Bonzur! It’s finally just a little bit colder. Alex went to see Jazzy Christophe play in Saint Antoine on Thursday night. Jazzy is a saxophone player and composer who studies at the prestigious Berklee College of Music; though he has been awarded scholarships and has performed in international festivals, he still needs to finance cost-of-living expenses for this new academic year. The event in Saint Antoine was part concert, part fundraiser, and it was absolutely brilliant, with riveting performances by Jazzy and his accompanying musicians. If you’d like to donate – and know more about his story – you’ll find details here.
News digest
It only took about twenty years, but a Constitutional reform may truly be in the works: the Cabinet announced on Friday that a draft Constitution (Amendment) Bill is under preparation, which will enable Mauritian citizens to stand as a candidate in elections without disclosing their ethnic/religious background. More details are due to be announced by the end of the week.
Ras Natty Baby died on Sunday 26 April. The Rodrigues-born seggae legend had been hospitalised for a month at A.G Jeetoo hospital, and was flown to India for an emergency heart operation last week. What is particularly troubling about Ras Natty Baby’s death, for us, is that he had to crowdfund to get the finances he needed to travel, and was only able to collect a fraction of the amount that was required. The OMCA Foundation and the Union des Artistes were able to send him to India despite this, but the singer's final weeks raise a question the government can no longer defer: what structures exist to ensure that the artists (and athletes) who carry Mauritian culture are supported not only on stage but at home?
An infant has captured Mauritian hearts: Ezekiel was born with Down syndrome and ten heart malformations. At four months old, he was flown to Delhi – again, supported by the OMCA Foundation, the star of our news digest today – and his heart was successfully operated on. He and his family are due back to Mauritius on the 7th of May.
Paul Berenger launched a new political movement on 25 April, called ‘Konba Militan Progresis’, which has around 1,500 members at the time of writing. The movement embodies the values that Berenger fought for, and he has encouraged anyone interested in participating to sign up here. In an unfortunate turn of events, however, KMP’s name and visual have been widely criticised: it is overly difficult to pronounce, and the movement's symbol seems a little similar (though considerably stretchier) to Linion Moris' own logo.
Tamarin Bay’s landscape is changing: the river that runs to the sea is widening, carving away large stretches of the beach and its trees. Locals think that the works upstream may be responsible for the devastation, and are coordinating efforts to restore the area. We recommend this thorough article in l’express: it’s a great assessment of the perils facing our beaches, the effects of urbanisation on our coasts, and what the future may hold for us. Alexandre Lassémillante has also taken stunning footage of the state of the beach – you should check it out.
An incredible story broke last week involving Rs 16 million in notes and the Poudre d’Or waste transfer station. The notes were mixed with trash; the workers at the station alerted personnel, and soon the whole village was aware. A few armed men arrived on the scene, threatened staff, grabbed the money, and weren’t seen again. The police are looking into it.
Diaspora spotlight
Dr. Sheen Gurrib is the first Mauritian woman to have graduated from both Oxford University and Cambridge University, with a Master of Engineering in Materials Science and a PhD in Spinal Research. This is a feat in its own right, but it is her unconventional career that attracted us to her story. Sheen is a content creator, podcaster and entrepreneur, with over a million followers across social media platforms. She has interviewed the likes of Sushmita Sen and Rana Ayyub, and has held conversations ranging from Bollywood and female independence to wealth-building and misconceptions of the Islamic faith. She has also just launched her first co-working space and podcast studio, alongside her co-founders in Dubai.
'If I hate it, it's not worth it.' This may sound naïve, flippant even, to the millions of people who work hard in jobs they don't necessarily like in order to get food on the table and pay rent. But this advice comes from a woman who left her home country for the first time at 18 years old, for her interview at Oxford; who grinded at an 18-hour-a-day job before jumping into an idiosyncratic career, with full cognisance of the financial risks that such a move would entail.
So many Mauritians of our generation (and preceding generations) have been taught to strive for excellent academic credentials in order to secure stable, traditional careers: the goal is financial security, even if that means sacrificing your own dreams. Sheen is, without a doubt, a stellar example of what could happen if one takes genuine risks to follow their heart. Her career has zigzagged through strategy consulting, fundraising, video creation, lecturing, podcasting and entrepreneurship; she juggles the last three concomitantly. 'I've always pivoted careers in order to prioritise my happiness,' she says over a hot chocolate. We met in Mauritius while she was briefly on holiday in December. What struck us immediately was that she looked so relatable, but also had such great poise (she’s also quite tall).
Her journey into content creation started with her roommate in Dubai. She was working in management consulting, and would glimpse his unconventional, lucrative life as a successful YouTuber in the few hours she was away from work each day. They got to talking, and he said she’d do great on a podcast. ‘I appeared in his interviews; he trained me on how to speak. I'd record and edit my YouTube videos on Saturdays. I have very cool friends — one of whom is an astronaut — and I was able to interview them. The channel immediately blew up.' An Emirati YouTuber reached out and offered to make her Chief Operating Officer of his media company. She quit her management consulting job and did that for six months, but it didn't work out as planned. After leaving that role, rather than retreating to the safety of the corporate world, or starting fresh in an engineering-related career, she began teaching Computer Science and Business part-time at Middlesex University's Dubai campus while figuring out life as an entrepreneur. ‘Leaving full-time structured employment is a very big shock to the system. You have no idea, no visibility, but you have expenses. It's scary.’ We find it remarkable that she ploughed through the uncertainty regardless.
Sheen knew she could bank on her talent in talking to people and creating relationships, which is where her ingenuity really lies. No-one in Mauritius told her — or us, for that matter — that being 'talkative' could become a full-blown career. 'In my Mauritian report books I kept seeing "very smart but very talkative." When I arrived at Oxford University, I realised that "talkative" was a strength.' She got an offer from Oxford, she thinks, because she won over the interviewer. 'I was memorable,' she grins. That same quality turned an informal conversation with finance creator Lámidé Elizabeth into a venture: the ProfessionElle Network (PEN), a space for young women to connect beyond workplaces, which expanded into masterclasses, networking events and curated experiences.
While balancing PEN and lecturing at Middlesex, she felt like she had more time on her hands than during her consulting and COO days: a function, she explains, of finally working on her own terms. 'I'm just very disciplined!' she retorts. 'You can't have a soft life and think you'll earn big money.' While building PEN, she carved out time to build her dream: a podcast. In 2023, she decided to give herself 10 episodes to pull it off or call it quits. 'I rented a studio, and for the first nine episodes, we just weren't hitting that many views. In the tenth episode, the final reel went viral. I went from 2,000 views to 20 million views. My phone shut down from the notifications.' Dream, Girl now has about half a million streams on Spotify. In April, she announced the rebrand of her podcast. Dream, Girl would come to an end and be replaced by a new chapter, Dream with Dr. Sheen.
Podcasting, she feels, 'is my mission on earth': her face and her voice on her own terms. 'When I was in Oxford and Cambridge I was the only brown girl in my programme; they sent me to all the outreach activities. It felt like a tick-the-box exercise, but then I'd get girls – privileged girls – tell me how much they needed to see women in STEM. I'd think: imagine all the girls back home.' She's become an aspirational figure for hundreds of thousands of girls of colour from the Global South and beyond. 'One woman recognised me when I was on safari; she said she keeps my photo in her wallet because I made her daughter reconnect with her faith!'
We’ll leave you with some of her wisdom, particularly valuable for anyone finding themselves at a crossroads in their life and career: ‘My biggest learning was to stop thinking about how much money I've spent on a specific type of education. The financial investment doesn’t mean that I have to be stuck with a specific career for the rest of my life. That’s the sunk-cost fallacy. 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't been invented yet, and we don’t know what Artificial Intelligence will do to the jobs that exist now. You need to be highly adaptable.’
A little reminder once again that we have office hours! Sign up for a thirty-minute slot here if you’d like to chat.
Also: if you have an event curated for the Mauritian diaspora, do share it with us at alo@bridge.mu! If it fits the Bulletin we’ll happily spread the word.
Bridge playlist
In memoriam: Ras Natty Baby’s excellent Leve Mo Pep, which was one of the anthems of the huge citizen’s march in August 2020 to protest against corruption, autocracy and the handling of the Wakashio oil spill.
Kreol crossword puzzle
P.S.1: Did you guess the answer to the last Bulletin’s sirandann? Bred galoupe, or, leafy greens on the run?
It’s liev – hare! And if you’re having trouble visualising the image: don’t think of bred chouchou. Mazinn de bred tompouce pe sot-sote.
P.S.2: Know somebody who is missing Moris? Forward this publication to them, and spread the mauricianisme!
