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Funicular for Le Morne?
--
Karl Morris
All
the world hopes to see the creation of a worthy national
park at Le Morne, a place of universal meaning and of
special ancestral pride for the Mauritian African-Creole
community
Representatives
of UNESCO are here once again to look at Le Morne Brabant,
which is still under consideration for inscription into the
Patrimony of the World and as one of the sites of UNESCO's
project, La Route de l'Esclave. The intervention of
UNESCO and of the world at large is welcome and much-needed
as the government has seemed slow to rein in the misguided
touristic development now under way at Le Morne.
Le
Morne Brabant, a giant Gibraltar-like rock/mountain at the
edge of the sea on the SW coast of Mauritius, was once a
haven of the Mauritian maroons (runaway slaves), and is now
proposed to become one of freedom's own shrines, meaningful
for all the world. In a new national and international park
the public might perhaps be given to read the text of the
Proclamation of Emancipation and, as well, parts of Roger
Moss's Le Morne (R. Moss: Le Morne, English
and Kreol, LPT, Port Louis, 2000) writ large upon tablets of
bronze or stone.
For
Moss movingly recounts the story of 1 February 1835, the
last day of slavery and of the fugitive maroons in
Mauritius, when British soldiers were dispatched to Le Morne
to announce emancipation from slavery. The maroons fled
before the soldiers, having no idea they had come on any
other errand than the one that had brought them in the past,
to hunt down and capture slaves. The maroons had, in their
way, gone back to Africa on Le Morne, living a simple life
of hunting and gathering in the bush, supplemented by raids
on the livestock of neighboring farms when hunting was
unproductive. But this Africa was different, for they knew
the score; they had a choice, if the slavers should come for
them again. All of them, some dozens of men, women and
children, fled to the heights, then flung themselves down
from the cliffs rather than be taken by the redcoats. As
Moss writes, “it is a simply unbearable story.” In
America, in Virginia, we honor Patrick Henry who said,
“Give me liberty or give me death.” At Le Morne the
world honors men and women who, as a whole community, made
this bitter choice.
At
the time of UNESCO’s previous visit in 2004 a great deal
was written in the press about the development proposed for
the site, which appeared to be mostly of the standard
touristic variety: hotels, condos, restaurants, shopping,
golf course, etc. There was a particular hue and cry about a
proposal to run a funicular to the top of the mountain. This
did seem, just on the face of it, unlikely to contribute to
the natural beauty of the location. But more than one writer
defended the scheme by asking the question, how else can one
hope to get up there? My curiosity was piqued, and I
resolved to try to go up there and check it out for myself.
Not
ever for a moment supposing it would become a project of
outright mountain climbing, I arranged, with the help of one
of the hotels at Le Morne, for a ride up the south face of
the great rock in a Land Rover, with a certain Patrick, who
owns land on the Morne. For 500 rupees Patrick drove me a
good way up the mountain on a truly amazing alpine road.
Patrick may have built the road himself, for he beamed when
I commented that it reminded me of roads in Switzerland.
There is, of course, no farming, but according to Patrick
there are numerous deer and monkeys in the place. I didn’t
see much in the way of fences, but the animals would, of
course, not even think of leaving their pristine wilderness,
for it is surrounded on the seaside by hotels, and by
endless fields of sugarcane in the other directions. They
live, in that way, much as the maroons once lived on the
Morne -- with no place else to go.
Hopefully
any new arrangements will take good care that the deer and
the monkeys are not displaced nor incommoded by the coming
development. Completely free wild animals are, symbolically,
the perfect tenants of a park dedicated to freedom. A place
might likewise be found for a modest Hindu temple: if they
would kindly expose their food offerings, as they do
elsewhere, the sweet macaque monkeys might approach the
public, as they do at Ganga Talao at Grand Bassin.
As
for the deer, they are still hunted from time to time… Can
all this symbolism allow for the closing of the park for a
week or two at a time for deer hunting season? I didn’t
ask about hunting monkeys, but one hopes that this, at
least, would be out of the question in the new park...
The
place truly is still a wilderness, almost completely
untouched by cultivation or the economy. On the south face I
saw just two roads, both of them quite primitive. The one we
didn’t take goes up, I was told, to the archaeological
sites, which are off limits. This is presumably where the
public is one day soon to be welcomed to a
national/international park honouring the memory of the
maroons. The other road took us high up on the southern face
of the mountain.
Two
others were in the “climbing” party, Ralph and Ida,
young people from London. And Jean came along as our guide.
The Land Rover was not coming back for us -- we would walk
back down the completely gorgeous road. I noted as we went
up what a safe and reasonably comfortable walk it would be
-- very well drained, of course, though there were a
few puddles at lower altitudes, and wider than Patrick’s
big car.
In
a lofty and widely-exposed little highland meadow the Rover
turned easily around and left us to continue on foot -- not
to say on our hands and knees! The great cliffs towered
above us, approached by a steep embankment, richly strewn
with knobbly boulders and firmly rooted bushes one could
hang on to. I got right into it, and followed Jean as
swiftly as I could, and continued a long time, but going
slower and slower. Patrick had said to be careful as it was
windy and it had rained lately. At one point I noticed that
some rocks at my feet slid a little bit… I looked around,
for the first time, behind me and down, and was instantly
frozen in my tracks by vertigo. I found a solid rock to
place a foot on, and leaned back on my backpack against the
hillside, at an angle only slightly out of vertical, and
stayed there till Jean came back down -- maybe forty minutes
later. I managed to struggle both feet onto the firm little
flat rock, and to get myself securely footed. Though I
sometimes could feel the wind stealing between me and the
cliff, trying to pry me loose, it never blew hard enough to
be a real threat, and I convinced myself I was safe. The
vertigo became manageable and I stopped grasping at
shrubbery with my hands. I was very glad indeed that I had
my glasses on, and did not have to dig for them in my
pack -- it would have been quite out of the question.
I
could see forever! The sun was still low in the East, and
not in my eyes. The distance -- including the mountains and
the sea to the SE -- was misty and gray. But the sea was
close below in the SW, and the lagoon was an intense indigo.
Several fields of cane and a farm were closely in the South,
at the foot of Mt. Fantaisie, a little pool of brightly-lit
jungle green. The mountain dropped away below me quite
dizzyingly, and I could not be said to have studied
what was immediately below me, but I did note that there
were enough obstacles that, if I were to slide off, I would
probably not roll far before being rescued by a thorn bush
or a big rock.
The
maroons, of course, are venerated at Le Morne for asserting
their freedom from slavery by hurling themselves down from
these heights. As a pilgrim, I had set before myself the
project of meditating on their heroic death, and the thought
of plunging down from the cliff never quite left me. It did
certainly intensify the joy and freedom of seeing the world
a moment with the eyes of an eagle.
Presently
I heard Jean scuffling the rocks above me, and he came to
rest a moment beside me. Incredibly, he was wearing the
ubiquitous Mauritian ‘flip-flops’, with no sturdy tread
on the soles and no shoelaces to bind them tightly to his
feet. After a time I asked in my best Kreol, “Nou capav
descenn enn ti pe?” We did not go down more than a few
yards before I saw a much more comfortable resting place. We
stayed there most of another hour, awaiting Ralph and Ida,
who had gone all the way to the level place at the top.
When
presently they joined us, they had scary tales of little
rockslides. I shivered and was glad I had not come to
anything worse than a brief season of vertigo. We shared
some chocolate and some peanuts, then slowly made our way
down off the mountain.
As
you see, I never made it to the top, though my hardier
comrades Ralph and Ida demonstrated that it can be done. A
shuttle by helicopter would be much too noisy a distraction
for a site of such meditative nature, not to mention highly
dangerous and costly to maintain. Unless a new road to the
top can go up by another route, a funicular may indeed be
the only way to provide access for the public. Maybe the
funicular could be “hidden” on the “back” (east)
side of the mountain, and/or maybe it could be made very
beautiful, somehow, by artistic design. But it does seem
that it should, in any case, be seriously considered.
As
Mr Tidjani-Serpos of UNESCO observed in 2004, it is indeed
of the essence that Le Morne present itself as a site of
tragedy, and not as an ordinary touristic site. For the
public to meditate in due sobriety on the meaning of the
place, indeed on the meaning of freedom, the park should
provide a quiet walk along the highest ridge, leading to the
edge of the bluffs, with a view down into the abyss and out
to sea. A museum would be appropriate, of course, but
hotels, shops and other development should not intrude upon
the repose of these features. All the world hopes to see the
creation of a worthy national park at Le Morne, a place of
universal meaning and of special ancestral pride for the
Mauritian African-Creole community.
Karl Morris
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