Circa 1950. Chinese came to Mauritius as early as 1780’s, originally Cantonese from Canton and later overwhelmed by Hakka people from Meixian, a district North East of Guangdong. From Mauritius some of these early immigrants, compelled by a bleak survival prospect, spread out to the southern part of Africa, Madagascar, Reunion and Seychelles. These early Chinese were very business minded and the majority opened shops all over the island.
When I was three or four, my parents, as a matter of course, acquired a shop, a small corner store which the local people called: “La Boutique”, the French name for shop. It engaged in selling mainly daily necessities, such as rice, flour, oil, salt and sugar, spices, bread, fruit, canned goods, cigarette and wine. Then there was the “Magasin”, another name for store but a bigger, more prestigious establishment selling more expensive household items, such as fabrics and clothes, pots and pans, toys and decorative items, appliances and furniture. As a kid I had envied the children from the “Magasin” as they were visibly way better off than we children from the “La Boutique”.
A typical boutique in the 1960’s
A typical “Magasin” in the 1960’s
Most boutiques were located at the corner of two streets or roads. Ours was at the corner of Aleppo Street and another street which name I have forgotten and which had since been renamed. Our shop was a single story building, stone walls bordering the two streets, and wood structure within the house, the roof corrugated aluminum sheets. The shop was small, no more than two hundred square feet, with a smaller adjacent room for serving wine and liquor, a miniature “tavern”. Our residence, a one bedroom unit, was connected to the shop by a small door. The one bed room unit opened into an open space with a small makeshift kitchen cum bathroom. Close by the kitchen was a small area protected from the sun by a leaky tin roof and paved with uneven stones which was used as a dining space for the family. We had a small yard fenced by flimsy tin sheets and odd wooden planks. In the yard was a small stone basin built on the ground with a tap where we washed our dishes and clothes. The toilet was outside our yard and shared by the neighbours.
Our shop location was not ideal with little potential as the west side to the shop was mainly open field and forest with no inhabitants. As a small kid I often thought that we did not provide good customer service and therefore attracted less clientele, I had observed that other Chinese shops in the neighbourhood were doing brisk business but not us. My mother was exceedingly harsh, rude and confronting with some customers which in later years I understood why. The shop was run by my mother and my eldest brother who was then only fourteen or fifteen years old. I didn’t know why my father was not involved in the shop and instead he was working as a resident manager of a Chinese Business Club downtown. Could be he was not conversant in the local creole dialect. Without the presence of a male adult the security of the shop was not on solid ground as we were located in a poorer, somewhat remote, less educated neighbourhood. My mother, therefore, had to constantly project an image of “toughness” and a no-nonsense attitude towards exceedingly dominant troublemakers. Many a time I saw her swinging menacingly a huge Chinese cleaver towards misbehaving and unruly hooligans. It was all for show, no hurting meant. I also remember many a time drunk adults causing disturbance in our shop, breaking bottles and glasses, swearing and pushing, looking for a fight. Police was sometimes called but they did not response promptly or in time. This “going to happen again” scenario was not their priority. One time my second eldest brother, then fifteen or sixteen years old, took care of one threatening drunkard by quietly going behind him with a bottle in his hand and hitting him hard on the head. The message was delivered loud and clear and the antagonist with a bleeding head ran away and never to come back. I was proud of my brother.
A typical home in our neighbourhood in 1960’s
I remember spending a lot of time in the shop helping. I was then seven or eight, and I was pretty good at serving the customer, always polite and helpful and the customers liked me a lot. I was always generous when serving the customer, often I would give a little more in the portion, at this rate I could never be a successful businessman. I remembered all the names of the products that were on the shelves and their retail price. The neighbourhood was too poor to offer us the opportunity of making any decent profit for the effort put in. We were selling items that carried a very low retail value and very low profit margin. I often heard my mother sighing that it was a “one cent two cents” business and this was no exaggeration. The neighbourhood was incapable of buying our product in quantity and we had to split the product in tiny portion or unit. We had to sell cigarette per unit rather than by pack. Sardine was sold by piece and not by can. Butter was sold by the spoon and not by tin. Spices, a basic necessity for the local indigenous and Indian households, were divided in small portion and wrapped in pieces of newspaper in the shape of a small cone. Yet the shop had provided for the raising of a dozen siblings. My hat off to my mother and my brother.
Then one day a severe tropical cyclone hit the Island and I would witness many more in later years. It poured heavy with strong howling winds that destroyed or blew away many makeshift dwellings, leaving many inhabitants without a roof over their head. The Government quickly set up temporary shelters around town. The barren west side of our shop suddenly saw some building development and a large number of cyclone victims came to settle there. While the cyclone disrupted many lives, it was a blessing to us as our store became surrounded with new homes and new customers, and we were able to make a little more profit. One thing we did was to buy a refrigerator, an item that we could not afford before but which most other shops already had for a while. We were now able to provide much sought after cold drinks, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. We also made our own popsicle and our own best seller lemonade from “tamarind”, a sweet and sour fruit widely grown in the city. Our shop’s income and profit improved quite a bit. We were even able to build our own toilet within our private yard for our exclusive use, a much welcome addition to our home.
Damage done to a Church by cyclone in 1960’s
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