Travel Teaching in Mauritius
and Madagascar

Armed with laptop, projector and our musical instruments, we set off in mid-January for a six-week teaching trip to Mauritius. The initial reason (or excuse) for the trip was a belated book-launch and signing at the University of Mauritius, since the English version of Jeremy’s book “Letter to the Christians” had been published there a year earlier.

Since marrying some five years ago, we have built up a range of programmes (including music, drama, devotional material and power point presentations) which we have been able to offer to Bahá’í communities in both Europe and Canada, as well as on some of the Scottish islands; this was our first venture into the Southern Hemisphere. While the official administrative language in Mauritius is English, most people are more at ease in French, and so many of our programmes were presented in French, or translated into French or Creole. The majority of the Bahá’í community reflects the ethnic distribution on the island, most of the Bahá’ís being of Indian Hindu background, followed by those of Creole (African/Christian) descent.

We stayed in a fairly basic flat in the Bahá’í Centre in Port Louis, the hottest place on the island. We hadn’t realised the full implications of going there in January/February which is in fact the height of the Mauritian summer, with temperatures around 35 degrees or more. We had no air conditioning in the flat, although two kind Bahá’ís lent us a couple of fans, which droned on night and day and helped to make sleep possible. Cloudy days were a welcome relief, and when the tropical rains swept in we realised why the town was full of wide concrete trenches! Carolyn became acquainted with the joys of cockroaches and ants of varying sizes and colours, and we eventually discovered that Chinese chalk discourages the ants and kills the cockroaches. Despite our best efforts we were frequently bitten by mosquitoes which had a particular preference for Carolyn!

The book-launch was followed by many contacts with Christians throughout the island. Local communities invited their Christian friends and we were amazed by their openness. They were happy to consider the extracts from Bahá’u’lláh’s writings placed in parallel with appropriate extracts from the Bible and none blocked further discussion by stating that there is no path to God except through Christ. After a session on “Letter to the Christians” with a group calling themselves “Young Christians” their leader commented that till then they had heard many general principles from the Bahá’ís but that this was ‘deep theology’ and that they would like to study these things more with the Bahá’ís.

One of the most remarkable moments in our trip was the performance of Carolyn’s musical setting of a selection from the “Hidden Words” of Bahá’u’lláh at the well-attended Sunday Catholic Mass whilst members of the congregation took communion. The Priest is a member of the Interfaith Council of Mauritius and collaborates closely with the Bahá’ís whom he welcomed to the service most warmly.

Taking advantage of the links which local Bahá’ís have established over the years with the wider community, Carolyn was able to visit a number of music schools where she played and talked about her career and her music. One Saturday morning she rehearsed along with the orchestra at the Conservatoire, establishing a relationship which made it possible for the Bahá’ís to use their fine auditorium for a concert at the end of our stay. The very welcome – and, in our experience, rare – air conditioning gave Carolyn an opportunity to perform in a more comfortable environment than she had been experiencing, and the concert also involved a local Bahá’í choir and the Mauritian ‘Diversity Dance Workshop’, comprising fifteen dancers.

We made ‘courtesy visits’ to the Minister for Sport and the Arts and the Minister for Women’s Rights, Child Development, Family Welfare and Consumer Protection! The latter not only presented Carolyn with a magnificent bouquet of flowers, but also promised Homa Mungapen, the NSA’s public relations officer, that she would arrange for a meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister in connection with the situation of the Bahá’ís in Iran.

Jeremy was invited to speak on “The Bahá’í Faith and Christianity” at the Mahébourg Rotary Club in one of the very up-market tourist hotels. One of the Rotarians, an agricultural expert who’d spent most of his life in Africa, had also worked for two years in Iran where his chauffeur had been a Bahá’í. He told us he had learned quite a lot about the Faith from him and greatly respected it and he requested a copy of Jeremy’s book. We also had two press interviews, two radio interviews and recorded material for an hour-long programme of music and interview for a TV cultural programme which took a whole afternoon to record.

Our original plan had been to visit Réunion, the Seychelles and Madagascar. The Seychelles didn’t come up with a plan, and although Réunion did, the epidemic of Chikungunya – a mosquito-borne virus – made a visit inadvisable. And so it was that, armed with malaria pills, we were sent off to Madagascar for a week. Madagascar is classified as being the third poorest country in the world. A small minority of the population is very rich, with the majority being extremely poor and 85% of the population illiterate, this in spite of being well endowed with natural resources.

We spent the first few days in the capital, Tananarive, where we appeared on television for the national news programme (the recording took place in the Bahá’í centre). They apparently ran it two or three times, but we didn’t get to see it.

Carolyn spoke to students of the Germano-Malgache Centre and gave a master-class to the violin students. We also visited the seminary for the training of Protestant clergy and presented them with a copy of “Letter to the Christians” for their Library with a promise of a copy of the French version later.

We then flew to Tulear in the South West (Madagascar is the size of France and Belgium together). Here life is challenging indeed and temperatures extremely hot, around 40 degrees. We gave a concert in the local cinema where it was so hot that the only way Carolyn could attempt to play was to soak her hands in a bucket of ice-cubes between each piece. During the concert there were four power-cuts, plunging the hall into total darkness.

We also made more ‘courtesy visits’ to officials, attended a 19 Day Feast and gave a PowerPoint projection (with, fortunately, no power-cuts) in the yard outside the garage where one of the National Assembly members lives with her three children.

Upon our return to Mauritius we learned that nobody goes to Madagascar without returning with a tummy upset and we were no exception! At the time of writing we think now of the Bahá’ís in Tulear fasting in the 40 degree heat. It’s their summer and of course they only have two seasons, summer and winter.

The Mauritian Bahá’í community is larger on paper than in practice since at various times in the past they have had big teaching projects which were never consolidated, but that still leaves a nucleus of a lot of Bahá’ís who are strong and deepened and thus we were able to have almost five weeks of teaching opportunities virtually every day. We hired a car, which enabled us to move around without depending on the friends for all our comings and goings and gave us a welcome element of independence. As everywhere they are busy with Ruhi; children’s classes and devotional meetings (which we did share in) seem to flourish. We also shared in a deepening on “One Common Faith”.

As is usual with such trips we learned a lot, were quite often out of our comfort zone, but always supported by so many lovely friends and no doubt the Concourse on High!