Rodriguais however, they can also make economic gains if the British agree to them returning to the islands. If (for whatever reason), the Mauritian government does not prevent them from returning, the Ilois stand to gain the Chagos’ rich marine life, its potential as a source of (under-sea) mineral wealth, and its tourism potential. Presently, in the cultural hierarchy of Mauritius, the Ilois occupy a more prestigious position than the Créole Morisyen. Their invocation of a distinct history, homeland and tradition is helping them to fit into the integrationist, multicultural state of Mauritius.

Conclusion When compared to Flacq and Karina, one observes a measure of social and material deprivation in Roche Bois. However, outsiders’ construction of poverty in these places compounds this reality. The designation of Roche Bois as a marginal space in need of modernisation and transformation means that in many instances it is seen as a place where certain kinds of people live. In their discussion of whether places have an effect on people’s perceptions of opportunities, 166

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Rosenbaum, Reynolds and Deluca (2002), argue that places matter and that they influence people’s responses to opportunities and their perceptions of opportunities. This means that people living in places such as Roche Bois and the River Camp often experience discrimination on the basis of living in these places and appear to behave in ways that confirm external stereotypes. However, residents attempt to overcome such stereotyping. In Roche Bois, wealthier Rodriguais residents invoke Rodrigues as a homeland and the Ilois also use homeland discourses, so as to find a valued space within the Mauritian cultural hierarchy. The portrayal of fixity and the crafting of homogeneity among the Ilois and the Rodriguais enable them to appeal to the multicultural discourse of nationalism in Mauritius. In other words, by emphasising their Rodriguais or Ilois roots they are able to meet the requirements of ‘unity in diversity’. Rodriguais women, in particular, are involved in the promotion of homogeneity through the recreation of spatial and social aspects of the homeland through houseyards, pigs and pickles. The imagining of homelands and attempts to experience home in the ‘host’ context is not always harmonious. Jealousy, class aspirations, the impositions of other value systems (such as bourgeois notions of urbanisation) and spatial limitations all affect the degree and quality of the invocation of homelands. For those living in the River Camp, poverty remains a powerful force in the shaping of their identity. However, other subjective identities are also varying the extent to which Creoles in the River Camp and Roche Bois are invoking their origins in Rodrigues or the Chagos Islands. Age, for example, has a diversifying effect on identity. Younger generations of Rodriguais and Ilois residents living in Roche Bois and the River Camp offer alternative sources of identity and ‘spaces’ in which to belong. Their appeals to transnational or diaspora identities are made through European clothing, Rastafarianism and rap music. For these young people, there is a positive reconstruction of blackness as a non-homogeneous and cosmopolitanism entity. This positive view of blackness is depicted in the beautiful painting of the black Madonna and child in the local Catholic Church. In the following, final ethnographic chapter, I argue that there are efforts to suppress a range of narratives concerning the Creoles’ past in these villages, and that these serve to hide the heterogeneity of the Creoles’ past and the hybridisation of Mauritians.

Notes 1. As Rodriguais they must vote for a Rodrigues representative, as Rodrigues is represented in the Mauritian parliament. 2. See ‘Squatting des Rodriguais à Maurice … Il faut créer les conditions pour empêcher l’immigration des Rodriguais vers Maurice’. Week-end 8 August 1999. 3. ‘Le berceau de l’identité Créole.’ 4. In Roche Bois, this ‘female space’ is true regardless of whether the household is headed by a male or female and whether the male is employed or not.

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11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

In another district. ‘Mais pas fine alle la bas pendant plis ki deux ans, pas pou capav dire si li plis bons ou non.’ ‘Kot mo pou capave fer sa?!’ ‘La Bombe Rodriguaise’. Week-end 8 August 1999. See ‘Aux bords du restaurant Corner, à Ste Croix, drogue et prostituées sont pignon sur rue’. L’Express 17 October 1999. ‘les réseaux de prostitution fonctionnent généralement en symbiose avec des réseaux de drogue et d’autres réseaux clandestins, la drogue est l’un des moyens le plus couramment utilisé pour soit attirer ou maintenir les gens en prostitution.’ ‘Souvent isolées et sans balises sociales (environnement familial ou cercle d’amis), elles sont vite répérées par les proxénètes. Quand aux motivations de leur venue dans l’île, elles sont de deux ordres: soit ces filles sont à la recherche d’un emploi soit elles ont dû quitter Rodrigues pour cause de pression sociale (suite à une grossesse précoce par exemple.)’ ‘Une plus grande liberté des moeurs.’ ‘Intense nuit de violence’. Le Mauricien 24 February 1999. ‘Roche Bois, six mois apres les émeutes : ‘Ici rien n’a changé!’ Week-end 22 August 1999. Selvon, S. ‘Riots “Now part of our culture” says police chief ’. News On Sunday 14 November 1999. ‘La guerre raciale va-t-elle commencé?’ ‘Reléguée, oubliée, laissées –pour-compte, la minorité créole noire s’insurge.’ ‘La révolte des créoles.’ ‘Un pays de constitution fragile.’

‘Ici rien n’a changé!’ It is not clear whether these are groups part of the international scout movement. Although see the interview with Nicolas von Mally (Week-end 2 June 1999) in which he describes Mauritius as the ‘Tiger of the Indian Ocean’ and Rodrigues as ‘The alley-cat at its side’, and his comments on Rodrigues’ L’Organisation du peuple Rodriguais (OPR) or Organisation For Rodriguais People, which has successfully argued for a form of political autonomy for Rodrigues from Mauritius in 2002.

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C HAPTER 7 N EGOTIATING L ANDSCAPES IN C HAMAREL AND L E M ORNE




The portrait of freedom fighters [that] emerges in Black history, is often complex and contradictory and illustrates that human history has always involved the creation of a recognised status in societies as a means of denying rights and privileges to particular societies. The records about their struggles are often ignored, distorted or misrepresented so that they could be exploited for social, political and economic purposes. Kofi Agorsah (Le Mauricien 21 November 2000: 10)

How do landscapes influence identity? Hirsch and O’Hanlon (1995) argues that before the 1990s the concept of landscape received little overt anthropological treatment and that social researchers rarely questioned the influence of landscapes on identity, as landscapes were perceived as neutral, apolitical entities. However, as Riley and Love (2000) emphasise, political and cultural interpretations of landscape have existed for some time (they trace the use of the term to painters in the late sixteenth century), and have informed local identities and politics. In this chapter, I focus on the temporal nature of landscapes and their influence on Creole identity in the villages of Chamarel and Le Morne. I argue (like Appadurai 1995, Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995 and Lovell 1998) that landscapes are discursive spaces within which individuals and groups attempt to re-present themselves. The ethnography shows that ‘there is no absolute landscape: the salience and relationship between place and space … image and representation are dependent on the cultural and historical context’ (Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995: 23), and that the latter are also not fixed but subject to diverse impositions and interpretations, all of which have important implications for identity. The unsettledness of landscape in Chamarel and Le Morne means that (for the most part) there is, space for diverse re-presentations of black history and identity there. 169

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In 2001 it was apparent that the inhabitants of Chamarel and Le Morne were participants in broader processes of identity reconstruction on the island, particularly ones that encourage the homogenisation of identity. From 1998 to 2002, Mauritians (academics and the general public) expressed their concern about the ‘crisis’ of Creole identity, the fact that the contributions of their ancestors were absent from official Mauritian history and that they are presently victimised in Mauritian society. From these comments and discussions the dialectical nature of identity construction became apparent, revealing (at the end of my fieldwork) that le malaise Créole has become a social construct necessary for an alternative homogenisation of Creole identity. Observations and interviews with residents in Chamarel and Le Morne villages support this view. Unlike the Rodriguais and Ilois discussed previously, the (mostly) Créole Morisyen living in Chamarel and Le Morne do not have a homeland (in the Rodriguais sense of the word) from which to construct a homogeneous identity. Secondly, until very recently, there were few public efforts to recognise their common past. In Chamarel and Le Morne, Créole Morisyen are homogenised as ‘true’ Creoles: individualists and hybrids par excellence who are ambivalent towards formal and regular employment, enjoy hedonistic pursuits and are present-oriented. In what follows, I argue that while Creoles in Chamarel and Le Morne are hybrids (in the sense that they draw on many cultural sources to construct their identity), the dominant perception of them as present-oriented hedonists is embellished to produce a group that may be easily categorised in the Mauritian ethnic hierarchy. In this scenario, Creoles either become the true opposites of the thrifty and community-oriented Hindus or a ‘lesser’ version of the historical bourgeoisie (the Franco-Mauritians), who are stereotyped as decadent and cruel (Eriksen 1998). Furthermore, the misinterpretation of Creoles’ individualism and ambivalence towards formal structures of employment further conceals the memory and experience of slavery. In what follows, I argue that these behaviours form part of Creoles’ strategies of resistance against cooption, subordination and the loss of personal freedom – experiences rooted not only in slave history but also evident in their present as the working and underclass of Mauritian society. When I re-visited Chamarel in 2004, many Creoles expressed their unhappiness about being ‘left-out’ of tourism and other development in the region and were hoping for more ‘authentic’ and (economically) meaningful integration into major tourism initiatives. For them, the contemporary manifestation of le malaise Créole was the fact of being excluded from the material development of Mauritius through tourism. When defining what they meant by ‘authentic’, residents said that they wanted tourism developers to acknowledge their unique contributions in the form of local cuisine, music and art traditions. For them, the lack of concern about their potential contributions suggested that (as always) tourism developers (or those with resources in Mauritius) did not really care about the material well-being of the Créole Morisyen. To respond to this 170

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exclusion, more Creoles are proactively assessing their potential contributions to the booming tourism industry. They are also becoming more aware of the economic value of culture and the kinds of cultural contributions that they can make. Other important stakeholders are also contributing to consciousnessraising and to identity politics in and around these villages. Outsider historians and activists are making a concerted effort to energise memory projects that seek to reinvigorate and distil an idea of Creole ‘culture’. For them, these efforts contribute to an alternative, radical reconstruction of Mauritian history and politics, both of which offer important rewards – individual status and power and a symbolic redemption of the Creole community. Towards the end of my stay in Mauritius in 2004, I found that tourism developers along the west coast had latched on to the term ‘heritage’ and were simply inserting it in resort names and services as a way of catering for the more politically aware tourist or (less cynically) indicating their awareness of the significance of culture. Lastly, re-presentation among the Créole Morisyen living in Chamarel and Le Morne is often not a public affair. Private struggles and ‘hidden’ acts enable some to craft identities that have long coexisted with powerful stereotypes. This means that while outsiders attempt to resurrect and reinvigorate a particular version of Creole identity, locals have long maintained a series of alternate identities that are useful at particular moments.

Chamarel and Le Morne Chamarel The villages of Chamarel and Le Morne are situated in southwest Mauritius. The CSO Report (2000) indicates that there are 622 people actually living in Chamarel and 1,143 people in the village of Le Morne. The populations living there are young (56 percent being between the ages of ten and forty years of age) and males outnumber females by an average of ten to twenty people in each village. The government statistics also provide an indication of religious and language groups in Chamarel and Le Morne. Both villages have a high percentage of Roman Catholics and most of the inhabitants speak Kreol at home. In 1982 the government prohibited the collation of statistical data on ethnic groups, so one has to assume that religious groups, to a certain extent, reflect the ethnic make-up of the population. Following this assumption, it is possible to say that most of the inhabitants in Chamarel and Le Morne are Creole and a minority are Hindu. In Chamarel many young men worked temporarily in the pineapple, sugar and coffee plantations, very few (about five in the entire village) worked for the local restaurants or in hotels on the west coast. The issue of employment was problematised in that income derived by illegal means was not declared by those interviewed. Chamarel village lies on the boundary of the Black River Gorges 171

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National Park, and the landscape of Le Morne village is marked by the presence of Le Morne – a mountain overlooking the peninsula to the west of the island. To Mauritians, Chamarel is mostly known for its seven-coloured earths, a product of old lavas produced between 3.5 and 7 million years ago. This asset has attracted foreigners far and wide, and is poised to turn Chamarel into a tourist destination.1 The village itself stands between two hundred and four hundred metres above sea level and thus provides a picturesque view of the western coastline. The national park contains indigenous ebony trees and a great variety of fauna – it stretches over two districts; the Black River district to the west and the Savanne district in the south. Chamarel appears isolated to the newcomer. Transport to and from the place is infrequent and its location in a forested area makes it appear ‘lost’ and remote. Furthermore, with exception to several tabagies (shops selling basic foodstuffs and alcohol) there are no retailers of hardware or clothing nor is there a shopping complex, the latter being common in almost every town and village on the island. Chamarel has a Roman Catholic church (Sainte Anne) built in 1876, and also a town hall where several social activities occur. Ras Moustas, a Rasta living in Chamarel, once asked me what the name of the village and of the west coast was. Confused, I said, ‘What do you mean? Isn’t the village called Chamarel and the west coast, well it’s part of the Black River district?’ He smiled a smile that seemed to suggest that I had been fooled like the ‘rest of them’. ‘No’, he said shaking his massive dreadlocks, ‘the whole area is the Valley of the Blacks – this is where we came to liberate ourselves and we [meaning the residents of the village] are here to take the land back.’ In Nagapen’s account of the area (1998) a different view of the ownership of the area is proclaimed. Nagapen adopts the name ‘Chamarel’ unquestioningly and traces the village’s origins to the arrival of the Frenchman Charles Chazal de Chamarel, who obtained land concessions in the forested region in 1786 (Nagapen 1998). In 2001 there were other white landowning families living in the hills of Chamarel. These families own sugar, pineapple and coffee plantations and others run profitable restaurants and hunting lodges. The Couacaud family was most often cited by the Creole inhabitants of Chamarel as a major employer in the area and many of the remaining families were said by the villagers to possess uncultivated land known as chassées (where deer are raised and culled); those possessing this form of land were, at the time of my research, considering the setting up of nature parks and game farms for tourist purposes. Land ‘possession’ and contestation over possession takes place beyond the chassées. Beyond these lands are thickly forested areas that are closely watched by forest guards employed by government and some of the landowning families. Braconniers (illegal hunters) stake their claims in these territories when they hunt deer for food. The forest guards also have to watch out for ganja cultivators who claim their part of the land by planting their crop deep in the woods; each ganja caro (plot) 172

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Figure 16. A View of the Black River Gorges. must in turn be watched over by the planter and his associates, because as harvesttime draws near, theft of the crop becomes likely. The government’s declaration of the Black River gorges as a national park in 1994 adds to contentions around who possesses land in the area. For various reasons,2 alliances develop between forest guards and users of the forests and contribute to the dialectics of land possession in the area, ultimately influencing social and economic interaction. Until 2000, a great number of the Creole inhabitants of Chamarel also worked as labourers and pions (field guards) for the Bel Ombre sugar estate, a huge property that stretches from the mountain-top village of Chamarel to the west coast village of Le Morne. It closed down in 2000 because of its low production of sugar. Long before the closure of this sugar factory, the residents of Chamarel maintained close links with those living in villages along the west coast. For example, during the Second World War, when Noellie, an inhabitant of Chamarel, was a child, there was no electricity in the village and it often happened that the residents would be compelled to walk down a precipitous escarpment in the dark to reach the coastal town of Case Noyale. Many of Noellie’s friends and relatives lived in the coastal villages along the west coast. In those days, sega performances were common, enticing participants from rural and coastal villages to the area. People travelled to the coast to buy fish, to attend weddings and other life events and to relax at the beach. In 2004, few residents in either Chamarel or Le Morne indicated that they maintained social or cultural contact with the other village, state plans for integrated tourism on the west coast 173

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Figure 17. Noellie and Her Daughter. does not seem to be taking into account the once shared cultural heritage of those living on the west coast. From Chamarel to Le Morne people are known by their ti noms – their nicknames – and a stranger to the area is quickly identified by their reference to the inhabitants’ ‘real’ names. This fact is unknown to those who think of the west coast as a playground for the rich because of the five-star, Le Paradis (Paradise Hotel), Berjaya, Appavou and Dinarobin hotels. Outsiders tend to think of the west coast as a socially exclusive world of golf courses, deep-sea fishing and gambling. But behind the imposing Mount Le Morne, is the village itself, where inhabitants have a profound sense of their Creoleness and have long made use of oral history and music to communicate their identity, despite the impositions of negative stereotypes. Ton Michel, an inhabitant of Le Morne village, explained that he and many others over the age of seventy living in Le Morne had spent part of their childhood in Trou Chenille, a village established by maroon slaves and ex-slaves, on Mount Le Morne. Another septuagenarian interviewed in Le Morne village says that he was nine years old when his family and others were forced to leave Trou Chenille by the Cambier family, who ‘owned’ the mountain. One man recalled that the forced removal happened during the Second World War, and Creole families forced to leave Trou Chenille had to build makeshift houses along the coast. These men said that there were some Indian labourers employed to work on the land owned by whites in this region. Creoles worked as fisherfolk 174

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but, because of the war, poverty was rife and most people experienced hardship and starvation. But despite economic difficulties, and especially after 1945, when many of the young Creole men who had been infantrymen with the Allied Forces returned to Mauritius, Creoles managed to create a vibrant social and cultural life in Le Morne village. Musicians, brewers, singers and dancers would prepare themselves for sega dancing and entertainment on the beach virtually every Saturday. People wanting to participate in the festivities would arrive from various villages along the west coast, including Chamarel. At these encounters, much ti-lambik would be drunk, sega songs composed, stories told and sorrows shared.

Factors Influencing Ethnicity in Chamarel and Le Morne Conservation The proximity of Chamarel to the Black River Gorges National Park means that the settlement and its people are often associated with nature and conservation. Prior to the declaration of the gorges as a part of the national park, the heavily forested hills contributed to local and public perception of Chamarel as a place of nature. To outsiders, that is, people living in the urban areas of Flacq and Roche Bois, Chamarel and Le Morne village are places that are retiré – isolated. In the 1950s, for example, young women living in the village of Chamarel were highly sought after as domestic workers by urbanites, in particular Chinese business people in Port Louis. It was believed that these women made good domestic workers because they were servile, meek and they lived so ‘far’ from home (in real and symbolic3 terms) that it was unlikely that they would run away, even under the most difficult working conditions. In some instances, workers from Chamarel were described as atavistic through references made about them being zako Chamarel – Chamarel monkeys. Those who remained in Chamarel and survived by foraging, hunting, fishing or working as labourers for the sugar plantation of Bel Ombre, were also perceived as being ‘close’ to nature. Interviews with Creoles suggest that some view foraging, hunting and, in some cases, cultivation in a positive light, as a rustic lifestyle that many have lost with the advent of industrialisation. Non-Creoles, however, and especially whites and urbanites, see this lifestyle is seen as an indication of cultural and economic backwardness. The presumed self-isolation of Chamarel and Le Morne residents also adds to the negative stereotypes. Outsiders, for example, see Chamarel residents as unsociable and primitive because of their tendency to use nicknames for one another instead of ‘real’ names. Furthermore, the remoteness of the village from modern infrastructure (shopping malls, cinemas and hospitals) is also seen an indication of the primitiveness of the people and the settlement. Yet, research shows that there are various factors contributing to the diversification of Creole 175

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identity in Chamarel. The residents’ specific work circumstances, the development of eco-tourism in the area, isolation, poverty, gender conservatism, ganja (and other drugs) production, hunting and church activities, are differentially influenced by and influence Creole identity. With regard to Le Morne, outsiders tended to perceive people living in the village as fisherfolk whose lives are closely intertwined with the sea. But changes to the livelihood and the environment of these inhabitants in the last twenty years have also contributed to the diversification of identity in Le Morne. The view of this village in particular as a locus of ‘organic’ Creole ethnicity is maintained by dominant groups and in some cases, fostered by Creoles themselves, as this view of Creole identity helps some Creoles to obtain economic and political support from various government ministries. The embedding of Creoles in Chamarel and Le Morne, however, in what Escobar (1999) calls biocentric landscapes does not have a permanent effect. I would argue like Escobar that one deconstructs concepts of nature, and perceives it as an entity that is ‘simultaneously real, collective, and discursive – and needs to be naturalized, sociologized and deconstructed’ (1999: 2). Under the governance of Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, biocentric perspectives on nature were common. However, in the 1970s, local and international experts challenged this limited view and the impact of political economy was carefully considered in discussions of environmental management (see Lutz 1994). In the 1990s it was apparent that Creoles also formed an integral part of the natural landscape and that their identities depended on them being able to negotiate their positioning in such diverse contexts.

Crafting Landscapes in Chamarel Roland, better known as ton (uncle) in Chamarel, was born in the village in 1934. Roland did not go to school because he had to help his mother take care of his younger siblings. There were seven children in the family, and even as a child Roland had to work. This he did by working as a helper to the mechanics in the village, but his most important daily job involved taking care of the family’s yard animals. Roland spent a lot of time collecting grass and roots for the family pigs and chickens and looking after his parent’s small maize plot. At the start of the Second World War, his mother was already planting maize because food was in short supply. Soon after the war had began, most Creoles living on the west coast were planting and eating maize as other staple foods such as rice were scarce. Small hand-operated maize mills were used to crush the maize; Roland told me, ‘That’s what we ate, every day with whatever else we could find in the forests’ and ‘life was difficult in the past but it was more beautiful than it is now!’4 As a child, Roland also spent a lot of time cutting wood from the forests to make charcoal, which the family sold or used for cooking. When Roland became a young man, he and his 176

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brothers became braconniers – they would illegally hunt deer in the fields5 to contribute to their family’s subsistence. At other times they would go fishing for river prawns and crabs or they would hunt tenrecs. Specific parts of forested hills, sections of rivers and streams were identified by the young men as best for hunting or fishing; in this way Roland and his brothers in the last sixty years have contributed to the crafting of specific landscapes in and around Chamarel. The establishment of plantations and specifically the gradual, stricter demarcation of plantations by landowners meant that eventually only limited access was available to rivers, streams and thickets where people could hunt or forage for food. Hunters such as Roland and his friends were sometimes compelled to hunt at night. If caught, some used the excuse that they were hunting tenrecs rather than deer, as tenrecs are nocturnal animals and not considered as a food source by the middle classes. Roland and other young men would spend most of the daytime outside the house playing cards or having a drink, waiting for night to come so that they could hunt. In the years when Roland was a young man, Chamarel men sitting on street corners drinking or playing cards may not have been perceived by outsiders as potential poachers but as lazy youths. The demarcation of plantations by whites also meant that a number of Creole families lost land or access to land. Richard, a resident of Chamarel gave one explanation: whites wishing to possess certain pieces of land would often advertise in newspapers that specific plots of land were to be appropriated for cultivation, and that if no-one could produce title deeds for the land to prove ownership then it would be assumed that the land could be appropriated. Richard explained that such newspaper advertisements were not seen by Creoles and in many cases these were not understood. Through the appropriation of land, plantation owners were able to create ‘new’ landscapes in Chamarel, landscapes founded on labour, cultivation and profit as opposed to hunting, foraging and subsistence. The emphasis on labour and profit in the plantation landscape is apparent in the daily activities of Adrienne, a labourer for the Couacaud family in Chamarel in 2002. Adrienne works from seven to eleven in the morning. Her job entails stripping sugarcane of its dead leaves and tying the stem to aerate the field and applying insecticides to the plant. Adrienne also labours in the pineapple fields, planting and applying chemicals to ensure the healthy growth of the fruit. When she is not working in these fields, Adrienne collects grass from the chassées for the deer owned by the Couacaud family. However, plantation life is not all-pervading, and for Adrienne and other plantation workers, her job has to make way for work at home. After eleven o’clock in the morning Adrienne returns home and does her house chores. For those who do not have house chores the afternoon allows for personal time that can be used in many different ways. For men, it offers time for socialising or for tending the family’s animals – cows, pigs, chickens or ducks. The ways in which men create spaces for themselves and for their family beyond the plantation are also apparent in the daily of life of Daniel (the youngest 177

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Figure 18. Entrepreneurs in Chamarel. son of Noellie), better known as Ticalou to his family. Ticalou worked as a canecutter for Bel Ombre sugar estate for six years. He is a tall, muscular man who cut twice the recommended quota of cane per day. That earned him 300 Mauritian Rupees on a daily basis. But when he turned thirty, Ticalou realised that he did not want to spend the rest of his days as a cane-cutter. He reasoned that he would eventually grow old and weak and that he would not be able to cut as much cane. So he decided to stop working as a cane-cutter and to use his savings of 32,000 Mauritian Rupees to buy twelve cows. He fed and took care of the animals, and when they were ready for slaughter the following year, he sold them to a Muslim butchery that needed beef for customers celebrating Eid. With the money from the sale, and after consulting with his wife Pamela, Ticalou decided to open a tabagie – a small shop. As they did not have the money to rent new premises, Pamela ‘sacrificed’ her lounge, which they turned into a shop. In 2002 Ticalou still has two cows that he keeps in the family backyard. Lutz (1994: 80) tells us that finding sources of alternative or additional subsistence became important in Mauritius after the end of the Second World War because of the eradication of malaria in 1948 and 1949, an increase in birth rates and a lowering of death rates. Thus hunting, fishing and foraging were not simply means to oppose the authority of plantation owners; they were also for subsistence. But although poaching and the brewing and trading of alcohol contributed to the family income, they also signalled masculinity among Creoles. Poachers and brewers were perceived by Creoles in the village as brave, independent, masculine 178

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and good providers in the family. Their daily encounter with nature and their ability to subjugate it for their needs and their ability to evade arrest indicated their ingenuity and determination. It also proved them as men. Yet, while Roland sees the forests as a source of food and livelihood, and also masculinity, conservationists in Mauritius see the forests as being rich in unique fauna and flora that must be preserved. The varied use of land and diverse productions of locality and identity in Chamarel confirm Appadurai’s (1995: 207) view that the production of both locality and identity is a dialectical process. Appadurai also argues that the neighbourhoods in which people live ‘are always to some extent ethnoscapes, insofar as they involve the ethnic projects of others as well as consciousness of such projects’ (1995: 208). In Chamarel, one finds dominant groups do not successfully produce both locality and identity. The counter actions of (historically) ti-lambik drinkers and (presently) ganja smokers, the planting of secret caros of ganja and illegal hunting challenge impositions of locality and identity. However, while Creoles in Chamarel are ‘in a position to generate contexts as they produce and reproduce their own neighbourhoods, they are increasingly prisoners in the context-producing activities of the nation-state’ (1995: 208). This was apparent in 2004 when the tourism ministry implemented initiatives that did not reflect the locals’ desire for authenticity. Despite this, young men (in particular), continue to generate local context and to craft a specific, independent identity for themselves. Increasingly, the production and, or, sale of ganja is not simply a means of income; it is beginning to form an integral part of Creole male identity in Le Morne and Chamarel. Life history enquiries suggest that approximately fifty years ago, alcohol played a similarly important role in the shaping of male identity among Creoles but that the public production, marketing and consumption of alcohol has meant that the substance has lost its cachet.

From Ti Lambik to Ganja, the Generation of Context and Identity Ti Lambik, Social Meaning and Identity The residents of Chamarel and Le Morne have for decades participated in the brewing of raw cane rum known locally as ti lambik. In the past, Gabriel, Noellie’s ex-husband and Ticalou’s father, retailed ti lambik at 50 Mauritian Rupees per bottle. Motivations for alcohol consumption appear not to be too different to that of ganja use. In sociological literature, alcohol consumption and other drug use is often perceived as a way to retreat from oppression and hardship. From an anthropological perspective, however, alcohol consumption and other drug use could be a vehicle for social meaning. This was apparent in Roland’s account of his experience of ti lambik. ‘In those days’ he said, ‘people all over the west coast were in some way involved with the production of ti lambik, rum that was unrefined and outlawed 179

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by the government because it contained dangerous levels of alcohol and its consumption often led to fights. I helped to transport ti lambik for a small sum of money.’ ‘But – it was not easy to make the stuff ’, brewers had to rely on others to ensure that the rum was not stolen before it had cooled down enough to be bottled. Retailers were often responsible for bottling the rum and selling it to individuals or groups that would share the drink at home or beach parties. Thus ti lambik was an important part of Creole livelihood and social life. Brewers, retailers, transporters and sellers earned their share of ti lambik production. With the money from selling ti lambik, Gabriel was able to build a concrete house before many of the other residents of Chamarel did. He also taught his children to save money and some of his children maintain that they had savings long before other children. However, the prevalence of rum drinking in predominantly Creole communities such as Chamarel was also exacerbated by the fact that sugar barons offered their workers arrack as part of their pay. Stephano, one of Gabriel’s son’s, declared that the cane fields are like the battlefields,6 that it requires extraordinary strength and determination in a man or woman to make it through the day; presently (as perhaps in the past), drinking alcohol dulls the senses, easing the burden of having to make the two-ton cane-cutting quota for the day. Beyond the fields, cane rum also provides a form of anaesthetic against the realities of daily life. As Tatate Felone, an ex-conman living on a government pension in Chamarel, told me: ‘When I drink, I don’t see or feel anything bad. I don’t see the shit houses, the sick children, the rich tourists or the white madams. I am blind and numb to all of that.’ While Tatate Felone is seeking absolute oblivion there are many who seek a temporary reprieve from the difficulties that they experience in these communities on a daily basis. In the past, ti lambik and dancing sega throughout the night provided this reprieve. There is a difference between the consumption of ti lambik or other forms of liquor and using ganja. In 2002 it appeared that the latter was more common among young people in Chamarel and Le Morne than elsewhere. In what follows, I argue that ganja use comes with a political message that was not available when ti lambik was produced in Chamarel and Le Morne village.

The Impact of Ganja on Identity Reconstruction Richard, a parent and shop-owner in Chamarel, told me that one of the main reasons why there are so many ganja smokers in Chamarel village is not because there are many fields of it but because it is sold with a message. ‘Young people’, Richard explained, ‘buy into the Rastafarian political message very quickly. It shifts the burden of their situation from their shoulders to the government, whites and the colonizers. The drug also makes them feel “lighter” mentally and they don’t care about anything anymore.’ Richard’s statement suggests that there is something 180

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amiss in Chamarel for young people to feel that they need to turn to drugs to deal with their reality. Younger people in Chamarel said that the prevalence of ganja in Chamarel was due to their experience of isolation, unemployment and exploitation. Some of the young men interviewed said that they felt depressed about their situation and smoking made them feel less so. Jacques, an office worker at one of the five-star hotels in the region, had this to say: The hotel seems to make a point of not hiring people for a period of not more than six to nine months at a time because if it does it is obliged by law to employ these workers permanently. So youngsters are often fired twice a year to ensure that they remain casuals and continue to earn low salaries and no benefits. When they are not working for the hotels they have to stay in the village or become labourers on the plantations. Men do not earn enough to maintain their families or to achieve their dreams, so they smoke to relieve boredom and depression, to show that they are men, to socialise and to look cool. This was certainly not the case in the past, when our fathers were able to hunt, fish and grow crops. What you find now is that both young and old are cultivating plots of ganja, to make ends meet and to get the things they think they should have.

Jacques, a younger resident of Chamarel, also argued that Rastafarian ideology played an important role in the increasing levels of ganja smoking in Chamarel. His view was that the liberation philosophy of Rastafarianism was being used to encourage young men to buy and consume ganja and so maintain production of the drug in the region. Specifically, Jacques’s friend Louis pointed out that young Creole men were not just smoking ganja because they wanted to be seen as Rastafarians but because it offered these young men a means of protest against ‘surveillance, discipline and mobilization’ by the state (Appadurai 1995: 214). In choosing to smoke ganja, the young men of Chamarel are making the state’s ‘task of producing locality … a struggle’ (1995: 214.) After all, Mauritius is supposed to be a place where there are ‘no problems’. Thus, in contrast to the use of alcohol, ganja makes a variety of statements about one’s political, social and religious beliefs. But, as Jacques’s friend Louis also explained, ‘many are not even aware of what smoking the stuff is about, they just go with the gang to score a hit.’ Many of the young people who smoke ganja and live in Chamarel and Le Morne village do not necessarily adhere to Rastafarian rules of living. They are not vegetarian and they do not necessarily profess a belief in Jah. Furthermore, some of them drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, activities that are assiduously avoided by sackcloth Rastafarians as these drugs are said to pollute the body. As Richard explained, ‘Ninety percent of the young men you see walking on the streets of Chamarel smoke ganja but they don’t really follow Rastafarian practices, they are only seduced by the prospect of freedom offered in Rastafarianism and the fact that it gives you reasons to blame someone else for your problems.’ But in Chamarel, many young men have not had the chance to blame others for their situation. 181

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Jacques explained that while he has a permanent job, it is a struggle to maintain his family from month to month. He earns a basic salary of 3,000 Mauritian Rupees a month (100 U.S. Dollars in 2002), and that is not enough to feed the family and send his children to school. So, Jacques has to do overtime most months, just to get by. Louis, a plantation labourer, spends half the day working in the fields weeding, scattering pesticide salts and planting when necessary. After lunch he returns to his parent’s house where he tends the family’s cattle in their backyard. His parents also have chickens and ducks that Louis must take care of. Louis’s day generally ends at four o’clock in the afternoon and then he either goes to the local basketball court at the back of the town hall or he heads for the football pitch to train with his team. Marc, an 18-year-old school-leaver, was uncertain about his prospects in 2002. He hoped to find work but he does not have any work experience and anyway Chamarel is so far from any urban centre that probably he will have to go to stay with relatives in ‘town’ if he wants to secure a job. Philip, a casual employee in the kitchen at a local restaurant just outside Chamarel, spends most of his day at the restaurant but was out of a job by 2002, because the company that he worked for became insolvent. The day I met and spoke to these young men, they were hanging out in the street. They said that they really had nobody to talk to about their situation and that Chamarel was so isolated that very few people came there to listen to the residents. The situation of residents in these villages goes beyond the local boundaries. Ganja in Chamarel and Le Morne are not simply produced by or for these villages. There are well-established trading links between buyers particularly in Port Louis and Rose Hill and cultivators in Chamarel and Le Morne. In January 2002 I learned that Dorine, a resident of the River Camp, had moved to a big house in Sainte Croix (another predominantly Creole settlement in Port Louis) because a family member had been arrested in Chamarel for buying a large quantity of ganja. There was no one to look after his house, so she decided to do so while he was in jail. The proliferation of ganja smokers is, according to Louis and Jacques, not always considered morally reprehensible among some families living in Chamarel. Although women generally do not smoke, some parents do not worry about their daughters marrying smokers because they too have caros of ganja and sell the crop to earn money for subsistence and prestige goods. The lucrative income made from the sale of ganja is such that fights sometimes break out between rival pro-Rasta groups in the village. It is difficult to ensure the security of ganja plots and it often happens that crops are stolen just before they are ready to be harvested. Or, that gang members would reveal the activities of their rivals to the anti-drug unit and their rivals would be arrested. The cultivation and use of ganja influences identity in diverse ways, one resident said that:

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People in Chamarel grow their ganja in the forests not just because it is safe there from the eyes of the authority. They grow it there because the forest is ‘natural’, there are no chemicals in the soil like what you would find in the cane fields. Plus it grows better there because it grows by the grace of Jah.

Church Influence on Identity According to the local priest in Chamarel, the cultivation of ganja offers these families easy money. These families are not able to afford a decent lifestyle with the salaries they earn. ‘But’, the local priest said, ‘People have to change their way of thinking about work hours. Many of these people are not self-disciplined. If they did overtime work they would earn enough to get by and they wouldn’t have to resort to illegal activities.’ When I asked if he thought that the wealthier families in the region were contributing ‘enough’ to the upliftment of Chamarel in various ways, he answered, One can always do more but we have to look at what government is doing or not doing too. Some of the wealthy (white) families in and around Chamarel have assisted the village by providing a fifteen-place minibus free of charge to transport people to Case Noyale every day – especially schoolchildren, because it costs approximately 500 Mauritian Rupees [17 U.S. Dollars in 2002] a month for a Creole family to provide school transport for one child. A list of children needing subsidised transport was apparently submitted to the Ministry of Transport. Nothing has been done to give these children school transport. What often happens is that government officials will come to small villages such as Chamarel and say that such and such must be done but they do not provide the finance for it. It is up to the private sector and these wealthy families to see that these projects are done.

The Comité de Fabrique, he explained, is a committee set up by the Roman Catholic Church in Chamarel to help with the planning and financing of church projects and initiatives. The committee members are mostly individuals who manage their own enterprise or are wealthy landowners in the area. Most have a long history in the region. For example, the president of the committee is Patrick Cambier, a man whose family owns vast tracts of land on the west coast including, Mount Le Morne. Observations of social interaction in Chamarel and Le Morne reveal that churches attempt to play an important role in the shaping of local identity. They do this through preaching and supporting a wide variety of initiatives and projects suggested by the village councils. To impact on identity, the church in Chamarel (and elsewhere on the island) is often compelled to rely on the benevolence of powerful families in the area. In some instances this involves socialising with wealthy families to obtain their favour and charity for the church. At Masses held 183

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in Le Morne village, for example, with the exception of one family, white and Creole families sit in different parts of the church. At the end of the church services, the priest makes an effort to converse with the local Creole parishioners but is often surrounded by white parishioners. It is here that further social appointments are organised. For the most part, Creole residents had to be strongly encouraged to come to church, to contribute their time to church activities, or to act as stewards of the church. When I asked some, what they thought of the church, many told me that the church was distant, that it either did not know or did not care what happened to them. They talked about times when they would be forced to make an appointment to come and talk to the priest, whereas white parishioners could simply drive up to the parish grounds and speak to him whenever they wanted to. Social commonalities such as class, race, a common history and language make the contact between white priests and white parishioners easier. And, perhaps a reliance on the patronage of wealthy parishioners also makes for a closer relationship between priests and white parishioners. Thus, there are important interdependencies and relationships between the Church and powerful white families in both Chamarel and Le Morne and these relationships influence perceptions of Creole identity. This was apparent in negative stereotypes of Creoles as being dysfunctional or irrational, and involved in the ‘blame game’. A young Franco-Mauritian resident had the following to say: In my philosophy class I learned that there are three roles in which humans often cast themselves. Two of these are ‘victim’ and ‘saviour’. Creoles cast themselves as victims but they are rarely willing to do anything about it. I have a family member who was willing to offer about 10,000 jobs to the people living in Le Morne village and adjacent towns. Recruiters had major problems getting people to accept employment. Many of the young people were unwilling to work long hours or to work until late at night. The thing is, they can make between 18,000 and 40,000 Mauritian Rupees [between 600 and 1,300 U.S. Dollars] a month, so they are not keen to do an honest day’s work.

In choosing to smoke ganja, young men are making statements about their identity and the ways in which they belong and do not belong in landscapes mostly inscribed by dominant groups. Such landscapes are impermanent and as Appadurai has argued, they ‘require continuous construction’ (Appadurai 1995: 209). Thus ganja smokers contest the view of themselves as ‘dope heads’, looking for scapegoats; young Creole men in Chamarel contest the view of themselves as lazy, and of wealthy local landowners as charitable.

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Tourism in Chamarel In the past twenty years, the west coast has experienced dramatic changes in the form of tourism. But associated infrastructure (tarred roads, signposts, marinas, golf courses, jetties and so on) has also impacted on local inhabitants’ sense of identity. Mauritians are not alone in this experience. In the Caribbean islands, for example, Polly Pattullo (1996) found that tourism development brought dramatic changes to local landscapes, which led residents to feel like aliens in their own land. At the end of the 1990s, tourism was big business in Mauritius. According to the Ministry of Tourism, ‘Tourism [is the] third pillar of the economy after the EPZ manufacturing sector and agriculture, [it] contributes significantly to economic growth and has been a key factor in the overall development of Mauritius. ‘7 An overview of government statistics indicates that employment in the tourism industry is increasing steadily, and that comparatively the increase has been more significant for hotel employment. This increase is matched by the increment in tourism receipts. The ministry suggests that tourism receipts will benefit Mauritians by a trickle-down effect through government provision of infrastructure, investment and the implementation of social development initiatives. The tourism industry itself is aimed at the ‘low impact, high spending, selective, quality’ market,8 which means that every effort is made to produce the best products and service, locally. Visits to Le Morne (and several villages along the west coast) from 2002 to 2004, suggests that the government’s claim of low (physical) impact tourism is not true. If anything, the physical impacts of tourism on the west coast are staggering.

Physical Impacts Selected tourism statistics9 indicate that the number of tourists coming to Mauritius increased dramatically from 1968 to 1999. Specifically, in 1968 there were just over 15,000 tourists and less than twenty-two hotels. By 1999 their were 578,085 tourists and ninety-two hotels. In 2004, the director of the Association for Hotels and Restaurants in Mauritius (AHRIM) wished to encourage three million tourists a year to visit Mauritius. The physical impact of tourists and supporting tourism infrastructure is incalculable. What one sees is a dramatic decrease in subsistence access to both land and sea, due to environmental degradation, the privatisation of land and strict conservation for biodiversity protection or scientific research. In the case of Chamarel, the government’s demarcation of the Black River gorges as a national park in 1994, for example, has affected the lives of Chamarel residents so that, not only are residents excluded from park benefits, but they are also negatively affected by the park’s existence. In 2001 it appeared that to legitimise or underscore conservation activities in this area, the Ministry of Tourism was prepared to cast inhabitants as rural and traditional so that they would to fit in 185

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with the developers’ view of it as ‘a remote village lost in nature which offers an ideal place for rural, cultural and eco-tourism.’ In 2002, Chamarel residents said that their lives had changed since the declaration of the Black River gorges as a national park. Access to the forests is restricted, as villagers can only enter the forests with the consent of forest watch guards or with an official. Hunting is severely restricted, with paid guards and fences preventing people from entering the forests to collect fruits, berries and mushrooms or to hunt small mammals. The concern to implement an eco-tourism project from 2002, in Chamarel, is based on the government’s desire to increase the number of tourists inland and reduce pressure on the coastal zones. Furthermore, as ecological conservation becomes more fashionable in the countries supplying most of the tourists, the island has to meet the demands of these tourists by identifying and creating green spaces. In Chamarel, one finds the intersection and interaction of an historicised landscape fostered by revisionist historians with an eco-tourism landscape being created by the state and private tourism developers. In their own ways, these stakeholders directly or inadvertently impact on Creole identity but their attempts to pigeonhole Creole identity often fail.

The Chamarel Integrated Development Project The main objectives of the Ministry of Tourism’s proposed Chamarel Integrated Development Project (CIDP) project were cited as follows: 1. to enhance tourism enjoyment and boost tourist spending with spill-over effects for the village; 2. to diversify the tourism product by developing rural and cultural tourism; to involve local people for sustainable development of the tourism industry; 3. to create employment and enable local people to reap the benefits of tourism; 4. to upgrade the physical environment of a deprived village and improve the standard of living of the inhabitants. The ministry described the village thus: Chamarel is a small, deprived village, situated in the South West of the island, isolated in the middle of dense forest and mountains with sugar cane fields over a large area. It has a population of about six hundred inhabitants and one hundred and sixty-three households (CSO Household Survey 2000) … Chamarel offers to visitors a splendid panoramic view of the green landscape with Mount Le Morne which stands on the horizon merging with the blue sea. Chamarel encompasses all the characteristics of a remote village lost in nature which offers an ideal place for rural, cultural, and eco-tourism.

In keeping with the view of Chamarel as a remote, rural and ecologically significant village, the project creators emphasised rural or rustic activities for the 186

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inhabitants. They suggested that a craft village be created ‘where visitors could witness the manufacture of handicrafts along with effecting direct purchases from artisans [and that these] products would include basketry, textiles, wooden sculptures and other types depending on the availability of appropriate raw materials in the village.’ In 2000 and 2001, Pamela and several other women in Chamarel learned various craftwork techniques so that they could be employed in the forthcoming craft village. In 2004, women from Chamarel (including Pamela) were still attending these classes. The project would emphasise the rustic and natural aspect of life in Chamarel along with the ‘naturalness’ of craftwork among the women. It is hoped that this will appeal to the eco-friendly tourist who might be impressed by the ‘preservation’ of cultural heritage in Chamarel. But, ethnographic research suggests that except for the mention of wooden sculptures, the range of traditional products made in the village do not include the items suggested by the ministry. Chamarel residents are skilled at brewing alcoholic drinks, sourcing traditional medicines, preparing food made from ingredients drawn from vegetation found in Chamarel, hunting, entertaining and producing music. When I went to Chamarel in 2004 none of these skills had been identified as means to sustain livelihoods in the village. The proposal of table d’hôtes (local restaurants) in 2000 should have, according to the proposers, ‘enable[d] visitors to discover the inner life of the island, meet the inhabitants in their natural habitat and discover Mauritian recipes. These would create an important development of cultural tourism and would enable the local people to reap the economic benefits of tourism.’ What is meant by the inhabitant’s ‘natural habitat’ is uncertain. In 2004, only two table d’hôte applications out of twelve had been approved. Both applications came from people who had business premises and were able to provide the kind of environment that the developers felt tourists would want. Creoles aware of the CIDP, and accepting of re-traditionalisation, thought that the project could highlight Creole identity and traditions. However, this did not happen.

Social Impacts In Chamarel, all the young men interviewed expressed concern about plans suggested by the Ministry of Tourism to turn Chamarel into a village touristique – a tourism village. Some were worried that Chamarel would change and argued that the village was different to others on the island in that it had managed to keep its natural beauty. When others in the focus group being interviewed said that the government was planning to implement an eco-tourism project in the area, in keeping with the fact that the village lies close to the boundaries of a national park, some of the men expressed relief, as they had not known what the government’s plans were for the village. But most of the men also expressed concern that the government was going to sponsor a craftwork centre in Chamarel so that women in 187

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the village could prepare and sell craft goods to tourists passing through. Although they did not say it outright, these men seemed worried that their power and authority in the village was rapidly being eroded. Men, they said are forced either to become labourers on the plantations or to work as casuals in hotels. Women smile, put on lipstick and encourage the tourists to buy or to stay. Men are not like this, and the government is not doing anything to help men get decent work. But discussions on the ecological conservation of Chamarel have been well received by some of the inhabitants of Chamarel. Some hinted at the protection of their ganja caros, others were expressing (popular) globalised views on nature conservation and had begun to see themselves as part of the eco-tourism landscape, saying that they wished ‘to keep Chamarel as natural as possible’ because ‘[they] are used to life like this’, even though this was not the case for recent arrivals in the village. Women in particular began to anticipate the economic benefits of a ‘new’ form of tourism. When I asked some of the young women in Chamarel if they knew of the government initiative and what they thought of it, they complained that the men do not vise loin – that is, they do not have significant ambition. They said that, men want women just to stay at home and have children while they go out and drink and smoke with their friends – but half the time it is the women who must work regularly to support the family. While it was apparent that a number of young women from Chamarel did work, it appeared that this was because there was a greater demand for women’s labour. Pamela explained how, before she came to Chamarel in 1997, she used to work in a garment factory with mostly women employees. She was a cutter and worked on vests, brassieres and men’s underwear, and even though working conditions were terrible there (they could not be late by more than five minutes and had to be very sick to get sick leave), at the start of her employ in 1992 she earned 800 Mauritian Rupees a month (about 53 U.S. Dollars). During the week it often happened that she would work from 7.30 am in the morning to 11 pm just to earn overtime and get at least 3,000 Mauritian Rupees a month (200 U.S. Dollars). This was more than her husband was earning every month as a sugarcane-cutter. The fact that it is mostly men and not women who smoke ganja, also means that young women have the opportunity to improve their circumstances through further education. Natasha, aged twenty, living in Chamarel, is one such young woman. Nevertheless, she explained that most Creoles in Chamarel stop going to school around of age of sixteen and some stop at an even younger age because of the lack of a secondary school in the village. Even so, a number of Chamarel residents do possess an Ordinary Level Certificate of Education (O-level). But women and girls in Chamarel fear their husbands or parents, Natasha said, They don’t want to go against established social norms. It is O.K. for example, for them to go and learn how to sew at the town hall but apart from that they just stay in the house the whole day. You see people are expected to remain in Chamarel and not to 188

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marry outsiders. As a result I don’t have lots of friends here mainly because my boyfriend is not from Chamarel. It is almost as if the locals expect me to have a boyfriend in the village just because I live here. Mais ki sanne la pou fer mo bonheur ici? – Who will make my fortune in this village?’

Natasha also argued that just as men in Chamarel have a distorted view of women and women’s capabilities, government officials tend to misjudge the level and areas of poverty in the village: When the government ministers come to the village to give gifts to the children of supposedly destitute families they don’t know that the people to whom they are offering gifts may not necessarily be poor. Just because they don’t have a regular job does not mean that they are not wealthy. In fact you just have to look at all the villagers that have beautiful concrete houses in the village to know that people are not poor. I can tell you now that many of these people have [ganja] plots in the woods and that is how they survive.

Landscapes and Identity in the Hotel Industry Not everyone has prospered through the cultivation or sale of ganja and not everyone crafts their identity through it. Some, like Stephano, combat marginalisation and obtain a sense of identity through their jobs: I started off working as a fitter and turner at the age of sixteen. I only managed to go up to form three in my secondary school studies. Things were very difficult back then. There were not so many factories and hotels offering jobs. In 1982 when the MMM/MSM alliance won all the sixty seats in parliament and ousted the Parti Travailliste government, the little Hindu workshop where I worked went out of business and I was retrenched. The only place left was the sugarcane fields, and like my friends I became a cane-cutter. One day, I arrived late and I was told that my pay would be deducted. The pay was already poor, the hours difficult and I thought about changing my job. At the time, I was ‘in’ with the office workers and land managers. Between harvests they gave me odd jobs around the plantation compounds – cleaning, washing cars and so on. But once the harvests began I had to go back to cane fields. In February 1990 I decided to try my luck at the hotels. I pitched up at the grounds (they were recruiting cleaners) and I attempted to get a job as a cleaner. I got a job with a local contractor but really wanted one in the hotel. I tried the hotel’s laundry section and was eventually offered a job in the garden instead. I was lucky, I got on well with the Indian guy who was in charge of the garden and he really helped me out. Eventually the opportunity arose to work as a cleaner for the hotel. It was April 1991, renovations had begun on the hotel and they needed more workers. The chef de cuisine spotted me and saw how well dressed and well spoken I was. He took me on as a garçon cuisine [kitchen boy] who would pack the groceries, clean up, 189

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cut vegetables and tidy the kitchen. Things were hard but I was commended on my work. After a difficult year, I saved my money and late in 1994, I bought six volumes of Les Délices de France, a set of cuisine texts, for 9,000 Mauritian Rupees. Only in 1996 did I get a chance to use them. A new chef from France gave me a chance to try out a few things and was so impressed with my skills that he included me in the training of students who had gone to prestigious hotel schools on the island.

Discussing his job, Stephano also indicated how the management employees at his hotel attempt to create special milieus for tourist enjoyment and as a result, influence the identity of employees through performance appraisals of: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Self-discipline Loyalty and devotion to the company Attitude towards supervision Knowledge of work Quantity of work Quality of work Stability under pressure Relationship with peers/others Skills development Appearance

And, strict disciplinary strategies: Guests are not allowed to know what our problems are. That is why we smile so much. We must look happy for them to feel comfortable. There is even a livret d’accueil (a welcome booklet) that each employee receives on arrival at the hotel that states exactly how one must dress, how to take care of their bodies and what to take into account to ensure hygienic conditions in our daily work.

Thus the growing number of hotels on the west coast are also altering the ways in which Creoles re-present their identity. In the case of Stephano and Jacques, as hotel workers, their identity as Creole men is transformed in the hotel context where, although ethnicity remains important, individuals are also seeing themselves as workers and members of a team. In these circumstances, this leads one to question the existence and nature of le malaise Créole.

Tourism and Change in Chamarel: Dialectical Processes Discussing tourism and change, Nash (1996) argues that change is dialectical process and that, ‘an important dimension of such [tourist] contact, wherever it occurs, is the power differential between the peoples involved, but it cannot be assumed that everywhere it conforms to the same imperialist model that has 190

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Figure 19. Stephano and His Délices de France. been prevalent in anthropological studies of acculturation or development.’ (Nash 1996: 85). Recreational tourism is big business and Mauritius specialises in this form of tourism. In the late 1990s, tourism developers and cultural brokers began to consider the economic and cultural value of heritage tourism. Initially, in my view, both forms seemed to privilege the needs and desires of tourists and the powerful in Mauritian society. In Chamarel, there was no recreational tourism even though this is what the locals are skilled at providing. Instead, as previously mentioned, eco-tourism is being promoted. This is largely influenced by the quest of (mostly European) foreigners for an ‘authentic’ Mauritius that is also an ‘unspoilt’ paradise. The Créole Morisyen living in Chamarel are embracing this idea by arguing for the preservation of the natural environment around the village. Historically, these areas have provided Creoles living there with subsistence in times of hardship and the preservation of these areas may protect their ganja plots. Other Creoles in Chamarel are embracing ethnic tourism, which Wood (1998) argues constitutes 191

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a specific drive for authenticity that feeds the discourse of ‘rootedness’. Groups (such as the Rastafarian music group, Group Natir) are encouraged to stage their unique cultural traditions for tourist consumption reinforcing ethnic stereotypes and sometimes providing limited opportunities for the changing of these. Yet, as Stephano’s account suggests, it is difficult to strike a balance between resisting the force of structuring ethnic patterns in the tourism industry and making a living from being ethnically stereotyped. But, in 2004, other residents of Chamarel were keen to produce authentic Creole cuisine and to have their own restaurants in which to do so. This would enable some to successfully and positively exploit the ethnic stereotype of Creoles as good entertainers. This is positive because until very recently many Creoles (dancers, singers and party-goers) were not able to make a living from being ethnically stereotyped without suffering its negative consequences – the loss of credibility and self-esteem or marginalisation.

Tourism and Identity in Le Morne Village If Chamarel is being re-ruralised and re-traditionalised, the reverse is happening to Le Morne village. In the last twenty years, five hotels have been constructed on the Le Morne peninsula, the grounds of one of these occupies seven kilometres of land. The land around most of these hotels has been fenced off. Indigenous vegetation has been cleared to make way for golf courses, parking lots and villas. As in Chamarel, however, one finds that Le Morne landscapes are politicised by inhabitants and outsiders. In Tilley’s (1994: 23) conceptualisations of landscape, it is argued that, the landscape is ‘always already fashioned by human agency, never completed, and constantly being added to, and the relationship between people and it is a constant dialectic and process of structuration: the landscape is both a medium for and outcome of action and previous histories of action.’ In Le Morne, one finds that the landscape is a ‘place that acts dialectically so as to create the people who are of that place. These qualities … give rise to a feeling of belonging and rootedness and familiarity … [and they] give rise to a power to act and a power to relate that is both liberating and productive’ (1994: 26). The reason why Le Morne ‘creates people’ (1994), is because it presently constitutes an important part of Mauritius’ slave history and Creole identity. But in the past, Creoles in Mauritius (as with coloured people in South Africa), particularly those who had the capacity to research and publicise the slave past, did not do so; this was because of direct political oppression and because of growing racism. For some Mauritians the Creoles of Le Morne are generally perceived as the true Créole Morisyen. Their physical proximity to Le Morne, in some cases their experience of life in the ex-slave village known as Trou Chenille that was once situated on Le Morne, and their narratives of a slave and ex-slave past; appears to authenticate the rootedness of their identity and their rootedness in this village and area. In 1999, this view of Le Morne Creoles in the slave and ex-slave 192

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landscape contributed to the re-writing of the Creoles’ past as told from the perspective of Creoles living in Le Morne. Revisionist historians in particular (Teelock 2000) see this rewriting as important for the liberating of suppressed or silenced discourses of Creoles. However, particular accounts of the past are problematic in that they tend to reify shared experiences among Creoles, which may in turn produce a homogenised Creole identity. Benson’s (1996) studies of West Indian ethnicity in Britain suggest that a homogenised identity is important where essentialist discourses on culture and identity prevail. To have culture and by implication identity, the AfricanCaribbeans (and Mauritian Creoles) need to demonstrate a shared history, shared sense of suffering, shared cultural traditions. This is a task that is being or has been achieved by other ethnic groups on the island. ‘New’ oral histories that deemphasise cultural interaction and hybridity, are for example, contributing greater homogenisation of group identities and the hardening of ethnic boundaries. Until 1999, both government and private tourism development agencies catered for an international (mostly European) market that has shown a preference for recreational tourism. And, before the 1990s, Mauritians (Creoles included) considered the history of slavery on the island as a taboo subject. Heritage projects concerning the experiences, livelihood and the historical settlement of slaves were not implemented or at least were implemented with great difficulty. Government attempts to build national unity through an adherence to Mauricianisme (a concept developed by the politician Paul Berenger), the westernisation of the island and fears of rampant communalism discouraged the state from implementing heritage initiatives. A slave memorial at Pointe Canon in Mahebourg was set up in 1985 (after nearly ten years of political lobbying) by the pro-black movement led by Sylvio Michel and Organisation Fraternel – a black consciousness organisation. In 2001, more than 160 years after the abolition of slavery on the island, government finally decreed the first of February a national holiday, the ‘Abolition of Slavery Day’. Creoles interviewed on this subject argued that this was to be expected – it is not only their culture that is not recognised on the island but their history and heritage is also not given any prominence. But between 1998 and 2004, several projects were either initiated or completed to revise Mauritian history and locate the historical settlements and sites that are significant to the history of slavery and indenture. This emergence of heritage projects can be attributed to the increased public interrogation of Creole identity in the 1990s and also to the growing influence of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics on prominent members of the Hindu community in Mauritius. A good example of the interest in heritage is the revamping of the slave monument at Pointe Canon, as is the unveiling of the monument to the unknown slave in front of the Port Louis Theatre in 1998 and the restoration of Aapravasi Ghat (the landing place of Indian immigrants), which commemorates the landing of indentured labourers on the island. On the National Heritage 193

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Trust Fund website, the decisions regarding Aapravasi Ghat’s nomination as a memory project is described as follows: The Aapravasi Ghat in an amended version of the act of 1985 … was listed on the National Monuments of Mauritius as coolie ghat referring to the most common type of immigrant that used the depot: labourers who arrived in Mauritius to work on the island’s sugar plantation, and who were familiarly described as such … [at] first [it was] a remnant of the old French colonial times. When the country was handed over to the British in 1811, it was referred to as Le Bagne in the Etat des Batiments Civils et Militaires du Port Napoleon. To better the conditions and treatment of indentured labourers, the Indian government imposed a prohibition on Indian Immigration from 1838 to 1842. Local planters were then compelled to frame a scheme to set up a depot in Mauritius. This particular site was considered to be the most convenient place to shelter the Immigrants after the long odyssey. An Order in Council of 1842 stipulated that the Indian Immigrants had to spend forty-eight hours at the depot. The place started operating as a full immigration depot in 1843 when the Protector of Immigrants took over all immigration duties from the Police Department. In 1844, the depot was used as a smallpox hospital. As there were regular complaints about sanitary conditions and the state of the buildings, the depot increased in size and improvements were made in 1853 and 1859.

Other heritage projects have been coming thick and fast since the setting up of the National Heritage Trust Fund in the Ministry of Arts and Culture. The growing interest in heritage is due to UNESCO’s declaration of the years 2000 to 2010 as a decade for cultural heritage preservation and to foreigners’ interest in socially responsible tourism. Garrod and Fyall (2000) suggest that, ‘there is a strong emphasis on conservation [in heritage initiatives].’ In my view, it is this that appeals to the socially conscious tourist. But, one has to ask, whose heritage is being conserved or sustained, and for what purpose? For example, the construction of a museum and monument at Grand Port in Mahebourg to commemorate the first Dutch landing on the island in the 1600s pays homage to history but is politically and ecologically controversial, given the Dutch’s destruction of Mauritian fauna and flora and the fact that they enslaved many Mauritians’ ancestors. In Le Morne, a place from which the Créole Morisyen could craft a positive identity that would enable them to challenge existing negative stereotypes, celebrate their hybridity and restore their self-esteem, the plans completely ignore Creole heritage.

Creole Heritage and Heritage Tourism in Le Morne Late in 1999, I received an on-line petition from a group of protesters in Mauritius who were opposed to the proposed development of a hotel and cable car facilities on Le Morne. The petitioners included some of the island’s 194

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revisionist historians, concerned that the site, important to the history and politics of Creoles was about to be desecrated by tourism development and tourists. More significantly, they were concerned that the project would create another tourist enclave and that ordinary Mauritians would not (for financial and other reasons), have access to the site. Several months later I went to the public beach at Le Morne and found that the land around the mountain had been fenced off. A big ‘do not trespass’ sign was up on the gate that was topped by razor wire. I went back to the beach and asked some of the families picnicking there what was going on under the mountain as, in days past, people were free to wander around the woods at the base of the mountain. I was told that the mountain is private property and that the owner had fenced off his land to prevent people from bothering him. That year, various groups had made their way up the mountain, especially representatives from local Rastafarian groups, who had begun to identify with the ‘maroons’ and maroon history. Other groups were also interested in the preserving the heritage of the mountain. The following year, the Mauritius Wildlife Fund, intent on preserving the mountain’s indigenous vegetation, sued Innovative Leisure Limited (the company spearheading the development of a cable car on Mount Le Morne) for having deliberately and illegally cleared a patch of indigenous vegetation on Mount Le Morne to build a helipad for potential investors in the cable car project. In response to his being sued for building a helipad, Francis Piat, the promoter of the project said, ‘I am being sued for 38 trees. This is happening while I am setting up a nursery that will produce 3,800, then 38,000, and ultimately 38 million young trees of the rarest species. This will help to save not only the ecosystem on top of Le Morne, but everywhere else where they have disappeared or are disappearing across the country’ (News on Sunday 30 April 2000). At around the same time, a UNESCO consultant, (concerned about the preservation of cultural heritage), had also been called upon by the government to assess the cultural feasibility of the project. He discouraged clearance for the project and concluded that the project developers wanted to ‘réduire l’importance du Morne’ they wanted to reduce the importance of Le Morne. Shortly afterwards, villagers of Le Morne, in conjunction with the then opposition party leadership and revisionist historians, staged protests against the proposed development of Le Morne into a tourism site. Speaking to the director of the National Commission for UNESCO in 2004, I learned that the cable car project had been indefinitely delayed, that the government was hoping to list Le Morne as a World Heritage Site and that if any tourist development is to occur, it will happen lower down the slopes of the mountain. These contestations show, however, that there are competing factions interested in imposing history and identity on Le Morne and nearby residents. Recent accounts on slave and ex-slave experience add to the complexity of these interactions. According to the historian and journalist Sydney Selvon (News on Sunday, April 30, 2000) the maroons, while mostly black (African, Indian and 195

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Figure 20. Mount Le Morne as Seen from the Village and the Hotel Side. 196

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Malagasy) included Europeans ‘who conducted guerrilla warfare for the liberation of the country from the Dutch, then [the] French.’ Bernardin de St. Pierre’s accounts of life in Mauritius in 1769 suggest that there were between 200 and 300 maroons in the region of Bel Ombre. These individuals lived in wellestablished communities and did not necessarily attack European settlements. Competing accounts abound of how these maroons lived,10 why the Dutch left, and the situation of slaves in the post-slavery period, adding to the volume of narratives on the Creoles’ past. The presence of legends and the revision of historical texts about the situation and experiences of ex-slaves contribute to the crafting of social landscapes. But the people of Le Morne have not only recently experienced the re-presentation of their identity and history; they are also seeing a dramatic transformation of the physical landscapes that they occupy and from which they draw a livelihood. Established ‘regimes’ (the biodiversity experts of the Mauritius Wildlife Fund, for example) and tourism leaders do not have to work so hard to get what they want in this discursive landscape. They are professionals in the intricate negotiations that will enable them to achieve their objectives. By 2004, the Rogers Group managed to gain government approval to build villas and bungalows along the lower southern slope of Le Morne. When I asked the UNESCO director what he thought of this, he declined to answer me directly but did say that there was no reason why Le Morne could not be a ‘mixed’ heritage site, one that is unique in its cultural, natural and tourist attributes. To seek broader support for their cause and to effect social justice in the whole preservation of Le Morne, revisionist historians argue that Le Morne is not just a political and historical symbol for Creoles, it is also a national symbol of liberation and anti-colonialism. In an interview on the subject, the historian Vijaya Teelock says that ‘Le Morne symbolises the fight for independence, the fight against colonisation, the fight for liberty’11 (L’Express 24 April 2000).

Le Morne Villagers’ Crafting of Landscapes and Identity The Creoles living in Le Morne village also harbour grave concerns about the tourist development of Mount Le Morne. For them, the mountain represents a major aspect of their history and they strongly feel that the creation of a cable car and other tourism facilities on the mountain will desecrate and destroy the memory of their slave ancestors. Worse, they see it as a precursor to the annihilation of their village. A new five-star hotel, Appavou, was (in 2001) already in the process of construction on their side of the mountain. In 2002, fisherfolk in Le Morne village explained that they were not catching as many fish as they had done in the years before tourism development on the peninsula. Noisy water sports offered by the hotels had driven the fish away and the disturbance of tidal pools was affecting coastal catches. Claude, a valet who has 197

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worked all his life in the hotel industry in Le Morne and as an occasional fisherman in the Morne lagoon, described the ecological damage being done to the sea. He says, ‘It doesn’t matter if you are a full-time fisherman or not, the thing is we live with the sea and the sea is being destroyed bit by bit.’ This he says is being caused by the numerous hotels being built, the mountainside plantations that use herbicides and pesticides and the chopping down of trees on the mountain slopes. The slopes are steep and the mud and chemicals flow straight into the sea. This is not the only thing that goes into the sea. Claude also says that some of the hotels do not treat their sewage: ‘What they do with it is anyone’s guess but I’m betting that it goes into the sea and before, youngsters were using ganja as a drug but now you find that hard drugs (heroin, cocaine) are also finding their way into our village.’ New settlements have also appeared in response to hotel development in the area. Dilo Pourri, an informal settlement, has little in the way of sanitation and as the number of residents increase so does the reliance on the sea for subsistence. In addition to publicising changes to their livelihood and physical environment, residents of Le Morne are also involved in challenging these impositions by promoting memory of the past through oral history. I was privileged to meet three individuals who had grown up in Trou Chenille. One of these is ton Michel,12 who related his experiences as a child in Trou-Chenille and stories told to him: On montagne13 Morne there lived many escaped slaves, but there is no memory for them. It is as though nothing happened there. But I know that something did. There is a small valley on the mountain slope, where there was once a village. My grandfather told me how the first inhabitants got there. There were many shipwrecks in those days and one of them foundered on the east coast at Les pointes des Hollandais, close to Grand Port in Mahebourg. The slaves that had survived the journey were strong, stronger than their captors and while the white men drowned, some of the blacks managed to swim ashore. When they got there, some of them were recaptured, some of them believed that the white men would eat them and ran away. Only a few survived, but with great courage they travelled along the southern wild coastline and settled in the mountain. I liked this story when my grandfather told it to me and I don’t know how true it is. But one day, as a herd boy, I saw the truth for myself. I was fifteen at the time and my grandfather took me from Trou Chenille village to a part of Mount Le Morne where I saw numerous bones and skulls of humans at the bottom of the cliff. It seemed that some of them had fallen on olive trees and had rotted right there. Their skeletons were draped over the branches.

Relating his life history, ton Michel described the hardships experienced by Creoles in their resettlement in what is today Le Morne village. His story suggests that it was as though the history of the villagers living in Trou Chenille had never existed and they were forced to make a new life on the coast. The inhabitants also appear 198

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powerless in their forced exodus from Trou Chenille. Some dealt with the pain of relocation and hardships imposed by new dependencies by turning to alcohol: I lived in Trou Chenille for many years. There were Creole fishermen there. Women baked their own bread and people grew maize and other foodstuffs to sustain the village. Fishing enabled families to buy or barter for other goods that were not made in Trou Chenille. People were very poor and in 1974 Alain Cambier, the owner of the mountain, paid everyone a sum of money, I think it was 10 Mauritian Rupees, and forced us to leave the village. We had nowhere to go. We set up small camps along the street that you see is today Le Morne village. We built streets of rocks covered with straw and soil. In those days, we also used to have a lot of parties. Life was really hard and we needed time to relax and to forget about our difficulties. We brewed and sold ti lambik. A bottle of ti lambik retailed for about 2 Mauritian Rupees and 50 cents in the 1960s. Wine was cheaper at 1 Rupee and 50 cents. Of course, drinking so much meant that there were frequent fights between people. But after a fight there were no hard feelings. We had sorted it out in public and could get on with our lives.

Ton Michel’s stories, like those of Harris and Idersse Lolo (better known as ti14 Roland) contribute to identity formation among Creoles, but they are not, as Nuttall and Coetzee (1998: 14) argue, based on specific accounts of the past that risk privileging ‘a few master narratives that offer a sense of unity at the cost of ignoring the fracture and dissonance.’ Harris, another resident of Le Morne, has been a fisherman in the area for fifty-seven years. He was born in Trou Chenille but came to live in Le Morne village when his family was forced to move by the Cambiers. As a child he would spend the entire day on the sea. In a cluster of ten to fifteen boats, he and his father would travel the southwest coastline in search of the best fishing spots. He remembers the sega nights in Trou Chenille. People would perform the sega tambour (with ravannes and drums only) right up in front of their neighbour’s door, and the neighbour would be compelled to join in. Ti Roland was born in 1931 in the village of Trou Chenille. He says that he had a wonderful childhood in this village – ‘we would fish, catch little fish, make a little curry, eat a little curry, swim in the sea and go to la boutik15 and steal bread!’ In Trou Chenille, he says, ‘Femmes ti pli mari ki zom’ – Women were more like husbands than men: Fathers worked but were not always there, so women did their own thing. Some women fished, gathered shellfish, collected wood for cooking, and sewing for the family. On Saturday nights we would dance the sega the whole night; we would cook, eat and drink. Children would also drink and would be offered half a glass of wine. Most of the time, though, they would get lemonade. People from all over would come to Le Morne to dance and we really enjoyed ourselves. My mother was a great sega singer, she was one of the few people that knew how to play the bobre,16 and she

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Figure 21. Casiers (Fish-traps) Started and Completed.

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passed on this skill to me. But one day, we were forced to leave Trou Chenille. Each family was given 10 Mauritian Rupees. There were about 150 people living there.

Ti Roland also recounted the diverse experiences of children living in Le Morne, indicating that although many people were poor and experienced oppression by powerful others, in many instances they tried improve their position within the society. Today Ti Roland has five daughters, and all of them rely on fishing for subsistence. One of them told me ‘We do all the jobs that men do, because we can. But it has not always been easy because men here don’t like it when women act like men.’ The stories of Ton Michel, Ti Roland and Harris seem to be told to most social researchers who come to Le Morne. These stories become a part of the storyteller’s myths and legends or part of history through school and scholarly history books. The stories craft a particular perspective of Creole ethnicity; one that is grounded in Creoles’ shared sense of suffering, shared traditions (in the form of sega and entertainment) and shared history. The key reason why proposals to build a cable car on Le Morne have been so strongly opposed by Creoles and revisionist historians alike is because there is concern that Creoles will lose the little anchorage of identity that they have in the story of Le Morne. However, as these stories show, Creoles have much more in the way of cultural heritage than the mountain. Their music, stories, cuisine and particular livelihoods (all of which are intangible heritage) deserve just as much attention particularly because they indicate Creoles’ cultural resilience and hybridity. Reflecting on the changing landscape and livelihoods in Le Morne, Claude said: I don’t believe in drugs, using it or selling it. I have grown up sons, how does the hotel expect my family to survive? Sunset harvesting [of shellfish and other small fish at low tide] is not an idyllic affair, it is for survival. At least, for now, survival is also enjoyable [smiles], I am not sure whether that will be the case for the future.

One warm afternoon in the middle of December, I saw what Claude meant. The sea had retreated and lay flat. The sun had fallen behind Isle of Fourneau (a small uninhabited islet off the Morne lagoon) but its light was somehow still reflecting off the water. Children, dogs, mothers and fathers waded in, clutching small woven bags and buckets. Bent over, their rounded backs making them like as boulders in the sea they collected ti moules (little shells) and brought them back ashore for supper. That December days before his son’s interview, Claude admonished the young man to shave his beard: ‘Clean up’, he said, ‘do you think they will take you in looking like that? They don’t want ruffians!’ His son was not so enthusiastic: he was more interested in football. ‘That’s where the real money is’, he told me. ‘What’s the point of slaving away, cleaning up after other people when you could get people to clean up after you?’

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Conclusion In a paper on the role of the heritage industry in Namibia after the fall of apartheid in South Africa, Ian Fairweather (2000: 1) says: ‘Without culture there is no future.’ In the case of Creoles in Mauritius, particularly those living in Chamarel and Le Morne villages, one observes a concerted effort to reconstruct the past, but not to necessarily present a homogeneous Creole culture and history. This has not been easy because the process of identity re-presentation involves homogenisation of identity. Heritage preservation and recreational tourism often require the authentication and homogenisation of identity and history. Both forms of tourism may privilege a particular version of the truth about the past and generations to come may see this impression as the truth. The memories evoked by Ton Michel, Harris and Ti Roland, which emphasise interaction and hybridisation will be lost. Similarly, the ‘magical’ aspect of Le Morne, recently experienced by my threeyear-old daughter when she watched in amazement as a local fisherwoman hoisted live octopus up in the air, ready to sell it to passers by, will rapidly disappear. The promotion of eco-tourism in Chamarel may lead future generations to believe that there is not much to the identity and traditions of Creoles living in the village. For both the residents of Chamarel and Le Morne, negotiating the past is difficult. Powerful financial and political interests influence the capacity of the locals to reclaim their history or to resist the homogenisation of their identity which, although important in the dominant cultural discourse and hierarchy, suppresses a range of local narratives about Creole identity and reality.

Notes 1. Chamarel is also known for its coffee plantations. Three types of coffee are cultivated in the area: Arabica, Liberica (a smaller version of Arabica) and Robusta. None of the species grown are indigenous to the island but have been imported from Brazil via Madagascar (Arabica and Robusta) and Thailand (Liberica). Once harvested, by both men and women, the crop is transported to the brûlerie (burning/roasting factory) in Case Noyale at the bottom of the escarpment. 2. The forest guards are drawn from the Creole community itself. They may either be sympathetic to the plight of some Creole families living in Chamarel or they may obtain some material benefit from the planters by watching over their crops or they may obtain material benefit from the land in participating in the theft of the crops. 3. Symbolic in the sense that these women were removed from the rural context. 4. ‘La vie lontan ti mizère mais li ti pli zolie ki astère!’ 5. Chassées. 6. ‘Champs-de-batailles.’ 7. See the Ministry of Tourism website at . 8. See the discussion of bed occupancy rates at . ‘The most prestigious beachside resort hotels are owned and, or, operated by large groups such as Sun International and Beachcomber. Many of the beach resort hotels are internationally recognised for their very high quality. It is estimated that around 25% of visitors stay in non-hotel

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9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

accommodation, such as boarding houses, self-catering bungalows and with friends and relatives.’ See the Ministry of Tourism pages at . ‘One small group of maroons who had lived autonomously for over twenty-five years in one part of the thick forests of the island … had plantations of food crops, tobacco and reared animals. They buried their dead near the settlements.’ (Selvon News on Sunday 30 April 2000: 16). This view of the ex-slave as a member of an organised and motivated community contrasts with the account given by Bishop Collier in 1845, who argues that the ex-slave population was dying in droves and that the cause was excessive drinking (Carter 2000: 177). ‘Le Morne symbolise la lutte pour l’independence, la lutte contre la colonisation, la lutte pour la liberté.’ Ton Michel is folklorised in a tale by Rajesh Ramdoyal (1979), and until I met him personally I had thought that he was a figment of the author’s imagination. Mountain. Little. The shop. A sort of one-string guitar, held upright like a harp.

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Souvent, trop souvent Lé passé appelle moi Même ki mo pressé, mo pas lé rétourné Li zette so lombraz lor mo simé Ramesh Ramdoyal (Souvent Trop Souvent 1985)

‘Hybridity’, according to Moreiras (1999) is often invoked ‘as a counter-concept, strong enough to dissolve the dangers of either hegemonic or counter-hegemonic reification and by the same token is able to ground a sufficiently fluid politics of identity/difference that might warrant the cultural redemption of the subaltern.’ (1999: 374). For the Creoles of Mauritius, hybrids par excellence, hybridity has not yet become a counter-concept to hegemony and is rarely invoked as such because Mauritian society is still affected by essentialist discourses, and dominant groups treat hybridity as ‘a threat to the fullness of selfhood [and] as the moral marker of contamination, failure or regression.’ (Papastergiadis 1997: 257). The Mauritian poet, Ramesh Ramdoyal (1985) has pondered Mauritians’ concern with roots and cultural purity in a selection of poems indicating (in the excerpt presented above, for example), the struggle of some who do not want to ‘look back’ or to ascertain their origins, but to live in the present with all its ambiguities.1 However, as argued in this book, Mauritians are obsessed by the past and see it as a source of identity, stability, meaning and solace. The non-invocation of hybridity is also often encouraged by a Westernised discussion of culture (Eriksen 2001) in which identities are treated as bounded and primordial. Thus, even though some Mauritians would like to publicly portray themselves as people who eat curry, dance sega and celebrate the Chinese New Year, they are often trapped in culture ‘grids’ created by the state, and, with 205

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time, have come to see such ‘political essentialism[s]’ (Hall 1997) as normal.2 Below, I discuss various forms of hybridity in Mauritius, arguing that while influenced by colonial constructions (Comaroff 2001) views of hybridity are increasingly shaped by experiences of modernisation and globalisation. For example, for a few Mauritians hybridity indicates positive syncretism and social resilience rather than contamination.

Positive Hybridity? Various interpretations of hybridity in the society are challenging the dominant view of this concept3 and are helping Creoles to challenge the imposition of le malaise Créole. A major factor influencing views of hybridity is that Mauritius is today a post-colonial society. This means that while Mauritius is still influenced by the legacy of colonialism, other transnational social forces and communities, not necessarily connected to colonialism, now influence local social reality. However, this recent relationship is not uncomplicated, for while transnational communities and peoples may acknowledge the fact of their hybridity their perceptions are still heavily influenced by dominant (Westernised) conceptualisations of authenticity, culture and homelands, all of which are profoundly anti-hybrid. Nevertheless, challenges to Euro-American domination in the twentieth century have meant that there is more opportunity (among those previously colonised) for subjective interpretations and assertions of identity. Western modernisation and globalisation also offer such individuals myriad forms of identity and belonging, which may in turn challenge dominant interpretations of hybridity and community. Moreover, modernisation and globalisation have brought such groups (like the Creoles) closer to people in similar situations living elsewhere. These changes allow for the circulation of a wide range of ideas and social meanings. Such hybridisation is also apparent in Mauritian society in the music of the Bhojpuri Boys or in the syncretic music of Cassiya, Group Natir and others. Hybridisation is most apparent in the dialect Kreol, where Hindi, Portuguese, French and English words are found, and where, Benoit (1985) tells us, the sentence construction and old riddles of the dialect are of Swahili origin. These mean that not all Mauritians reject hybridity and hybridisation. However, I would argue that such a response is possible for those who have access to particular forms of prestige and power in Mauritian society, resources which, ironically, are to be found among those considered by the dominant to be part of homogeneous groups. In other words: members of the middle-class, Hindu or straight-hair and fair-skinned, educated people – those who can afford to be cosmopolitan (open to difference) without becoming hybrid (embracing difference). Continued material and particularly, non-material effects of colonialism, make it difficult for Creoles (especially Créole Morisyen) to invoke a positive hybridity. 206

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Public articulations of cultural origins (in public rituals and symbols) as counterpoints to the destabilising and polluting impact of hybridisation through culture contact, the sponsoring of ethnic centres and ethno-nationalist politics makes it hard for Creoles to develop a positive discourse on hybridity. Carpooran (2002) hints at this difficulty by arguing that the public discourse on Creole identity in the late 1990s is a result of Creole intellectual (if not middle-class) efforts. One might argue that it is easier to accept the rootedness/purity/homeland discourses than it is to challenge powerful pronouncements on hybrids and hybridity. However, only some middle-class Creoles are searching for their African roots. This largely because of the racial dilemma posed by acknowledging their black ancestry versus obtaining an identity through acknowledging their roots. Among many ‘ordinary’ working-class Creoles whom I met in Mauritius (particularly in Flacq, Karina and to a certain extent Chamarel), there was a greater tendency to occupy multi-layered, multi-faceted positionalities. Day-to-day existence required it and it was possible because they were aware of and took possession of the range of possible lives ‘open’ to them. For these people, le malaise Créole was not perceived as a major issue, because they were ready to exploit their hybrid heritage and to perceive opportunities in being a multi-faceted family or individual. However, these individuals and families are few. Dramatic social and economic change on the island in the last twenty years has left many ‘persuaded of a need to confirm a collective sense of identity … in the face of economic, political or other forces’ (Wilmsen and McAllister 1996: ix.). In many instances this has encouraged the reaffirmation of ties to a homeland as a means of establishing where one ‘truly’ belongs. Allegiances elsewhere have been a cause for concern among Mauritian leaders in the last 30 years. They have had to encourage the inhabitants to establish a ‘metaphoric kinship’ (Eriksen 2002: 107) with the state. Until recently this has been possible for the dominant Hindu group because the state was led by a Hindu, and came to be seen (by non-Hindus) as working in the interest of Hindus. But long after independence and despite such encouragements, people of Hindu descent encouraged by religious interpretations of purity and meaning tended to maintain a stronger tie with India and depended on it as a source of rootedness and power. Juxtaposed with and separated from their motherland, the land they now occupied (Mauritius) was an impure land or space that had to be ritually purified through the maintenance of strict ethnic boundaries and cultural traditions. For some, Hindu nationalist discourses have reinforced these initial views of Mauritius. Those born of the land, of mixed heritage and not seeking to purify themselves also came to be seen as impure. Thus to unravel perceptions and experiences of hybridity in post-colonial states further research is required on the exact manner in which local identity is influenced by identity discourses elsewhere. In the case of Creoles, that ‘elsewhere’ is not just India. European ideas about class and progress also need to be examined as a possible source of negative views on hybridisation. This was evident in the different approach of outsiders to those 207

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living in Roche Bois and the River Camp where progress is equated with homogenisation or sameness. Outsiders (and wealthier residents in Roche Bois) often viewed the poor living in the River Camp as those who did not fit in with the dominant (European) vision of development, modernity and suburbia. The importance of economic status to homogenisation explains, in part, why some women in Flacq and Roche Bois can partake in social exchange with ethnically different ‘others’, while poorer women elsewhere find it difficult to do the same.4 Some authors (see Eriksen 1998, Srebnik 1999) argue that Mauritians in general are tolerant of hybridity and that this is evident in their cosmopolitan behaviour. I would argue that is not apparent among all, at least not to the same degree. Cosmopolitan behaviour requires being ‘comfortable’ with one’s core identity, having the necessary resources to explore a different identity or having the courage to purposefully extend one’s ethnic network in an ethnically conservative society. Difficulties in expressing or celebrating hybridity and in fact, accepting who they are, has meant that in general, many Creoles are succumbing to the invocation of homeland discourses as a means of establishing their identity. When the Rodriguais and the Ilois invoke their homelands (or publicly expressing their ‘homesickness’) they do so ‘comfortable’ in the knowledge that they are contributing to the (dominant) pluralist discourse of the Mauritian state. For some Créole Morisyen, the perceived lack of a ‘homeland’ produces a profound sense of not having an identity and not belonging anywhere. This is compounded by the fact that Creoles, in general, continue to be treated as a residual group, assumed to be a pool of consumers or voters who have no allegiance to anything or anyone because they are hybrids. However, while there is still some doubts about ethnic tolerance and accommodation in Mauritius among the young generation of Creoles emerging in the twenty-first century, it is apparent that this generation is more open to a wide range of identities and forms of self-expression. This generation seems to be adopting a more cosmopolitan approach in their self definition.

Hegemony in Mauritius The ability of a younger generation to take advantage of cosmopolitanism or to celebrate hybridity depends on the extent to which they experience social and political constraint in Mauritian society. It is already apparent (especially as Mauritius becomes more of a democratic society) that it is not easy for any group to establish ‘permanent hegemony’. Instead, what one finds is a ‘discursive hegemony’ (Hall 1992), in which, as Bayat (2000: 542) has argued, there is no ‘universalized form of struggle’. Resistance to historical and contemporary forms of oppression on the island finds expression in: music, lyrics, dance, public protest and ‘hidden acts’ of sabotage and solidarity. There are also unconscious challenges 208

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to hegemonic values. People living in Flacq, for example, buy things and have parties because it makes them feel good or modernised, or because they perceive a practical need for these things. However, dominant (Hindu and FrancoMauritians) sometimes perceive these acts as contradictory to what they consider ideal behaviour and value orientations. Creoles also challenge the status quo by participating in and contributing to ethnic rituals (Divali, Cavadee and the Chinese New Year) which are not ‘theirs’. By doing this, they consistently challenge ethnic boundaries and subvert dominant ideas about groups and categories on the island. Yet, as shown in various chapters of this book, challenges to hegemonic rule does not necessarily mean that there is greater equality in a society. Those who are part of a ‘discursive hegemony’ are not equally empowered. For instance, although many people in Le Morne are opposed to plans for the construction of a cable car and associated tourist infrastructure on Mount Le Morne, they lack the economic and political resources to stop the developers. Similarly, the Creoles in Le Morne do not have enough political clout to challenge the homogenisation of the Creoles’ past at the hands of writers and politicians, intent on presenting a particular image of Creoles for political and other reasons. Viewed differently, it is also possible to argue that some Creoles living in places such as Le Morne and Chamarel want these portrayals because in the long run, they think that it will bring material and political compensation to them. However, the social and cultural picture in Mauritius is becoming more interesting and complicated. In Karina, local residents are struggling with outsiders’ perception of them as rural and backward, and yet they are engaging with modernity and dominance in various ways, indicating their multi-layered identities and their growing self-confidence in the democratic state. Other social forces (such as the feminisation of labour) assist Karina residents and facilitate their engagement with modernity, therefore contributing to the interaction within the hegemony in Mauritian society, by introducing more options and more diversity. The empowerment of women is also having another effect. It is leading to the homogenisation of women as members of a particular gender as opposed to them being members of a particular ethnic group. This is less apparent in Karina than it is in Flacq and Roche Bois, partly because, in Karina there are specific dynamics (such as history and location) that emphasise the ethnicity of the residents rather than their particular subjective identities. Thus, gender and ethnicity are linked.

Le Malaise Créole The degree of hybridity in Mauritian society appears to make it difficult to defend the view that le malaise Créole is a condition of being hybrid in a society that devalues hybridity. But while hybridity exists, it is not yet a powerful force to be 209

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reckoned with, leading those who are hybrid to feel ‘left out’ or, feeling that they do not belong. Hybridisation in Mauritian society also appears to make it difficult to explain the renewed interest in primordial identity on the island. Addressing the second issue first, I would argue that there is no renewed interest but rather the reactivation of an old interest in primordiality among dominant groups. This is apparent in Chamarel and Le Morne where the recent identification of heritage sites has become a means to homogenise Creoles and harden ethnic boundaries. Prior to the 1990s, dominant groups in Mauritius did not have sufficient economic and political resources to invest in heritage projects and, so, attempts at homogenisation occurred at a local level in less visible arenas. Plus, existing economic hardships meant that most were immediately concerned with survival in physical and economic terms. By the late 1990s, the rate and level of economic development led some to believe that such immediate concerns had been addressed. Attention now had to be given to the impact of modernity on society, which was seen (see Miller 1994), as destabilising. Similarly, before the 1980s there were public rituals but there were not enough resources to publicise them as extensively as they are today. Pilgrimages to the holy lake, the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and Chinese New Year celebrations are major public events in which the public and private sectors and the media are now involved. These public rituals are meant to emphasise cultural homogeneity, but in some instances, they also create the impression of economic homogeneity. For example, wealthier Hindu families tend to have more elaborate light-decorations on their houses, more outfits made, and share more ornate delicacies with their neighbours while celebrating Divali than poorer Hindus, who tend to celebrate the festival of light privately. Thus, further research needs to be done on the extent to which there is class homogeneity as opposed to ethnic homogeneity in Mauritius. Nevertheless, the emphasis on ethnic homogeneity in Mauritius and the fact of Creoles’ hybridity is a major contributor to le malaise Créole. As Anthias (2001) says (from the perspective perhaps of those considered subaltern), ‘it could be argued that the acid test of hybridity lies in the response of culturally dominant groups, not only terms of incorporating (or coopting) cultural products of marginal or subordinate groups but in being open to transforming and abandoning some of their own central cultural symbols.’5 (2001: 630). Adding to this, I would also argue that, in a society such as Mauritius, identities are not fixed. Hybrid people like the Creoles will vacillate along a social continuum between primordialism and hybridity, particularly in a society that places value on the former and also because Creoles are now part of a world in which there is greater acceptance of hybridisation. Moreiras (1999: 377) argues that, ‘identities are dialogically constructed within a structure of power. Hegemony and subalternity are two major players in this scenario: hegemony with the power of allocating meaning, subalternity as a relentless place of contestation and reallocation of meaning.’ It is easy when unravelling le malaise Créole to lapse into essentialist interpretations of culture and 210

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identity. How else can one explain that Creoles, who had similar experience to many other Mauritians, did not manage to take advantage of the economic development that Mauritius has recently experienced? Some Mauritians (including middle-class Creoles) have attempted to argue that it is because Creoles have specific, deeply embedded values, which they did not challenge. In this book, I have argued that Creoles, being hybrids in a society that devalues hybridity, have experienced many difficulties in their attempts to take advantage of social, political and economic opportunities in Mauritius since independence. Whether Mauritians (including middle-class Creoles) will recognise the extent to which most of them promote the discourse of origins, and the impact it has on Mauritians of mixed-descent, remains to be seen. Presently, and as Moreiras (1999) argues, part of ‘The problem is elsewhere, and cannot be circumscribed to the subjective terrain.’ (1999: 377). Further empirical investigation and theorisation is required of the ‘elsewhere’ that influences Mauritian identities and shapes local reality. In my opinion, the ‘resolution’ of le malaise Créole depends on whether Mauritians can learn to accept the past and re-think hybridity. As Bogues (2003: 20) argues, this is ‘not only a semiotic challenge but also, importantly, a battle for human validation.’

Notes 1. ‘Often, too often, the past calls to me, even if I’m in a hurry and I don’t want to go back, its shadow falls on my path.’ Souvent Trop Souvent, A poem by Ramesh Ramdoyal (1985). 2. Mainly because (1) these came from the state, which was perceived by the ethnic majority as inherently benevolent, and with which they shared a ‘metaphoric kinship’ (Eriksen 2001) (2) these essentialisms also mirrored the generally observable plurality of Mauritian society and (3) for some, they offered opportunities to access power and resources. 3. See for example, Benjamin Moutou’s comment that, ‘Les Créoles, [sont] victimes d’une société de regards’ (Barbeau, Week-End, 20 February 2000). 4. It also provides a more distinct interpretation of the phrase ‘Créole-fer-blanc’ (Creole-wannabewhite), which at first glance suggests a racial desire when it is also an economic one. 5. Her emphasis retained.

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Le Défi Plus ‘Plan d’action contre la pauvreté. Cohésion sociale et integration de tous uisées’. Le Défi Plus 1 September 2001.

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Week-end Patel, L. 1999. Week-end 24 January 1999. ‘Ally Lazer: “Il faut savoir comprendre le toxicomane”’. Week-end 27 June 1999. ‘Nicolas Von Mally: “Maurice, tigre de l’océan Indien, avec Rodrigues, chat de goutières à ses côtés’’’. Week-end 27 June 1999. Benoit, N., 1999 ‘L’Après-emancipation à l’île Maurice (1839 -1911)’. Week-end (Le Dimanche) 27 June 1999; 4 July 1999; 11 July 1999; 25 July 1999. ‘Journaux en Créole à la MBC depuis jeudi’. Week-end 4 July 1999. ‘Déclaration Communale’. Week-end 25 July 1999. ‘Industrie sucrière à Maurice “highly vulnerable” à des changements climatiques’. Weekend 4 July 1999. Martial, G. ‘Affaire Kaya: un brouillard à couper’. Week-end 11 July 1999. ‘L’Ecole de la briquetterie: un nouveau look, une nouvelle pédagogie’. Week-end 11 July 1999. ‘Démonstration pratique de la méthode de ravanne de menwar’. Week-end 21 July 1999. ‘Lancement d’une école de ravanne à la cité briquetrie’. Week-end 8 August 1999. ‘Chagos: l’affaire Bancoult – La Grande-Bretagne face à un dilemme cette semaine’. Week-end 8 August 1999. ‘La batterie de l’harmonie à Rivière Noire: une morne destinée’. Week-end 8 August 1999. Antoine, J-C. ‘La Bombe Rodriguaise’. Week-end 8 August 1999.

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‘Maurice est un petit pays qui ne peut se permettre le luxe de divisions internes’. Weekend 8 August 1999. ‘Squatting des Rodriguais à Maurice … Il faut créer les conditions pour empêcher l’immigration des Rodriguais vers Maurice’. Week-end 8 August 1999. Martial, G. ‘Décédé vendredi soir dans une cellule de l’hôpital de la prison: aucune indication de foul play dans la mort de Bacorillal, conduit l’autopsie pratiquée par le dr Satish Boolell’. Week-end 15 August 1999. ‘Pêche artisanale: le casier en fibre de verre: une toute nouvelle industrie qui promet?’ Week-end 15 August 1999. ‘Roche Bois, six mois apres les émeutes: ‘Ici rien n’a changé!’ Week-end 22 August 1999. ‘Quand l’education contribue à perpétuer l’exclusion’. Week-end 22 August 1999. ‘La gestion des parcs marins de balaclava et de blue bay: plongeon dans le grand vide!’ Week-end 22 August 1999. ‘Intégrité territoriale: l’intervention du vice-premier ministre à l’ONU sur les Chagos eus cité polémique dans les organisations iloises’. Week-end 3 October 1999. ‘Amène to ros’. Week-end 3 October 1999. ‘Unequal Opportunities’. Week-end 3 October 1999. ‘Un millier d’etudiants mauriciens à l’école des droits humains’. Week-end 3 October 1999. ‘Equal Opportunities Act oui, mais justice toujours attendue après la mort de Kaya et Berger Agathe’. Week-end 17 October 1999. ‘Une formule révolutionnaire pour combattre la pauvreté’. Week-end 17 October 1999. ‘Les Chagossiens exilés représentés par l’avocat de Nelson Mandela et de Steve Biko’. Week-end 31 October 1999. ‘MMM: 30 ans de combat – du militantisme romantique à l’alternance socialedémocrate’. Week-end 31 October 1999. ‘Séminaire international sur l’interculturel aujourd’hui’. Week-end 31 October 1999. ‘Brûlant Appel’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Martial, G. ‘Festival Créole à Rodrigues: une semaine à revivre sa culture, sa tradition et son histoire’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Martial, G. ‘Festival Kreol ’99 des Seychelles: l’Archipel Rend Hommage aux Ancêtres’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Patel, S. ‘Journée Internationale de l’être créole ou de la langue créole?’ Week-end 7 November 1999. ‘Le mouvement solidarité chrétien invite à la découverte du kwanza’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Lebrasse, J. ‘Les dynasties en politique, une tradition à Maurice’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Patel, S. ‘Nous sommes trop fermés comme lieu intellectuel et culturel’. Week-end (Le Dimanche) 7 November 1999. ‘Uteem et Ramgoolam demandent aux jeunes de s’inspirer des grandes valeurs de la coolitude’. Week-end 7 November 1999. Meetarbhan, R. ‘Signaux de fumée’. Week-end 14 November 1999. ‘Au Morne: protestations contre le projet de téléphérique’. Week-end 5 December 1999. Prudence, A. Week-end 9 January 2000. 230

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A advocacy, advocate, 13, 19–20, 31, 90, 219, 221 ancestors, ancestor veneration, ancestral, xv, 13, 43, 45, 48–49, 54–55, 69, 101, 149, 165, 170, 194, 197, 217. See also All Saints Day Anthias, Floya, 5, 10–11, 66, 68, 135, 144, 210, 213 anthropology, xvii, 14–17, 19–23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 213–26 anthropological research, xx, 1, 18, 41, 43. See also multi–sited fieldwork black anthropologists, 1, 16–17 ethnography, xvii–xviii, 5, 22–23, 47, 169, 217, 219–21 and gender identity, 15, 21- 22, 24 at home, xvii–xviii, 1, 14–21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 58–59, 62, 64–65, 72, 100–101, 115, 120, 130, 132, 137, 143–145, 152, 162, 171, 177, 180, 188, 220–21, 223 participant observation, xviii, 21–22, 24, 80, 137 in southern Africa, 1, 18, 21, 218, 225 authenticity, 115, 117, 126, 147, 179, 192, 206, 225 B Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ix, 9, 193 Berenger, Paul, 31–32, 143, 193 Boissevain, Jeremy, xx, 215 C Chamarel, vii–viii, xiii, xix–xx, 4, 8, 21, 30, 34–36, 67, 79, 122–23, 131, 141, 169–93, 195, 197, 199, 201–203, 207, 209–210, 227, 232 Chan Low, Jocelyn, 5, 46, 74, 216, 229 charismatic sessions, 92, 103 Charlot, xv, 109–112, 117, 124 Charlot clan, 109–110. See also Karina children, vii–viii, 26, 33, 35–37, 46, 50, 56–57, 73, 85, 87–88, 90, 94, 97, 101–104, 108, 111, 113–14, 116, 118–20, 124, 127–28, 130, 132, 143, 149, 152–58, 161–62, 164–65, 176, 180, 182–83, 188–89, 199, 201, 224, 232 childhood, 15, 77, 113–15, 174, 199 children and black magic, 86,116 education of, 32, 37, 87, 93, 97, 101–102, 119–20, 130, 188, 215, 219

inheritance and children, 127 Christianity, xviii, 3, 42, 69–73, 79, 84, 87, 89–91 civil society, 12, 121, 220, 225 civil associations, 101–102 class, 13, 15, 24, 32–33, 46–48, 51, 62, 66–67, 79, 84, 90, 95, 104–106, 118, 120, 133–34, 142, 144, 156, 167, 184, 207, 210, 213, 217, 221, 224, 226 lower-class, 58, 87, 224 middle-class, 3, 9, 16, 47, 52, 57, 60, 67, 104, 128, 136, 140, 156–57, 166, 206–207, 211 under-class, 46, 156–57, 170, 225 working class, 46, 67, 90, 118, 142, 224, 226 Cohen, Robin, 5, 66, 136, 147–49, 216 communalism, 30, 33, 71, 102, 165, 193, 222 unity in diversity, 8, 136, 167 conservatism, 20–21, 176 consumption, xviii, 3, 9, 51, 60, 76, 78–80, 90, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103, 121–23, 151–52, 179–80, 192, 221–22 and prestige, xviii, 13, 41–42, 60, 75–77, 79–80, 86–87, 89–96, 99, 101, 103, 122–23, 127–29, 133, 142, 152, 182, 206 Creoles, vii, xvii–xx, 1–17, 19, 22–24, 27–28, 30, 32, 34–35, 37–39, 41–75, 78–79, 83–118, 120, 123, 126–29, 133–37, 139–40, 147–51, 154, 157, 159–61, 164–65, 167, 170–71, 174–79, 184, 187–88, 190–93, 195, 197–99, 201–202, 205–211, 220 Black Creole, 1, 36, 56 Créole Madras, 46–47 Créole Morisyen, 42, 46–56, 84, 142, 146, 148–51, 165–66, 170–71, 191–92, 194, 206, 208 Créole Sinwa, 46–47 Creoleness, 5, 64, 174, 214 Ti–Créole, 47 creolization, 11, 75, 79, 91, 223 Eriksen on creolization, 11 culture, xviii, 2, 8, 10, 12, 14, 20, 23, 26, 29, 44–45, 52, 63–64, 68, 74–76, 103, 105, 108–109, 117, 133, 136, 144, 148–50, 158, 165, 168, 171, 193–94, 202, 205–207, 210, 213–20, 223–26, 228, 230–31 cultural traditions, 37, 45, 52, 54, 192–93, 207

233

Index lack of, xvii, 5, 36, 38, 64, 94, 111, 119, 124, 154, 170, 188, 208 memory of, 8, 170, 197–98, 222, 224 performance of, 8, 62, 64–65, 73–74, 190 D democracy, democratisation, votes, 1–2, 14, 56, 159, 162 diaspora, xix, 4–5, 9, 14, 16, 54, 66–68, 76, 147, 150, 159, 167, 213, 216, 219, 223, 225 drugs, viii, 39, 90, 122, 158–64, 176, 181, 198, 201 alcoholism, 4, 92, 120 in Chamarel, viii, xx, 4, 21, 30, 34, 36, 67, 123, 169–73, 175–92, 202, 210 cocaine, heroin, 198 ganja, 67, 107, 121–24, 127, 133–34, 159, 172, 176, 179–84, 188–89, 191, 198, 228 stress, 32, 34, 45, 85, 90, 97, 106, 164 substance abuse, 59 Duval, Gäetan, 29, 66, 128, 229, 231 E education, viii, ix, 24, 32, 37–39, 47–48, 60, 71, 87, 93, 95, 97, 101–102, 119–20, 127, 130, 132, 157, 162, 188, 215, 219, 230 CPE, ix, 37, 39, 101, 228 illiteracy, 119 private tuition, 37, 120 star schools, 37, 101 technological literacy, 35 Eriksen, Thomas, xvii, 2, 5–6, 11, 14, 25, 35, 41–42, 44, 46, 48, 55, 58–60, 68, 76, 124, 147, 170, 205, 207–208, 211, 217 on Creole ethnicity, 14 on Mauritius, 8–10, 17, 27, 35–36, 38, 42, 44, 59, 67, 79, 107, 133, 138, 149, 194, 214, 228 essentialism, essentialist, 7, 12–14, 22, 69, 161, 193, 205–206, 210 ethnicity, xviii, xx, 2–3, 5, 10, 12, 14, 16, 22, 25, 30, 43, 46, 48, 51, 54, 60, 66, 74, 79–80, 84, 88, 104, 106, 123, 132, 175–76, 190, 193, 201, 209, 213–14, 216–18, 224–26 ethnic groups, 7–8, 12, 25, 27, 30–31, 37, 39, 42–44, 67, 73, 76, 88, 100, 102, 106, 126, 160, 165, 171, 193, 214–15, 220, 225 ethnic tourism, 61, 191, 213, 226 hair matters, 57 situational identity, 10 Eurocentrism, Eurocentric, 6, 17 F family, xv, xix, 1, 15, 19–22, 24, 27–28, 32–33, 39, 49, 51, 53–54, 56, 58–61, 65, 77–78, 80, 84–87, 89, 94–98, 100–101, 107–11, 113, 115–16, 118–19, 121–23, 126–30, 132–34, 138–39, 143–45, 149, 153–54, 157–59, 164, 166, 172, 174, 176–79, 182–84, 188, 199, 201, 207, 216, 218, 220, 225–26, 232. See also extended households extended, 20, 59, 63, 80, 94–96, 105, 107, 128, 138, 145 matrifocal, 53, 58–59, 225 nuclear, 59–60, 95

fishermen, 34, 59, 122, 139, 199 in Chamarel, viii, xx, 4, 21, 30, 34, 36, 67, 123, 169–73, 175–92, 202, 210 fish-traps, viii, 34, 200 in Le Morne, xix, 4, 21, 34, 36, 169–71, 174–76, 179–85, 187, 192–95, 197–199, 201–202, 209–210 Flacq, vii, xii, xviii–xix, 3–4, 20–22, 27, 30, 33, 36–37, 47, 50, 58, 60, 68, 72, 75, 77–111, 113–16, 119–20, 122, 125–27, 129, 132, 134, 146, 149, 161, 166, 175, 207–209 Fog Olwig, Karen, 135, 218 fundamentalism, 7 fundamentalist, 9 Islamic fundamentalism, 7 G gender, ix, 13, 15, 17, 21–22, 24, 32–33, 35–37, 48, 104, 106, 118, 123, 132–34, 138, 209, 213, 222, 226 conservatism, 176 employment of women, 149. See also working women feminism, 32, 121, 215, 220 in Flacq, 104 gender relations, 118 in Karina, 133 matrifocal communities, 53 matrifocal families, 58 patriarchy, 65, 118, 120, 123, 127, 132, 141, 149 and poverty 37 women and civil associations, 102 gens de couleur, 30, 46, 56, 62, 66, 84, 89 gift–giving, 129 globalisation, 5, 12, 19–20, 103, 206, 218, 220 globalising identities, 16 H health, 32, 86, 98, 103, 134, 157 clinical depression 134n healer-diviners, 116 mental Illness, 134 stress, 32, 34, 45, 85, 90, 97, 106, 164 hegemony, 3, 5, 10–12, 14, 25, 27, 38–39, 104, 205, 208–10, 217 discursive hegemony, 10, 208–209 hegemonic formations, xx, 25, 66 hegemonies, xviii, 12 heterogeneity, 29, 80, 167 hierarchy, xviii–xix, 3–4, 24, 29, 43, 46, 66, 89, 103, 105, 140, 142, 166–67, 170, 202, 216, 220 homeland, xix, 4–5, 11, 67, 76, 103, 136, 138, 142, 146–48, 150–51, 156, 159–60, 164–67, 170, 207–208 and colonial discourse, 222 homeland discourse, 67, 146, 148, 151, 156 and Rodrigues, 4, 39, 41–42, 45–46, 48, 62, 136, 138, 143–44, 149–51, 158, 168 and rootedness, 7, 126, 148, 192, 207 homogeneity, homogenisation, homogenise, xviii, 2, 7–8, 11, 13–14, 28, 30, 36, 55, 74–75, 90, 103, 106, 112–13, 115–17, 132, 166–67, 170, 193, 202, 208–210

234

Index Hookoomsing, Vinesh, 5, 42, 66, 218, 220 hotels, 24, 28, 34, 64, 84, 107, 131, 171, 174, 181, 185, 188–90, 192, 197–98, 202 and beaches, 34 and construction, 23, 34, 96, 147, 206 and employment, 30, 33, 35, 46, 71, 83, 95, 118, 149, 170, 186 and heritage, 2, 7, 12, 44–45, 55, 58, 106, 165, 171, 193–95, 202, 207, 210, 224 and pollution, 20, 149 and tourism, 8, 11, 14, 33, 48, 96, 139, 166, 170, 185–87, 190–95, 197, 202, 213, 216, 220 hybridity, xvii–xviii, 2, 5–7, 10–14, 44, 54–55, 80, 104, 148, 193–94, 201, 205–211, 218, 222–26 hybrid spaces, 24 hybridisation, xvii, 11–12, 68, 91, 167, 202, 206–207, 210 hybrids, xx, 76, 170, 205, 207–208, 211 I Ilois, 34, 42, 46–48, 52–55, 87, 135–36, 139–40, 142, 148, 150–51, 160, 164–67, 170, 208 and Bancoult, Olivier, 53, 54,164,166 and BIOT (British Indian Ocean Territory), ix, 53, 223 and British Government, 164 in Chagos islands, 54, 140 and CRG (Chagos Refugee Group), 53, 164, 166 in Diego Garcia, 166 in Port Louis, 33–35, 49, 53, 70, 74, 105, 126, 136–37, 142, 155, 164, 175, 182, 193, 231–32 immigration, 138, 167, 194, 230 emigrants, 129, 135–136. See also Malawi immigrants, 17, 25–26, 82, 193–194 migrants, xix, 9, 35, 49, 135–136, 141, 143–44, 146, 149, 152, 156, 218, 223, 226–27 See also foreign workers, 134 industrialisation, xix, 2, 14, 25, 35, 38, 103, 126, 137, 149, 175, 222 construction industry, 114, 123, 125 cottage Industries, 98 textile industry, xviii, 3, 28, 34, 80, 96-99, 108, 118 tourism industry, 11, 37, 61, 63, 130, 171, 185–86, 192 trade, 33, 37, 94 J Jugnauth, Pravin, 29 K Karina, vii, xix–xx, 3–4, 7, 20–21, 30, 36–37, 79, 102, 105–34, 149, 161, 166, 207, 209 L land, xix, 4, 7, 13, 25–27, 34, 41, 78, 94, 96, 105–111, 113, 119–21, 124–27, 133, 138, 164–65, 172–74, 177, 179, 183, 185, 189, 192, 195, 202, 207, 215, 224 dispossession, 2 and hotel construction. See also hotels, 34 land possession, 172–73 landlessness, 35–37, 98

M magic, 86, 92–93, 115–16 exorcism, 92 spirit possession, 115 les passes, 86, 115 treatment of, xix, 35, 55, 57, 68, 115, 133, 194 marriage, 26, 36, 45, 52, 54, 58, 68, 84, 103, 113, 126, 129, 132, 142, 158, 222. See also marrying white, 105, 108–109, 111, 129, 133, 145, 151, 153 masculinity, 90, 113, 120, 122–25, 178–79, 217 and employment, 30, 33, 35, 46, 71, 83, 95, 118, 149, 170, 186 hunting, hunters. See also hunting and conservation, 43, 35, 78, 98, 117, 121–24, 134, 172, 175–79, 186–87 in Chamarel, viii, xx, 4, 21, 30, 34, 36, 67, 123, 169–73, 175–92, 202, 210 in Karina, xix, 4, 37, 105, 107–33, 207, 209 smoking, 67, 90, 122, 127, 134, 181 Mauricianisme, 31, 193 Mauritian government, 32, 48, 53, 138, 140, 146, 166 Mauritians, xix-xx, 1, 3–4, 8, 11–12, 16–22, 24–25, 28–35, 37–38, 45–46, 49, 55, 57–60, 63, 68, 70, 74–75, 78–79, 81–82, 84, 93, 96–97, 99, 103–104, 106, 111, 124, 128, 133–34, 140–42, 146, 148, 150, 157, 164, 167, 170, 172, 185, 192–95, 205–206, 208, 211 Franco-Mauritians, 6, 22, 34, 46, 62, 66, 70, 81, 99, 104, 120, 148, 157, 170, 209 Indo-Mauritians, 29, 60, 81, 84, 108, 119 Sino-Mauritians, 83 memory, 8, 65, 112, 170–71, 194, 197–98, 213, 218, 220, 222, 224–25 memory–making, 194,197,198. See also homelands, 8-9, 112, 130-32, 141,170-71, 187 modernity, modernisation, xviii, xx, 3, 15–16, 20–21, 52, 78–79, 85, 97, 103–104, 106–107, 115–16, 118, 121, 123–24, 126, 129, 132–33, 149, 159–60, 166, 206, 208–10, 214, 217, 219–24 Le Morne, vii–viii, xiii, xix, 4, 8, 21, 34, 36, 79, 131, 141, 169–77, 179–87, 189, 191–99, 201–203, 209–210, 227–28, 230 Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), ix, 31–32, 39, 65, 189, 227, 230 multiculturalism, 8, 49, 218–19, 227 N nationalism, 7, 9, 76, 118, 167, 213–14, 217, 226 Hindu nationalism, See also baitkas, 7, 9, 118, 214, 226 Hindu power, 28 Malaise Hindoue, 14, 228 Nas and Nasyon, 68, 76, 84 nation, 8, 31, 66, 68, 76, 214, 224, 228, 231 nation building, 8 P Papastergiadis, Nico, xvii, 6, 10, 13, 147, 205, 223 on hybridity, 7, 104, 201, 207–208 Parti Travailliste (PTr), ix, 157, 189 Pattullo, Polly, 185, 223

235

Index Père Laval, 70, 74–75, 85 pigs, 35, 116, 136, 140, 142–46, 149, 165, 167, 176–77 and homeland, 4, 146, 148, 150, 160, 165–67 and urbanisation, 124, 167 in Roche Bois, viii, xix, 4, 30, 33, 35–36, 39, 48–49, 53, 59, 79, 92, 100, 102, 114, 135–51, 153, 156–57, 159–64, 166–67, 208–209 Port Louis, vii, xii, 4, 7, 33–36, 46, 48–49, 53, 67, 70, 72, 74, 81, 105, 126, 135–37, 139–42, 145–46, 154–55, 157, 159, 164–65, 175, 182, 193, 213, 215–18, 221–22, 225, 231–32 postcolonial existence, postcolonial society, postcolonial states, postcolonial identity, xvii, 4, 10 postmodern, postmodernism, 6, 12, 19, 23, 214, 218–19, 225 poststructuralist theory, 6 poverty, xix, 2, 4, 23, 31, 36–37, 70, 90–91, 97, 106, 114, 119, 126, 129, 138, 150, 152, 156–60, 166–67, 175–76, 189, 213, 220, 222, 224–26 culture of poverty, 158, 220, 224, 226 as identity, 6–7, 12, 15, 55, 78, 87, 103, 117, 135, 142, 152, 169, 190 in Roche Bois, viii, xix, 4, 30, 33, 35–36, 39, 48–49, 53, 59, 79, 92, 100, 102, 114, 135–51, 153, 156–57, 159–64, 166–67, 208–209 and sex work, 155, 158, 164 prestige, xviii, 13, 41–42, 51, 60, 65, 75–77, 79–80, 85–87, 89–97, 99, 101, 103, 113, 121–23, 127–29, 133, 136, 142, 151–52, 182, 206 primordialism, xvii–xix, 2–4, 8, 13, 45, 55, 59, 158, 205, 210, 217

S sega, sega typique, sega tambour, vii, 43, 52, 55, 61–66, 75, 113, 165, 173, 175, 180, 199, 201, 205 and morality, 65, 74, 88 seggae, reggae, rap, 64–68, 73, 75–76, 150, 159, 167, 231 and sexuality, 64 at weddings, 52, 64, 133 slavery, xvii, xix, 2, 4, 7, 9, 13, 26–28, 38, 42–43, 45, 56, 63, 65, 67, 69–70, 75, 78, 89, 94, 106, 109, 127, 170, 193, 223–25 abolition of slavery, xix, 4, 26–28, 69, 94, 106, 193 ex-slaves, 27, 70, 75, 106, 174, 197 slave women, 56 slaves, xvii–xviii, 2–3, 5, 9, 25–27, 38, 42–43, 45, 53–54, 56, 59, 61–63, 65, 69–70, 101, 106, 110, 174, 193, 197–98, 213, 216 social mobility, 2, 20, 60. See also class Srebnik, Henry, xvii, 208, 225 sugar estates, 83–84, 114. See also tablismans constance, 83, 109, 112 fuel, 125

R race, 5, 10, 12, 15, 26, 30, 57, 66, 89, 95, 104–105, 128, 133, 184, 213–14, 217, 219, 221, 225–26 phenotype, 24, 44, 84, 129 racism, 4, 21, 37, 56, 67, 160, 192, 224 Ramgoolam, Navin, 29–31, 45, 53, 176, 220, 230 Ramgoolam, Seewoosagur, 29–31, 45, 53, 176, 220, 230 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), ix, 9 Rastafari, Rastafarianism, 66–68, 159–60, 167, 181 in Chamarel, viii, xx, 4, 21, 30, 34, 36, 67, 123, 169–73, 175–92, 202, 210 and ganja, 67, 121–24, 127, 133–34, 159, 176, 179–82, 189 residual group, 6, 75, 208. See also General Population Rodrigues, xix, 4, 35–36, 39, 41–42, 45–46, 48–49, 62, 136, 138–139, 141, 143–145, 147, 149–151, 154–155, 158–160, 167–168, 227, 229–232 Rodriguais, xix, 4, 35, 39, 42, 46–50, 52–53, 55–56, 59, 135–136, 138, 140–144, 146–152, 154, 156–160, 165–168, 170, 208, 229–230. See also pig–keeping and homelands Roman Catholic Church, Catholicism, Catechism, 1, 48, 62, 69, 80, 88–90, 93, 103–104, 106, 172, 183. See also Cerveaux, Roger, Grégoire, Jocelyn and Souchon, Henri, 1

T taxi-trains, 39, 82 Teelock, Vijaya, 9, 26–27, 42, 45, 61–62, 106, 193, 197, 213, 218, 225 Ti-lambik, 175,179. See also substance abuse, 59 tourism, 8, 11, 14, 33–34, 37, 48, 61–63, 96, 130, 139, 166, 170–71, 173, 179, 185–88, 190–95, 197, 202–203, 213, 216–18, 220–26, 228, 232 eco-tourism, 176, 186–188, 191, 202 tourism in Chamarel 190–92 tourism industry, 11, 37, 61, 63, 130, 171, 185–86, 192 tourism receipts, 34, 185 tourists, 63–64, 68, 81–82, 180, 185–88, 191, 195, 217, 222, 224 U urbanisation, 35, 84, 105–106, 123–24, 140–41, 167 suburbs, 49, 67, 94, 141, 165 urban space, 140–41 urbanisation, 35, 84, 105–106, 123–24, 140–41, 167 and economic growth, 185 and poverty, xvii, 2, 23, 31, 36, 91, 106, 114, 126, 150, 158, 160, 175, 189 rural/urban dichotomy, 106 V Voice of Hindu (VOH), ix, 9 W Werbner, Richard, 5, 218, 223, 225–26 whiteness, 2, 6, 52, 85, 95, 106, 116, 118 blackness, xix, 2, 4, 51, 87, 89–90, 167, 223, 226 discourse of whiteness, 52 marrying white, 2, 127, 130

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