Women in Mauritius are some of the prettiest in the world.

A wonderful place to visit. 

 Ameenah Gurib-Fakim has been elected President of Mauritius.

The 56-year-old politician was voted in by the Parliament of Mauritius on Thursday.

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim is the first woman to hold such position in this country.

Mauritius Elects First Female President, News, June 5, 2015, Bankole Jamgbadi, Source

Cuzzo, if the timing is suitable, perhaps we can travel together to Mauritius.

I have a number of friend In Mauritius whom I will be visiting.  Then we will travel together to India to the location where the Indian Government restored and established permanently the Demerara Harbour in India, the location from where the then indentured labourers travelled to then British Guiana, and eventually to other parts like Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, etc.

A quick pass thru once, on way to another country.  

Lots of similarities to GY, both ex-British colonies.

Also Dutch and French history like Guyana, but more developed and tourists.

You know, between Mauritius, Singapore and Guyana that got independence at the same time, Guyana is the less developed, other than Prodoville.

Our organization have projects in Mauritius.

A Toronto friend with [my full name] works there sometimes. Other times in Africa.     My next adventure is to Pitcairn's.   

If you would like personal information about the indenture labourer monument in Kolkata. A person who was instrumental in its establishment is Guyanese Ashook Ramsaran of GOPIO.   Google his name for contact information.

Coming up in Kolkata, memorial for Indian indentured workers

By Shubha Singh | Friday, August 06, 2010 | 1:10:21 PM IST (+05:30 GMT), Source

Kolkata, Aug 6 (IANS) An abandoned dock on the Hooghly river, once known as Demerara dock, is being spruced up to act as a link between the descendants of Indian indentured workers in the 19th and early 20th centuries and their ancestral homeland. The memorial will be a pilgrimage point for those persons of Indian origin (PIOS) around the world who cannot trace their ancestral homes in India.

This was the last point of contact for the migrants before they set sail for the sugarcane plantations of British Guiana, which is today Guyana.

Though the dock in the Kidderpore area is no longer in use, it has a clock tower that is in good physical condition with a relatively fresh coat of paint. A memorial plaque is to be installed at the Demerara Clock Tower to commemorate the over one million indentured workers who sailed from similar depots.

Edged along by the keen interest shown by a group of Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) as well as the governments of Mauritius, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, the Indian government and the West Bengal state government have speeded up efforts to locate sites for a museum of indenture. The museum will relate the history of indenture and the stories of the people who left home to work in distant lands.

The memorial and museum proposal will be a joint project of the central and West Bengal governments. The Demerara Clock Tower memorial would be an emotional and physical connection for the descendants of the indentured workers.

Once the area around the clock tower is cleared up and landscaped, the memorial would be inaugurated at a special function with high level representation from Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana.

A team of the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, the West Bengal government, its archaeology department, historian Leela Sarup and GOPIO vice president Ashook Ramsaran toured the area in a motorised launch last month to identify the sites which are linked to the migration of indentured workers.

The team travelled down the Hooghly river and inspected the sites from where the indentured workers began their journey across the seas. The officials used old maps, local information and details provided by Sarup to identify the Demerara Depot, the Garden Reach Depot and the Surinam Jetty at Kidderpore.

The team also visited Alipore and Bhawanipore in Kolkata to identify the site of the barracks where the indenture recruits stayed while they underwent a medical examination that would certify their fitness for agricultural labour. The team was looking for sites that were free from legal encumbrances.

Each of the labour importing colonies had to appoint an agent and set up a depot where the indentured recruits stayed while they waited for the ship to take them across the sea. There were separate depots and jetties for each colony.

Demerara was the name of the region where sugar was planted in British Guiana; it gave its name to high quality natural brown sugar, Demerara sugar, which was produced in the region.

The governments of Guyana, Mauritius and Trinidad and Tobago have expressed a keen desire to have a memorial in India for indentured workers who came to their country.

The descendants of indentured workers, now citizens of Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji, South Africa, Trinidad, the US, Canada and Britain, who come to visit India are often deeply disappointed to find nothing that can be associated with that phase of India's history.

Many of them discover that ordinary Indians have no knowledge of the great migration that took place in the 19th and early 20th century.

'We are the forgotten children of mother India. Mauritius, Trinidad, Suriname, Guyana and Fiji celebrate Indian Arrival Day and have memorials for the Indian workers. But in India no one remembers them,' said David Sheoraj of Trinidad, a visitor to the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas function.

There is a strong emotional connection between PIOs and their ancestral homeland. Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam of Mauritius, former prime minister of Trinidad Basdeo Panday and President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana are proud descendents of indentured workers. Each of them sought Indian government assistance to locate their ancestral villages and paid an emotional visit to the villages while on official visits to India.

In 2008, Ramgoolam had touched a chord with the hearts of the villagers gathered to welcome him when he bent down and reverentially touched the soil of his ancestral village, Harigaon, in Bihar.

I am conversant with and have vast information on the indentured labourers to Guyana and other parts of the world.

Thank you D_G. Very informative. 

Indian Researcher completes the tale of Indentured Labour

– donates collection to UG library

June 20, 2011 | By KNews | Filed Under News, Source

Researchers into the early days of the indentured labour system have long used texts written by local and regional authors but last Monday that field of inquiry received a donation of resources that could bring them full circle.

Indian historian and entrepreneur Leela Sarup gave a brief lecture on the Indian Indentureship System that encapsulated the almost 18 years of research that she has done into the system from the archives and libraries of India and Mauritius where she grew up. What started nearly two decades ago as a yearning to understand why her great grandparents would have migrated from their native India to live in Mauritius turned into a project that today consists of 14 volumes of transcribed archival material on the Indentured Labourer Trade.  And the dynamic little woman is not finished yet either, she estimates that the entire collection will eventually come to some twenty eight or thirty volumes.

Mrs Leela Sarup (center) and her collected works which were received by Dept Librarian UG, Mrs Gloria Cummings (far left)

 

The collection stands in three distinct sets: The Acts (1837- 1932), Proceedings (1825-1913) and Annual Reports from the Port of Calcutta (1842-1932).

The Acts look at the Colonial Emigration Acts in detail. It tracks the legislation that shaped the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians from 1837 to 1932. Proceedings is a ten volume set that lets the reader relive some of the history of the era as it chronicles the conditions and lives of the labourers once they were recruited into becoming labourers. According to Sarup, “there were instances of kidnappings, coercion, even instances of men being sent overboard as they were far too sick to travel, a rollback to the days of the slave ships from Africa. And Annual Reports from the Port of Calcutta will let the reader/researcher see the dynamic events which unfolded at the Port of Calcutta between Government and Labourers, where the laws were “upheld” and the effects that these laws had on the movement of the Indians as well as their lives.

Mrs. Sarup brought with her on this trip all of her collected works up to this point and presented the entire set of materials to the University of Guyana Library. Receiving on behalf of the Library was the Deputy Librarian at UG, Mrs. Gloria Cummings who thanked Mrs Sarup heartily for her kindness telling her that her donation has now brought research into the era and the history of indentured labour full circle because for the first time researchers would be able to see the trade from both ends – what went on here in the colony and what went on at the originating end, and it is no secret that the records in India are much more extensive and detailed than those kept here in the former colonies.

Mrs. Sarup herself is truly a renaissance woman having been involved in a number of fields over her remarkably busy life. She manages a pest control firm and has written a book called A Comprehensive Guide to Pest Control.

Mrs. Sarup has also worked extensively in the rabbit breeding industry and has helped her Government set up almost eighty rabbit farms with software controlled breeding programmes to maximise yields. She has studied beauty therapy and designed her own line of botanical based cosmetics called Herbelle which she markets overseas. Not content with doing all of this and being a historian she also manages to find the time to design jewellery as well.

Add Barbados to the list. They did better than Guyana although they have fundamentally different geography and population structure. They have an even higher average income compared with Mauritius and do slightly better on the HDI. Nevertheless, Mauritius is a remarkable success story worth studying. Singapore, Barbados and Mauritius had moderate Prime Ministers at independence. They were more along the Fabian Socialist line. They never got too mesmerized in stupid ideology and isms like the leaders of Guyana and Jamaica. They did sensible policies instead of spouting crap all the time...working class this...working class that...all the time. Congrats to the beautiful lady!

I love the name Ammena also my grand daughter's name.

All visitors to the memorial plaque for indentured workers may visit the site as follows:

1. By road: Visitors may reach the Kolkata Port Trust, No. 8 Workshop, Garden Reach Road, Kolkata-43 and collect passes from the gate and visit the site. The passes may be returned at the gate after the visit.

2. By jetty: Boats may be hired on a payment basis to reach the site from the following- Shri R. Chakraborty,  Deputy General Manager, West Bengal Tourism (mobile: 0091-9051057272, email:
   tourismcentre.kol@westbengaltourim.gov.in). No passes are required for visitors in this case.

http://moia.gov.in/services.as...dp=357&mainid=23

Add Ammena to another little girl, who lives in the US, mom from Guyana/ father from Europe and her grandparents live on East Coast Dem.