Confinement…. Or enjoying life at its best?

Does confinement heighten all of our senses?!

I cannot really answer this question, however it is clear that the level of pollution has significantly decreased these days, our gardens are bright with different shades that attract our eyes! Our multicoloured bougainvillea, our red hibiscus. Are our banana trees greener and our papayas a brighter yellow? And our tea plantations, our sugar cane fields….. Have we ever seen them so green?!! Butterflies are back in our yards and definitely bringing more colour to our lockdown days!

The roof of the Notre Dame Auxiliatrice church definitely seems redder to me. Have our lagoons ever been of such a beautiful turquoise, our sunsets, aren’ t they more orange….. To my memory, our powdery sand along our coasts have never been so pristine.

Could it be that the reduced circulation, rare traffic noises and the recent low activity, are enabling us to pay much more attention to the rooster’s crowing at dawn, the melodious birds’ songs in our trees? And those familiar sounds that could no longer be heard: children playing hopscotch or jumping rope, our neighbours singing at dusk, the audible flow of a stream running through our gardens, or the one of the rain on a corrugated iron roof, our local sega being played on a radio station in the distance….

Should I also bring to mind the long forgotten scents that are back to our nostrils? I enjoy recognizing a few: those of a goyaves de chine jam, the aroma of bread just out of the oven, the little coconut delicacies which are typically Mauritian…… All those will of course delight our taste buds. Impossible for me to describe the wonderful taste with every bite.

After all, are we not simply at a stop focusing on our surroundings? Are we not more in tune with the world around us? Are we not more receptive to those home-made local dishes?

So whilst our little island of Mauritius is busy rejuvenating, are we not taking the time to quite simply : enjoy every minute of our life.

NadElle