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

27 septembre 2011

Whales

I went on a “whale safari” with a few colleagues last week. There are often whales and dolphins in the lagoon, but not this day, so we went right out of the lagoon and up to the north of the island. The trip itself took about an hour and a half by reinforced...

Posté par calligraphy à 10:20 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: indian ocean, island, mayotte, colleague, jaws, lagoon, safari, splash, water, whale

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29 mai 2014

Super-Car

There are lots of cars in Mayotte, many more than the roads can provide for in terms of capacity and maintenance. But one is above all. One car to rule them all. One car to find them. One car to bring them all and in the potholes bind them. In the land...

Posté par calligraphy à 07:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, car, road, football, decoration, goldys, lord of the rings, om, psg, team

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24 février 2014

Put it on your head.

A series of rather interesting postcards has been released recently. They're all drawings of scenes in Mayotte. My favourite is the one above, as it's a mixture of two scenes I come across very regularly. Scooters here aren't just a quick way of getting...

Posté par calligraphy à 04:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, ladies, postcard, scooter, supermarket, shop, boueni, balance, street, head

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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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19 novembre 2011

The Motorbike Saga Begins

First motorbike lesson today, called an evaluation lesson. First, the monitor sat two of us down and talked us through why we wanted to drive a motorbike, what were the pros and cons, what protective material we needed and what the exam was like. I now...

Posté par calligraphy à 14:29 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: school, lesson, motorbike, rain, driving school, gloves, helmet, jacket, leather, trousers

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26 novembre 2011

T.P. Folk

Yesterday, my music group and I were invited to play in a local brochetti. Brochettis are small restaurants, often in car-parks or in the middle of nowhere, all corrugated iron and plastic chairs, but they cook locally-grown/fished/caught food on a barbecue,...

Posté par calligraphy à 20:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: breadfruit, food, fish, music, road, barbecue, brochetti, colas, construction, mama brochetti

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14 février 2012

Inspector Valentine

I’m being inspected today. Inspections in the French education system aren’t like Ofsted ones: there’s only one inspector at a time, usually, and he or she’s only coming to inspect one particular teacher over one hourly period. The teacher is warned a...

Posté par calligraphy à 04:26 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: school, lesson, inspection, marks, ofsted, plan, sleep, students, tuesday, valentine

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27 août 2012

Charming flora and fauna

A brief review of some of the various animals and plants we've seen during my first year in Mayotte. These photos do not come close to showing what it's really like, and I haven't taken photos of everything. Please bear in mind that all these animals...

Posté par calligraphy à 05:43 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: banana, zebu, coconut, flowers, beetle, bird, grasshopper, lizard, plants, water buffalo

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22 octobre 2011

Sans Queue Ni Tête

A rather eventful morning today, because as it’s been fairly calm for the last 24 hours, I wanted to see if the supermarkets had reopened. Unprepared as always, I saw a great long queue in front of the local Sodifram and decided to join the fray. Again,...

Posté par calligraphy à 16:22 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: rice, strike, supermarket, pasta, quiet, security, shop, sodifram, toilet paper, watermelon

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1 décembre 2014

The Fashion Salon

The Fashion Salon was last weekend. Not usually the type of event I go for, but there are few enough events of any sort in Mayotte for me to try and go to the ones there are. On Saturday evening, there was the fashion show and competition. Every year,...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, clothes, dress, november, salon, dance, sing, fashion, chigoma

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12 janvier 2015

Je suis Charlie

Yesterday, Mayotte had its second gathering in homage to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack. The first one took place just after the attack. This one was called a "white march". My plane arrived at 7.30, I got my luggage very quickly and took the...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:06 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, white, mahorese, assembly, charlie, hebdo, homage, magazine, march, victim

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6 février 2014

The Box.

Sent: 06 January 2014. Received: 03 February 2014. Not too bad. Boxes and parcels always take about a month. Except that this particular one was coming from the UK, which the Mahorese customs weren't too sure about. They sent me a letter the week before...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:27 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, box, cat, post, send, letter, post office, england, customs, uk

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4 août 2014

Mayotte has a brand new airport.

Above, the old airport arrival hall. Three hundred people in a very small space with a small conveyor belt, and one or two men in the middle of the conveyor belt, pushing the bags together in order to fit more bags on the belt. You see, the belt would...

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

Tags: mayotte, airport, car, bag, cooler, luggage, plane, organize, station, taxi

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26 mai 2014

Kids

Adults in Mayotte don't really like the camera lens. There is a belief that being photographed removes a part of your soul, but it's usually closer to not liking white tourists taking photos of "locals" doing "local things". Which is fair enough and perfectly...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:47 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: clothes, photo, camera, children, kofia, kids, muslim, local, boubou, coran

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9 juin 2014

Another one bites the dust

Each village in Mayotte has its own football club. Some of the most famous are the Mtsamboro Bees, the Mzouazia Twins, the Rosador of Passamaïnty and the Southern Miracle. And without fail, during the dry season, all matches are played amid clouds of...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:57 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, play, dust, field, football, game, soccer, sport

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21 juillet 2014

The Blue Mango Strikes Again

Last week, we had a going-away party for two members of the Blue Mango... party during which we learned that a third member was also leaving next month, so we had another going-away party on Friday, where we actually convinced the restaurant owner to...

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

Tags: food, blue, music, mango, brochetti, restaurant, musician, landfill, ma brochetti, party

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3 mars 2014

This Is The Voiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice !

There's a reality-TV show called The Voice. The idea is to try out amateur singers, train them, get them singing all sorts of different musical styles, find the best one and record their first album with them. There are several shows of this type, it...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:10 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: music, sing, singer, burglary, casting, the voice, audition, train, bruno berberes, koropa

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26 septembre 2011

Birds and Beasts

The first animals we saw upon getting out of the plane were zebus. Cow-like four-legged creatures with a bump on the back of their neck where they store water and fat for later. They stared at us, we stared at them and wondered where on earth we had ended...

Posté par calligraphy à 10:43 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: island, mayotte, flat, banana, bat, gecko, hotel, margouillat, roussette, zebu

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13 janvier 2014

Pink bags and blue boxes

In Mayotte, people don't fret about big travel bags, careful packaging, luggage straps and padlocks. They don't worry about their big black case being indistinguishable from everybody else's big black cases on the luggage carousel. They don't bother repackaging...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:38 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: france, mayotte, box, england, trip, cooler, ice, luggage, plane, travel

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6 janvier 2014

Overseas Women

There was a national photography competition in France not long ago, whose title was: "Overseas Women". As the Mahorese people didn't like the results, saying they weren't representative enough of women in the French overseas territories, they had their...

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

Tags: mayotte, clothes, women, photo, work, hair, computer, ferry, jasmine, smartphone

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2 avril 2012

What's the weather like?

The rainy season is over now, and the wind is just starting up. It's still hot though, and will remain so until next November, at which point it will get slightly hotter. It's slightly more breathable now, however. These screenshots are from my Windows...

Posté par calligraphy à 20:46 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, temperature, heat, rain, sun, rainy season, weather, wind, dorchester, poitiers

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29 juillet 2013

Cascade

The Soulou Waterfall, on the west coast of Mayotte, is a place which is renowned for its thefts, break-ins and various attacks of all kinds. Unfortunately, it's also recognized as one of the most beautiful sites on the island. That's why, when a friend...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, colleague, water, beach, friend, walk, group, soulou, cascade, waterfall

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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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6 avril 2012

Striking

There are a few strikes going on at the moment, mostly led by the local health authorities. As we saw with what has come to be known as the révolte des mabawas, or chicken-wing riots, people who go on strike here tend to block the roads and throw stones...

Posté par calligraphy à 18:02 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: school, strike, rights, boring, bus, martin luther king, protest, rosa parks, stones, year 11

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5 décembre 2011

Mangrove Mud

Last week, I went on a grande randonnée, a walk signalled by white and red flashes on the trees, with the association my music group belongs to, the Bretons of Mayotte. I hadn't really had the occasion to explore the island properly, mainly because of...

Posté par calligraphy à 06:04 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, banana, food, beach, rain, chirongui, mangrove, picnic, pilao, root

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