Notes From A Burning House

Mu Sang Sunim took me out to lunch recently at one of our favorite haunts, Sante La Brea. It is just about my favorite place to eat, and it is within walking distance of the Zen Center. (We don’t walk there, though.  In Los Angeles, pedestrians are considered strange.) 

As I tore open a sugar packet, I started reading the back of it.  The turbinado sugar I was about to pour into my coffee was produced, I read, in the country of Mauritius.  I had never heard of Mauritius, but my sugar packet told me it is an island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa known for its lovely beaches.  Later I discovered their amusing tourism site, funny both for its text and some of its posed photographs (go there and click for info on honeymoons). 

The word association that played in my head went like this:  African island à sugar à  COLONY.  It also occurred to me how rare it is to be told where one’s granulated sugar comes from.  How is it that I was reading about this place on my sugar packet today? 

The island has changed hands more times than a ball-point pen.  The Arabs and the Portuguese did not find it worth exploiting, and quickly moved on.  The Dutch introduced sugar cane and African slaves to the island, but the colony withered.  Later, the French East India Company – who were skilled at the word association game themselves – sailed in and built sugar mills.  Much later, the English forced regime change after Port Louis became a haven for pirates, and eventually forced slavery was replaced by wage slavery (and the wage slaves came from China and India as well as Africa).  Mauritius, named for a colonial emperor, is now a parliamentary democracy trying to find ballast in an evolving global economy.  Sugar prices have dipped and swayed nauseatingly, unemployment is up.  Ah, so.  It is no accident that I read about Mauritius on my sugar packet.  They are spreading the word, sweeping up the beaches and putting a fresh coat of blue on the friendly skies - time to harvest a tourist industry. 

There is also an initiative afoot to make Mauritius a “cyber-island.”  If, while reading this drivel, your computer’s operating system conks out and you call the support desk, you might possibly find yourself talking to someone from Mauritius.  That someone could even be a Creole descendant of the island’s original labor force.

     So sail, ye mighty ships, sail on to Mauritius.  We are still in business.  Like it says on the official tourism site, “past and present are smoothly blended together.”  Drink up your coffee and follow this packet to find your fortune. 

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