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

28 juillet 2014

This Little M'Zungu Went To Market... and she bought...

This is the outdoor market in Mamoudzou. Pretty much a permanent fixture, currently augmented reality thanks to the Ramadan market which has appended itself on top of the original. I'm quite pleased with these photos because photos of the market are hard...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, cassava, fruit, tomato, vegetable, clothes, salouva, fish, boat, market, fat, headscarf, onion, china, fisherman, mamoudzouThis l, size, taiwan

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12 mai 2014

There haven't been any underwater photos for a while.

On Easter Sunday, I went out on a boat trip with the Bretons of Mayotte association. Dragged a friend along, too, and there also happened to be a couple of folk dancers on the same boat. We went to the north of Mayotte to look for dolphins and possibly...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, water, colour, white, coral, fish, reef, beach, blue, boat, sand, sea, bretons, friend, trip, choisil, potato

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21 janvier 2013

Right. Where do I start?

I am frequently asked what my students' level of English is like. It is, after all, their third language after Shimaorese and French... and it's not as though they speak the first two properly. English is very difficult for most of the kids. Their fluency...

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

Tags: school, teacher, english, students, test, word, bob, both, culture, elvis, language, marley, neither, noun, presley, verb, whereas

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13 avril 2015

Versailles and Vienna

You might vaguely remember these posters. The music school organized a concert at the beginning of February whose theme was "the Royal Celebrations of Versailles". It was such a success - the first classical concert of the year, so 250 people came - that...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: school, guitar, music, recorder, concert, play, violin, church, piano, cello, viola, university, valse, versailles, video, vienna, waltz

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15 septembre 2014

Cats and Miss.

School's been back for three weeks now. I've met all my classes, and there's everything from sweetness and light to ear-splitting caterwauling in there. These are some photos of my school. Right at the top is the tropical almond (Terminalia Catappa, if...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:06 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, cat, food, dress, salouva, kawéni, pupils, school, teacher, tree, students, miss, building, badamier, litter, mew, playground

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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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25 septembre 2011

Cooking

What happened when we went to the market ! Tomatoes, coconuts, green bananas, peppers, yellow bananas, papayas, cassavas. After having trailed as many times as humanly possible round the two local supermarkets – one of which is a large one with pretty...

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

Tags: banana, breadfruit, cassava, food, fruit, glue, green, jackfruit, latex, papaya, pepper, slices, tomato, vegetable, yellow

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26 janvier 2015

Brussel

The original plan was to spend New Year's Eve in Brussels with a friend of H's. However, they hadn't managed to contact each other in time, and she was working that day, so we went up on New Year's Day, a public holiday, without warning the friend beforehand....

Posté par calligraphy à 01:24 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: emily, new year, trip, travel, chocolate, day, belgium, brussel, brussels, bruxelles, anais, bar, beer, delirium, lights, mannekin pis

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6 octobre 2014

Salon du Tourisme

A few photos from the Salon du Tourisme which took place this weekend. Mayotte is involoved in several programs such as the Vanilla Islands Program, there's one about the Indian Ocean as well... the general idea is to try and convince tourists that Mayotte...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: department, france, indian ocean, mayotte, black, holiday, white, salon, french, mahorese, european, comoros, tourism, tourist, referendum, yes

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7 avril 2014

Look at the makis!

I teach kids in school, but I also teach adults in a training centre about half an hour away. My current groups belong to a local construction society, so we spend hours talking about excavators, compactors, bulldozers, the difference between a Manitou...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:31 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: teacher, lesson, english, time, maki, students, group, adult, mother, lemur, line, phone, stop, tail, tummy, young

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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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10 juin 2013

Manta rays and Mangroves

Last Sunday, I went on a boat trip with the Association of Bretons of Mayotte. They're the ones I play music with, they organize an activity every month so I try to go along when I can to get out of the house and to talk with people over four feet tall...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:44 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: yellow, pretty, white, beautiful, coral, fish, reef, beach, boat, sand, mangrove, tree, mac, manta, ray, zodiac

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4 mars 2013

Aria Sopra la Bergamasca

That was fun. I hadn't played in a "real" concert for ages. The sort of concert where you're in a church, everybody on stage is dressed in black and the atmosphere is very serious. You're not supposed to laugh, cough, say anything or even look anywhere...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, guitar, music, recorder, concert, violin, group, baroque, ensemble, singer, church, classical, fatima, nomad, notre dame

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7 novembre 2011

Photo albums

Underwater photo of anemones and little fish, taken by a colleague's daughter with an underwater camera. I've just added a photo album to the blog, called "Blue Lagoon". It shows photos of the lagoon, above and under the water, some corals and fish, sandy...

Posté par calligraphy à 14:10 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: lagoon, newspaper, strike, coral, fish, beach, sand, album, photo, underwater, bag, bin, dark, people, rubbish, town

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25 septembre 2011

Dress codes

At the airport The traditional dress here is called a salouva, and they have a turban on their head, known as a kishali, often just worn as a scarf over the head. It’s all very colourful, though probably not terribly practical. Salouvas are made from...

Posté par calligraphy à 10:30 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, airport, ceremony, clothes, dress, girl, heat, kishali, ladies, mbiwi, salouva, scarf, skirt, t-shirt, women, wrap

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4 juin 2012

Radio Tour de l'Île ! Infos, quizz, musique, fun !

Over the Pentecost week-end, a friend of ours was participating in the Tour de l'Île, a sailing boat tour of the larger of Mayotte's two islands. He told us that he does this every year, and that he usually ends up being the only one playing music on...

Posté par calligraphy à 04:59 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: island, mayotte, cat, food, water, emily, beach, boat, sea, pilao, philip, tour, knots, ropes, sailing

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22 juin 2015

Girls, tyres and ministers, oh my!

Last Saturday was the tyre-race. Just to be different, I'd decided that this year, I wanted to run with a big tyre, a lorry tyre, one of those huge things that come up to about chest level. I knew the time-keeper for the tyre race, so I talked him into...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:05 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, girl, tyres, race, big, lorry, minister, paint, 2015, dom, manuel valls, najat vallaud-belkacem, prime minister, problems, ton petit dom

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8 septembre 2014

The beginning of the end: my last back-to-school rush in Mayotte.

School started again on August 25th. In Mayotte, the teaching profession has one of the highest turnovers I've ever seen. This year, only three new colleagues joined the English-teaching ranks in my school. Two had been teaching in various lycées before...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:46 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, black, class, pupils, school, teacher, white, table, students, computer, back to school, european, board, chair, classroom, videoprojector

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25 février 2013

Pretty Yellow Flowers

Yesterday, I went with the association I play music for to a farming establishment which I'd heard about before, because one of the owners has a stall at the big monthly market where she sells fruit, vegetables, juice, jam, ylang-ylang essential oil and...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:19 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, banana, papaya, bretons, mahorais, tree, ylang, flowers, distillery, cultivate, essential oil, farm, height, peas, pick, smell

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1 vote

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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17 juin 2013

Starry Skies

On the 1st of June, the Mayotte Astronomy club organised its annual Sun and Star Party. They invited the local schools to make and show models and exhibitions about space, they hung up big colourful balls, they had posters up about light pollution or...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, sun, hemisphere, southern, star, australis, borealis, centaur, chart, constellation, corona, crux, mtsangabeach, night, saturn, scorpius

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