On March 7th, 2018, I went from a pollywag to a shellback. This might not mean much to you, but since we woke up at 4am to watch us cross the equator and then participated in the Neptune day festivities, it means a lot to me. To answer some of your questions: no, I didn’t actually see the equator, but I did see a red light flashing in the distance and yes, Neptune day is real thing. Search it on Wikipedia and they even give SAS a shout out.
We were woken up at 7am by the dressed up crew banging drums and screaming in the hallways. “The voice” over the loudspeaker gave us 45 minutes to be ready and upstairs on 9. In order to properly conquer this task, they poured “fish guts” on us, which was actually just green juice, then we jumped in the pool, kissed a big dead fish, kissed King Neptune’s ring and that was that. For the rest of the day, people shaved their head, and every last person, even all the deans participated in this maritime tradition.
Since this is a combined blog post, I’ll give a little rundown on Mauritius as well because it was only a one day fuel stop. The Port Louis terminal was by far the prettiest port I have seen. I had my Global Studies field class, so I went with a big group to the Rotary Mural Club called CEDEM where we painted murals. CEDEM houses and takes in children from abusive or dangerous homes. They provide schooling and extracurricular activities. To create a more visually pleasing environment, they asked us to paint murals on the cement wall outside the building. The kids there were so excited to dip their hands into jars of paint and then smack them on the wall.
We were in Mauritius the day before their independence day, so there was a lot of celebrating and excitement around us. The people at CEDEM were incredibly hospitable; they gave us frosted cookies, chocolate croissants, and bread right when we arrived, and if anyone looked tired they just kept giving us more food.
After we said our goodbyes, we went to the beach for an hour. Beaches in Mauritius are gorgeous, really clear and warm water, its a must see. We came back to the ship that afternoon and had more food that the people from CEDEM sent with us. I’m telling you, it was actually unbelievable how many processed carbs they so graciously provided us with that day.
To add onto the eating habits, my extended family on the ship (a fun program for students and staculty to form ship families) had a ice cream sundae party on the pool deck.
The one day stop in Mauritius broke up our trip from India to South Africa. See ya there! xx
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