Go out to dinner... in Kinshasa: Gombe, Kinshasa / The Taj
... or take in a pet show in Mauritius: SPCA Pet Show, November 6 .
The last post is from Isabelle Kai Wing, a young Mauritian, who posts intermittently on life in her country: Mauritius.
Wing has been posting once or twice a month since last spring. In general she posts on recreational activities, visits to parks, the car show, a night out with her husband, the dog show, a family wedding. There are some posts on political events.
Lots of pictures, but she apparently posts them separately from the related text posts. You have to go the relevant month in the archives to see text and pictures together.
This post ( Doulos, 3rd - 13th November ) describes how local booksellers protested the visit of the Doulos, the vehicle for the German based charitable foundation, Good Books for All. The foundation's mission:
Doulos visits port cities throughout the world, supplying vital literature resources, encouraging inter-cultural understanding, training young people for more effective life and service, promoting greater global awareness, providing practical aid and sharing a message of hope in God wherever there is opportunity.
In 2005, the Doulos visited Mauritius:
Doulos’s short visit to Mauritius stirred up the local bookshops from their usual slumber. Doulos is the “World’s oldest active ocean-going passenger vessel”, built in 1914, two years after the infamous Titanic. Throughout the years, Doulos has been respectively a cargo ship, a ship transporting immigrants, a cruise ship and it is now the largest “floating library”, sailing from port to port to sell books at bargain prices. It is also home to 320 Christians from 40 different nations who volunteer their services to all the countries they visit. Doulos is managed by a non-profit organisation, the GBA (Good Books for All) and has half a million books in store, which covers a wide range of subjects, mainly religion but also arts, sport, cookery, gardening, science, and the usual encyclopaedia and dictionaries.
This is Doulos’s third visit to Mauritius, after 1995 and 1998. Anticipating a decrease in profits, a few local bookshops banded together and threw a public tantrum to stop Doulos. The attempts to stop Doulos were fruitless. Mauritians, mostly unconcerned about the debate surrounding the event, jumped at this opportunity to buy books that would have cost them 3 times more at their local bookshop. The chance to visit a ship dating back to the Titanic period was a big incentive as well. Thank You Doulos.
She says it's the custom in Mauritius to light up municipal buildings for a few days at Divali, the Hindu festival of lights. Scroll to the end of these November posts posts to see her pictures.
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