The Perfumed Island

By Isabella Morris

On the pastoral winding roads to and from Piton Maido on Reunion Island you pass through the small village of Le Petite France where wisps of white smoke rise from the perfume distilleries. The expensive bottles of perfume that travellers clamour to buy at the duty-free airport shops suggest that they have emerged from expensive and sterile laboratories, and they probably have. But right at the very beginning of the perfume’s magical odyssey is the manufacture of essential oils and the humble distillery that we visit is one of many on the island that produce essential oils ranging from geranium to vetiver.

Stills, run by distillers like Begue Jean Yves, are the gardens of the Parisian perfumeries; it is from islands like Reunion that the grand perfume houses source the most basic of their ingredients – the essential oils.

Against the hillside, with a view of the beguiling ocean, Begue’s rustic still boils and steams and an ordinary wine bottle traps the oil. “It takes 300kg of geranium leaves to produce 1l of essential oil,” he tells us, explaining that the leaves need to be soft and pliant to provide the oil. He crushes some leaves and hands them to us, and the scent is pure and concentrated and evokes memories of heady summer afternoons lying on the grass gazing at the sky, the sound of bees humming lulling one to sleep.

Michel Cazal’s Mare Longue forest garden of perfumes and spices that has been in the family for 258 years and contains over 1500 species. We are introduced to indigenous and exotic plants that are grown for their scent and/or other uses – cardamom, cinnamon, ornamental pink bananas, palms that yield the delicious palm heart, the delicious monster whose delectable fruit is known as ‘little pleasure’ and a whimsical white flower affectionately nicknamed ‘the cat’s whiskers’.

In the quaint hillside village of Salazie Mr Folio’s creole house and garden is a testimony to Reunion islanders who are intent upon conserving the island’s plant-life and its culture. A specialist in bamboo, Mr Folio has created a small museum of bamboo implements and explains that most of the creole houses are not made only of wood, but also from bamboo. Salazie is home to a species that grows 40m in a month and it can withstand pressure of 1200kg/cm³.

One of Reunion’s major crops is the lychee fruit, the bark of which yields an attractive wood. If the tree was to be felled it would fetch Euros3000/m³, however the fruit crops generate a more generous income so the wood is seldom harvested.

Reunion and the aromatic vanilla have a unique relationship. Vanilla originated in Mexico and although the orchid was exported throughout the world, it could only be pollinated by a bee found in Mexico. In 1819 it was exported to Reunion in1819, and in 1841, a young slave named Edmond Albius found a way of hand-pollinating the plant. He used a bamboo needle to open the flower and pressed the stamen and pistil together. This discovery increased production, but the labour required for artificial pollination is responsible for its hefty price tag. Islanders use the spice to infuse teas and honeys, to perfume candles and body lotions and to flavour cakes and pastries and vanilla duck or chicken is an appetizing treat.

Wherever there is land that is not occupied by sugarcane, there are gardens. The islanders have such a love for plants that twice a year they have a plant exchange where people trade cuttings, seeds and plants with each other – no money is exchanged, just love and passion.

Isabella Morris travelled courtesy of Flight Centre, the Reunion Tourism Board and Air Austral. This article first appeared in The Citizen, November 2009.

I have a headache; not an ordinary one that a couple of aspirin would cure, no I have a double headache caused by the fact that I have two competing alphabets in my head. The dominant throbbing one is the Latin/Roman alphabet that is used predominantly in the western world no matter what language you speak. The other, behind-the-eye dull ache, is the Arabic alphabet that is trying very hard to establish itself in my mind but is constantly being suppressed and bullied by the Western dominatrix.

I haven’t had a lesson for a few days because I’ve had a busy schedule preparing for the biography I’m going to be writing and I’m finishing off outstanding commissions. But this morning I sat down and began working through the process of joining the unfamiliar Arabic letters. I removed my glasses to take a break, and as I caught sight of the letters in the table that I had created, I had my eureka moment – it was like the different colours on the Rubik’s cube had all fallen into place and everything made sense. I could see which strokes of the letter fell away or were included, depending upon their position in a word. It was a relief for me, and I know it will be a relief for the good-natured Abdul.

Even though I know the alphabet off by heart, the shape of the Arabic letters don’t resemble the shape of the latin/Roman alphabet, for example the Arabic ‘y’ looks like an ‘s’. When I was learning French and Afrikaans, I found it fairly easy to learn because initially one is confronted with a familiar alphabet, therefore reading the words is a lot easier. When I look at Arabic words, it is still as though I’m reading a mathematical equation; there is absolutely no familiarity for me: I see the Arabic “a” and read it as an English ‘l’, so it’s going to take some time for all the parts in my brain to co-operate – sight, sound and language – so that I can get a grip on this elusive language.

Tomorrow when Abdul starts teaching me words, I’ll have to use a mental muzzle to silence Big Girl Western Alphabet so that Mild Mannered Arabic Alphabet gets a word in.

These Arabic lessons are calling for admissions I’m not sure that I’m comfortable revealing but I’ve vowed to give an honest account of this process, so here goes.

Back in high school I was renowned for my ability to come up with an excuse to avoid boring lessons – everything from relying on my pale genetic Scottish skin to send me home, to hiding in the classroom cupboard when Sister Emanuel arrived to teach Maths and Geography. I wish I’d known about the girls who smoked cigarettes with Father Bugler behind the church.

With my delinquent predilection then, it’s no surprise that I begged off today’s lesson. The thing is, I can’t face the homework. I promised Abdul I’d practice joining letters and I haven’t. The reason for my reluctance is because every sample of the Arabic alphabet that I download has different versions of the letters, or different pronunciations of them. I don’t like inconsistency.

When I went to the post office box the other day to collect mail, a young lady behind me was having a conversation on her mobile phone and she said, “Oh don’t worry about that, it’s same-same different.” I had a good chuckle to me at the oxymoron, and tried to fathom exactly what she meant – words being my business and all. Now the meaning is clear to me. The letters and their pronounciation are same-same-different and I shouldn’t get so hung up about semantics but I do. Oh I do; I can’t help myself.

On a package insert for a Chinese garnishing tool that is really a vegetable peeler, the English instructions are confusing, “Wind the peeler round and round, up to the bottom.” Bizarrely, this absurd instruction relates not to anything meaningful with vegetables, but it does apply to how I feel about my placement of Arabic letters on a page. Abdul has not shown me where to place the characters on the lines of a notebook; and because the Arabic script is so unfamiliar to me, any word I write goes up, down and round to the bottom. I feel like a first grader in need of guidelines that will show me how far the risers of a letter should extend and how long the flourishes should be.

I studied calligraphy for a year; measured the ratio of letter size according to nib size, and practiced the form of each letter until they were carbon-copy perfect. I feel the obsessional need to do the same with the Arabic letters. In my manic obsession I will either succeed and create perfectly written words, or I will drive myself insane trying. So, I’m off to find my 3mm ink-pen nib, my measuring rule and alphabet charts and by the time my lesson starts on Monday morning, I’ll have mastered the letters, or not, depending on my family’s indulgence of my latest obsession.

It’s just as well that my teacher Abdul is a religious man, otherwise in between vowels and consonants he’d be hearing a helluva lot of expletives – probably the one that starts with F and doesn’t change its form depending on whether it’s spelt out in capitals or joined in cursive.

I achieved 99% for my final university Afrikaans exam and what can I say, once I set my sights on something, I am DRIVEN!

This morning’s lesson begins with an alphabet test and I score 25/28 which is 89.2% – omigosh! In my defence can I just say that the three letters I get wrong are because Abdul has taught them to me incorrectly? Dare I blame him?

The not-quite ninety percent kills me, but Abdul beams and swiftly proceeds to the next lesson – joining the letters into a word. And that’s when it all unravels for me. The J-sounding letter looks like an old English T ج and it requires a lot of concentration to remember which strange shape of each letter denotes which sound. Feeling confident that I can remember the sounds, I open my notebook and grip my pen. However, once the ج is added to other letters in a word it changes shape so as to be unrecognisable. “I have to learn the alphabet all over again,” I say to Abdul and he gives me a blank stare, but when he sees the alarm trembling in my eyes he grabs the notebook and starts writing down the attached form of the letters.

Without waiting for the new instructions to sink in Abdul proceeds with the vowels – fatHah, damma, kasra, jazam, tanween and kasrataini, they are not written as letters, but rather they resemble apostrophes and miniscule backward e’s and o’s. He dots and slashes them above consonants that I no longer recognise because they have only just been taught to me.

By this time the words are swimming in front of my eyes and instead of reaching for a tissue I realise I’m not wearing my glasses so I make my excuses to fetch them. My housekeeper commiserates with me and pats me on the shoulder. Containing my sniffling, and stumbling in my reading glasses I totter back across the lawn to my table of learning.

My housekeeper’s five-year old grand-daughter Kini lives with us and she has left her keyboard on the ground next to the table; I almost eat grass when I trip over it. I mutter under my breath and wonder why I can’t be as linguistically capable as she is. A year ago she couldn’t speak a word of English and now she sounds like a kugel from Glenhazel, so South-Africanly flattened are her nasal vowels. But vowels aside, she has mastered a third language in less than a year (Tswana and Zulu being her other languages); and I know that if I was to test her on the personal pronouns I’ve been teaching her, she’d score more than a miserable 89.2%.

Abdul consults the grammar book in the hope of finding some instruction that will elucidate what he is trying to teach me, but he is unable to locate the neat and meaningful grammar lesson that I need. I say F under my breath and reprimand myself – “You wanted to learn Arabic Isabella, what are you going to do – give up because it’s too hard?” The hell I am!

I grip my pen and grit my teeth, suck in a deep yoga breath. “Let’s try this again Abdul. I am a slow learner.” There – I’ve admitted it; I might not be totally convinced, but it eases the frown on Abdul’s unlined face and it’s infinitely worth the little white lie.

Who am I kidding? Myself, I suppose; but if I believed for one nanosecond that I couldn’t succeed then I’d have to seek out another project, and as I’ve said before, I couldn’t bear to hear another word about the latest trends in HRT.

Before Abdul arrives I sit outside chanting aalif, baa, taa, thaa…

‘Eish, it’s difficult; you think you can manage?” Molly asks me, shaking her head as she opens the window and listens to me chanting. My daughter wags a playful finger at me and says, “You must learn it all today. Remember when I was learning Zulu and you told me the alphabet was easily manageable in a day, hey, hey?” She laughs and I try not to glance at the page to verify whether the letter in my mind is qaaf ق or kaaf ك . The difference is so subtle to me as to be indeterminate, but to Abdul and millions of Arabic speakers it is no doubt very different – much like the soft ‘c’ and the subtly more explosive ‘k’ in English.

We’re a house of students at the moment. Chris, Matt and Nic are studying for their final exams at university – psychology, linguistics, business, industrial design, actuarial science, economics… the subjects blur. Cait has only written her Computer Technology Practical exam and studies at the library for her next matric exam. Mark is lecturing on valuations. Ali sweeps the driveway and looks up every now and then puffs on a cigarette, wondering if I’m up to the task of mastering a language that rolls off his tongue like summer rain from the gutters.

When Abdul arrives I explain my objectives for wanting to learn Arabic – I tell him that I want to be able to read and write it. We agree to proceed at a slower pace, mastering one section of the book per week. We agree that he will teach me from Monday to Friday. “Does Madam Isabella go to church on Sundays?” He asks in the third-person with a smile, I shake my head. “Saturdays?” He asks, the smile fading. “No I don’t go to church at all,” I say. The smile is replaced by a frown and he sighs and opens the textbook, and I wonder what he thinks about Madam Isabella who does not have a day put aside to worship. For a moment I wonder about it too.

As we work through the alphabet, me writing the letters and pronouncing them, I recall teaching Grade 1s when I was a student teacher. The excruciating slow pace at which the gap-toothed gradies progressed, stretched my patience to the limit, and yet here I am, aeons older than those littlies and working at the same deliberate rate.

After managing to recite the alphabet and write it from start to finish without a pause, Abdul smiles and says that next time he will point out the letters and I must identify them; he’s cottoned on to my tactic – learning parrot fashion. “And,” he says, turning the book over, “you must practice writing from right to left.” He might have listened to my terms at the beginning of the lesson, but by the end of it he has resumed his status: he’s the teacher; I’m the student.

I intended to have the lessons in my outside office, but the  unseasonal wind blew away my intentions and we had to abandon the lush, peaceful garden in favour of the lounge. The young men left their shoes on the welcome mat despite my insistence that they did not need to remove their shoes. They declined beverages both hot and cold and sat with their palms on their thighs as they waited for me to turn off the idiot box that would drone on incessantly if my children had their way.

Abdul opened “Arabic for Dummies” and we started with the alphabet, me repeating every letter after Abdul. When we reached khaa’ خ  Abdul shot a hesitant glance at me and with great patience made the throaty sound, but Afrikaans is my second language and every past tense verb is preceded by the guttural sound so it gurgled happily in my throat and Abdul beamed with hope.

When the lesson was over Abdul took down my mobile number, and with regret I noticed that he entered my name as Madam Isabella. I wanted to say forget the ‘Madam’ bit, it’s a word I am eternally uncomfortable with, but I have asked my housekeeper and my gardener not to call me Madam and after years, they still both call me Madam, Ma or when they’re feeling really affectionate – Ma Bella. As my late father said, it doesn’t matter what anyone calls you as long as it’s not “Hey You!” So I didn’t say anything to Abdul.

I was optimistic, convinced that learning Arabic is a manageable project – until I sat down at 21h00 to do my homework and learn the greetings and alphabet. Faced with Abdul’s transliteration I suddenly realised that I am going to have to work much slower – MUCH slower. I want to learn Arabic, not only to speak it, but to read it. I have read a fair amount of translated Arabic poetry and it is magnificently lyrical, but I want to be able to read it in Arabic. I will have to guide Abdul, so that he teaches in a way that will be meaningful and helpful to me. Is that the teacher in me coming out, wanting to direct the terms?

To view the crater, one travels north to Bourg-Murat and then heads east towards Pas de Bellecombe. Here one crosses the vast, eerie ‘beaches’ of  greenish olivine sand resulting from picrite basalt lavas; they are desolate and nothing grows here. The barren landscape is dotted with hikers who endure the heat and distance with sunhats and long walking sticks.

Over half a million years old, the volcano is 2631m above sea level, and although the site is somewhat windy on the day we visited, the vista is impressive. In the bottom of the caldera lies the conspicuous small crater known as formica leo which is accessible by a footpath. The tranquil atmosphere belies the chaotic volcanic activity that takes place here and it is difficult to imagine swathes of molten lava pouring forth and making its way down to the Indian Ocean.

It is only when one stands on the lower slopes of Le Piton de Fournaise overlooking the Grand Brûlé (Great Burnt), the cooling lava, that one appreciates the scale of the destruction wrought by the angry mountain. Through the swirling mists of cloud cover you can see the black rivers of lava that destroyed everything in its path. Steam pours from grey landscape and lava dries in ropes and drapes.

Roby Soriano, proprietor of Volcano Run, a company that leads tours into the volcanic cave, refers to the cave as Roby’s Maison; he is intrigued by the magic of the cave and spends most of his time enjoying it. We walk across the solidified lava that is slip-resistant and the view of the ocean is so compelling that I almost miss the small mouth of the cave; greenery has sprung up around it, like a beard. We duck low and enter a cool sanctuary and not being fond of dark, dank places, my trepidation is replaced with awe.

The cave was created by a gas pocket in the lava flow; the lava cooled and the gas escaped. I had imagined bats and spiders, muddy floors and slippery rocks, but there are no creepy crawlies and it is as though the cave has been cast in magna – it is a solid smooth cocoon.

“Do you like chocolate?” Roby asks and I give him an obvious glance. He holds up the torch and the entire cave ceiling resembles dripping chocolate, smooth, and glossy from the water that seeps in. As we make our way through the cave, crouching or just ambling, Roby points out the stalagmites and the stalactites that resemble the aloe plant. There are many familiar shapes cast in the magna – one resembles a shark, another suggests a sleeping dog. When we have been walking for about 600m Roby cautions us to be quiet and a low rumble is replaced by a swift whoosh as cars pass by on the national road above the cave.

The volcano erupts almost every year, emitting lava and minor explosions and in August 2009 the island began installing seismic monitors to monitor its activity level.

This article was first published in The Citizen, October 2009.

According to experts, learning a language post 40-something is enormously beneficial. It gets the neurons firing and keeps the mind young. “Gosh, you’re the last person I would have thought would worry about ageing,” my husband says. It’s not that I’m averse to having birthdays; it’s that I’m averse to doing the things that younger people think older people are only capable of – like knitting, slowing down, looking forward to babysitting brattish grandchildren, being content to prune roses. Hell yes, if that’s what being ‘older’ means then I’m not getting ‘older’! I embrace my language flashcards to my chest.

As a travel writer, it is an ongoing source of frustration that I speak or understand only basic French, German and Italian and have absolutely no understanding of Asian or Eastern European languages. I have decided that my limited language ability is going to be a thing of the past. So I’ve decided to learn to speak Arabic. When I visited Egypt for a month sabbatical my friends were distressed. Dee rolled her eyes and said, “What don’t you know about the Bahamas, doll-face? I mean really, Bella, E-gypT!” The thing is I love being surrounded by the sound of Arabic; it’s a melt-in-your-mouth language. But in the same way that there’s no way to explain what foie-gras tastes like, there’s no way to explain the delight of Arabic to them.

My multi-talented Malawian gardener noticed the Arabic dictionary and grammar books on my shelves and said, “Mama Bella, you like Arabic? I can speak.” I looked at his lovely smile – a fellow language lover in my own home! Ali grew up in Malawi and was too poor to attend the local grammar school but the local madrassa offered him the opportunity to study there. He was such an excellent student that the offer was made for him to further his studies in Saudi Arabia. However he was young and afraid of leaving the familiar so he declined, much to his father and teacher’s disappointment. But some of his homies accepted the madrasss’s offer, and one of these men, Abdul, will arrive at 09h00 this morning to teach me.

I am apprehensive because I have no idea how my round-vowelled English tongue will adapt to the full-mouthed language I love so much. “We’ll start with the alphabet,” Abdul said yesterday when he glanced at my “Arabic for Dummies” and “A New Arabic Grammar”, disappointed that the former title only includes the transliteration of Arabic and not the actual Arabic script.

I straightened my husband’s shirt before he left for work and said, “I’ll be able to greet you in Arabic when you come home for lunch.” He darted an irritated look my way and I winced; I won’t get any practice in with him. No, at this early stage I have a feeling that my Arabic vocabulary will mainly comprise horticultural terms as I grow more familiar with the language and Ali, my gardener-cum-practice partner.

This is where I will share my travel experiences with you, I hope you’ll enjoy the colours of the world as I try to paint pictures of the places I’ve visited and the people I’ve met. Please feel free to send comments.