Tales of Tyre-racing, Makis and M'zungus.

9 décembre 2013

Notre Dame de Fatima

The last big classical concert we had in Mayotte was with the Nomad Baroque group who had come for a few days to play. They had invited the music school classical orchestra as well as several other musicians to play with them, including me. This time,...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:03 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: school, guitar, music, recorder, concert, classical, clarinet, organ, piano

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2 décembre 2013

On the Art of Little Pots

In Mayotte, one of the most useful things you can buy in the local supermarket is a Tupperware (or similar) container. Here, the brand is Eda, so they're Eda containers. They come in all shapes and sizes and are absolutely wonderful. The reason for this...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:30 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: food, rice, supermarket, pasta, sugar, cockroach, flour, fridge, insect, spices, tupperware, weevil

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25 novembre 2013

Whodunnit

I'm working on crime at the moment with my students. In the first lesson, they came up with crime vocabulary in French and looked up the English words in the dictionary. Experience must have spoken because the first words they said were "rape" and "pedophile"....

Posté par calligraphy à 04:30 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: pupils, school, lesson, english, students, burglary, court, crime, fingerprints, pedophile, police, rape, scene, silence, whodunnit

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18 novembre 2013

Striking Teachers.

Before the school holidays, the French authorities started talking about their civil servants. Specifically the civil servants working overseas. As you already know, all French civil servants receive bonuses for working in the French overseas territories...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:10 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, school, teacher, strike, money, euro, room, staff, bonus, civil servant, compensation, distance, headmistress, paper, pension, tax, thousand

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11 novembre 2013

Breton Rock

I've been playing quite a bit of music recently. You see, a group I'd never met and I were hired for a "Breton rock concert" at a bar. We were hired on Sunday. The concert was to be on the following Friday. The group was already formed, and I was supposed...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:59 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, bretons, guitar, music, recorder, test, violin, group, keyboard, improvisation, bass, best, café, drums, rock, transposition

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4 novembre 2013

Chicken wings again

Mayotte is a French department and therefore receives all the French adverts. The TV adverts stay exactly the same, advertising things that haven't made it as far as Mayotte yet, but the paper adverts are tailored to local taste, one might say. You might...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:33 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, chicken wings, mabawas, advertising, telephone, orange

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28 octobre 2013

Dipé Chaoula

A restaurant menu in Mamoudzou's main shopping street. Kebab Today's Special Panini Sandwich Salad Hamberger (complete with spelling mistake) Round Thing Find the odd one out. (And no, the restaurant was closed, so we didn't get to taste it).

Posté par calligraphy à 03:49 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, food, restaurant, dipé chaoula, hamburger, menu, panini, sandwich, shopping street, special, thing, today

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28 octobre 2013

Wedding Dances

Last Saturday, something rather exceptional happened. The Blue Mango, my music group, is followed around by the Dancing Lizards, who are a group of folk dancers who come to all our concerts to dance. One of these dancers is a Comorian lad called Halidi,...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:06 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, food, rice, blue, accordion, guitar, music, mango, pilao, flowers, dance, wedding, violin, jasmine, bride, groom, meat, necklace, salad, samoussa

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21 octobre 2013

Milatsika

P arrived last week, which is the main reason why there was no blog post last Monday. I got the Blue Mango to wake up early and three of us came to fetch him at the airport, flower necklace in hand and instruments out. We certainly amused the people who...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:52 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, guitar, music, del, percussion, singer, abdallah, abou, blues, chiconi, comoros, festival, mauritius, milatsika, musician, tritonik

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7 octobre 2013

Those who can, cook. Those who can't, eat.

I've been teaching my students about food recently, as you saw in the recent blog post about the European classes. They love learning the English words for their local fruit and vegetables: cassava, breadfruit, chicken wings... they're shouting over each...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:25 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, banana, breadfruit, food, tomato, class, school, lesson, pasta, vanilla, yoghurt, hungry, cinnamon, courgette, healthy food, junk food, local, muffin, sausage, shepherd's pie

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