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

20 mai 2013

Kawéni

My school and most of my pupils belong to the village of Kawéni, between Mamoudzou and Majicavo-Lamir. Both village and school have quite a reputation. The village is known for being the starting point of most of the complaints, robberies, strikes and...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:30 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, kawéni, school, people, mangrove, village, clandestine, immigration, mountain, sugar, industrial, roundabout, shack, slum

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6 mai 2013

Salama Djema

Mayotte is made up of two main islands, Grande-Terre and Petite-Terre. Between the two islands, the only means of transport is the ferry, known as the barge. There's even a verb for it: barger. Barging costs 75 centimes for a pedestrian, 2€ for a 50cc...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:53 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: island, airport, lagoon, car, scooter, people, petite terre, barge, euro, ferry, grande terre, pedestrian, salama djema

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18 mars 2013

Moving House

When P and I came to Mayotte on August 15th 2011, we had only known for a short while that we - I, at any rate - would be moving at all. I remember searching the Internet for possible flats or flat shares, hunting all around the area of the island my...

Posté par calligraphy à 04:49 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, flat, sun, philip, cupboard, move, clean, shelves, shutters, tired

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14 janvier 2013

Food Shopping

P went back to France at the beginning of December. At one point, he had to go to the local supermarket to forage for food. He went round the supermarket with his mouth hanging open, so many products were there. So many products, and so many varieties...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, food, expensive, shop, tesco, christmas, money, camembert, cheese, england

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7 janvier 2013

Out of Place

Mayotte is a strange place to live in. On one hand, the country is a French department and has belonged to France for over a hundred years. You can find La Poste and the Conseil Général, every village has a Mairie (town hall) and often a boulangerie (baker's)....

Posté par calligraphy à 03:29 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, car, shop, television, amazon, bakery, customer, land, mainland, post office, product, salespeople, technology

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31 décembre 2012

Scenes in Mayotte

Two Mahorese ladies, decorator and decoratee during a Tourism Committee festival. They draw geometrical figures and flowery shapes on their faces for all sorts of ceremonies, from weddings to end-of-year school parties, generally with a white paste. Sometimes,...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:08 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, box, fruit, vegetable, zebu, fish, boat, market, ylang, water buffalo, face paint, distillery, fishing, letter

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24 décembre 2012

Rich gentlemen have it, boys!

On the last day of school, my class - MY class, the one I'm the main teacher of, the one I theoretically have the power of life and death over (or at least a say in what happens to them next year) - seemed rather excited. So did everybody. The holidays...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:50 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: food, class, holiday, school, death, cake, children, biscuit, hungry, last day, life, poor, present, sweet

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18 octobre 2012

Happy Birthday Mum

Happy Birthday Mum Lots of love, Emily xxx

Posté par calligraphy à 03:39 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mum, birthday, happy

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1 octobre 2012

The Motorbike Saga Ends Here.

Good morning. Just to say that I passed my motorbike licence last Wednesday. It's a test which is in two parts, half on a quiet track, half on the road. On the track, we had to manoeuvre the bike around cones and sticks, first very slowly around cones...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:08 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: motorbike, road, track, exam, slalom, test

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24 septembre 2012

Miss Mayotte

A few weeks ago, Mayotte 1ère, the department's main news and silly programme channel, held the Miss Mayotte for Miss France elections and narrowed the candidates down to five. The five almost-winners have been going round Mayotte showing themselves off...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:12 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: france, mayotte, girl, beauty, contest, miss, stanisla

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