Articles populaires – 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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26 novembre 2012

Things pupils say.

I love it when... I love it when my pupils can't quite speak properly, but they try anyway. Faced with a picture of a baby learning to walk, they say: "She is learning to go". Brilliant. Sometimes, this turns into rather long-winded explanations because...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:18 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, pupils, school, lesson, harass, harassment, learn, sexual, word

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1 juin 2015

Nanny, you probably don't want to know what I did last weekend.

I recently had a couple of acquaintances over. The sort of people who'll give you absolutely no news for a year or so, then suddenly pop up out of the blue saying that they've bought plane tickets to Mayotte and can I put them up. They'd timed their visit...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:53 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: island, mayotte, t-shirt, motorbike, trip, area, moto club, residential, sunday

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30 décembre 2013

Sleeping Bouéni

In England or France, shopkeepers and shop assistants are always on their toes. And on yours, half of the time. They're always alert, they're always looking for something to offer you to make you stay a little longer and buy something else. They'll say...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:26 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mamoudzou, mayotte, shop, bouéni, market, sleep, customer, douka, service

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12 novembre 2012

Dancing on Tanaraki

The friends we had over during the holidays were a girl my age and her mother, both of whom we'd met while doing a musical exchange between our Poitiers folk group and theirs, near the Puy du Fou in the Vendée region. So to keep them busy, we decided...

Posté par calligraphy à 02:34 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: beach, accordion, music, recorder, friend, dance, violin, percussion, tanaraki

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8 octobre 2012

Let the Teacher do the Work

Recently, I've been taking my kids into the computer room. For a start, there are 15 computers, 4 of which don't work but which all the kids absolutely want to try anyway, "I'm sure I can make it work, Miss". Of course, they can't, so we all get frustrated....

Posté par calligraphy à 02:43 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, mzungu, school, teacher, students, computer, finish, headache, kids

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14 mai 2012

Voulé on Sohoa Beach

We went to a barbecue on the beach the other day. These are extremely common here, there are always groups of people cooking things on any beach you go to. Traditional barbecue food here is chicken wings and green bananas, which are either cooked in the...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:43 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, scooter, beach, music, barbecue, mahorais, leaves, voulé, carry

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22 février 2012

The Motorbike Saga Continues

I've had fifteen hours of motorbike lessons so far, and have reached the stage where I'm working hard at it and not feeling I'm actually getting anywhere. There's a circuit you have to do for the test at a very slow speed, as you have to drive through...

Posté par calligraphy à 10:47 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, temperature, emily, lesson, motorbike, driving school, helmet, jacket, track

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13 novembre 2011

Feet, bikes, cats and cars.

This morning, the temperature was 29°C in the shade, 47°C in the sun. At 8.25 a.m. At the moment, even the cat is flat out on the cool floor tiles. This is the cool season. It doesn't actually bother me when I'm busy doing nothing, but does get in my...

Posté par calligraphy à 19:24 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: temperature, cat, degrees, mango, poquette, rain, sun, terrace, tiles

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25 mai 2015

Salouvas for All

Clockwise from top left: Samianti, Nisma, me, Nadhrati, Moinécha, Moinécha's boyfriend Matthias (who ended up in the photo for some reason), Hoby, Chaharazadi, Djaha, Nabaouya, Laïla and Nassifanya. And the odd unrecognizable fuzzy student. My kids have...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:27 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: girl, salouva, school, teacher, blue, students, miss, samoussa, same

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20 octobre 2014

The Gesture Festival

I'm a member of a community called Couchsurfing. The idea is to put up travellers and backpackers on your couch for a night or two, show them around a bit and make their stay more interesting than if they were in a hotel room on their own. It also works...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:07 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, boat, jewellery, chiconi, festival, craft, gesture, october, wood

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1 avril 2013

It's raining.

Tropical rain isn't anything like European rain. It's not cold, for a start, there's none of that freezing drizzle that bites into your skin and makes you huddle inside your anorak. You can go out in the rain here and actually stay under it for as long...

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

Tags: mayotte, school, lesson, rain, rainy season, children, adult, dentist

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10 septembre 2012

Sea's out.

Last weekend, yet another beautiful day, how tiring ;). School has been back for three weeks, so like every other teacher on the island, we went to the beach. At low tide. Very low tide. So low that we could actually walk right up to the coral reef drop-off,...

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

Tags: mayotte, water, school, emily, coral, fish, sea, philip, tide

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19 mars 2012

Fish and Chips

We ate out this lunchtime. This is fish and chips. Red tuna - I know, it's a protected species in the Atlantic, but it isn't here - in a spicy vanilla sauce with little bits of vanilla pod. Bon appétit :). Ingredients (Serving Size : 4) : 4 fillets of...

Posté par calligraphy à 18:11 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, food, rice, fish, chips, lunch, tuna, vanilla, recipe

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16 mars 2015

Lille again.

As Nanny and Papi know from a rather frantic Facetime chat some time last week, I've been in Lille for the last week and a half, looking for a flat. It wasn't supposed to go that way. Originally, H and I had planned to spend the school holidays together...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:44 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: flat, house, money, euro, thousand, lille, bank, estate agent

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11 décembre 2011

Christmas Market - R.I.P.

Two hours later, I went to the driving school for two hours of motorbike lessons. It had already started drizzling, so the monitor told two of us that we had better come back another day as the rain looked like holding. It's OK to learn to drive in the...

Posté par calligraphy à 05:13 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mbiwi, water, mzungu, lesson, motorbike, rain, christmas, market

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21 mai 2012

Hot country, cold chain.

This singularly appetizing photo is of several cardboard boxes of mabawas - chicken wings again. What the photo doesn't show is the large yellow and red sign just above the food, saying "DO NOT OPEN THE BOXES". Written in French, which most people here...

Posté par calligraphy à 04:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, box, food, chicken wings, supermarket, beef, cold chain, shopping list

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13 août 2011

Everything Must Go

Preparing to leave for a long time in a foreign country is easier than I thought it would be, actually. That’s before you get there and realise you’ve forgotten your driving license, clean socks and cats, who should be wailing their way round Paris airport...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:37 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, box, cat, deadline, flat, furniture, house, stuff

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15 février 2012

Tying the knot

Took the car to the garage this morning for an oil change and to get the air-conditioning sorted out, as there seems to be a leak somewhere. The mechanic behind the counter received a phone call while we were there and put the caller - apparently one...

Posté par calligraphy à 07:37 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: car, garage, air-conditioning, employee, knot, oil, telephone, tie

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27 mai 2013

Don't talk rubbish. Please.

Discussion with my computer students about statistics. "When we say 'Sales have picked up', what does that mean? Are sales going up or down?" "Miss, 'pick up' means 'ramasser' in French." "Right, and when we pick something up, what do we do with it?"...

Posté par calligraphy à 01:09 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: bin, students, up, computer, pick, discussion, sales, statistics

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2 mai 2012

Internet

The Big Antenna In The Sky went down the other day. Mobile phones stopped working for the morning. Which is roughly as much a catastrophe here as it would be in any other country, as people don't have enough money to buy chicken wings or cheese, but everybody...

Posté par calligraphy à 23:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, access, internet, orange, stoi, 56k, broadband, speed

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15 mars 2012

Stuck in the Mud

There has been so much rain lately that it has severely damaged the road leading down from our flat. Great holes, some up to 50cm in depth, have appeared in the road... which has already blocked more than one car from going up. We had a collection day...

Posté par calligraphy à 17:32 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: flat, water, car, rain, road, season, driving, mud

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30 septembre 2011

The Dark Side of Mayotte

Most of the time, Mayotte is postcard-pretty and the people are lovely. But it isn't "home" yet. It’s not that I don’t like coconut trees and papaya fruit, having the lagoon just next door and going to school on a scooter. I do. But some things take a...

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

Tags: mayotte, house, lagoon, water, dirty, electricity, postcard, pretty

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5 novembre 2012

Dziani Dzaha II

You may remember a map similar to this one. There's a pretty lake on the small island, and we took our friends round it to show them what it was like. A fairly long walk to get to the top, but definitely worth it once we got there. We started off from...

Posté par calligraphy à 03:16 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

Tags: mayotte, beach, dziani, lake, petite terre, view, dzaha

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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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