If you check the dictionary, “La Cour” will be translated as “The Court” or “The Courtyard”. But in Mauritius “La Cour” means property which consists of the land and any building erected on it. We often said in amazement, with gleaming envious eyes, that this and that gentleman owned several “la cour”. Because owning a “la cour” was an indication of wealth and the owner automatically placed in high regard.
Our family did not own any “la cour” when we were growing up, whereas my two uncles owned one or more properties. We did not own a property earlier because my father, as a teacher at the Chinese Sing Wah School, had limited income. My two uncles, on the other hand, ran a boutique at a much earlier stage, in a middle class neighbourhood, and earned good profit to buy properties. My family started to run a boutique much later and saved many years before we could purchase our own “la cour”, by then I was 18 years old. I remember Mr. Lai Fat Fur, a prominent businessman and philanthropist, loaned our family eight thousand rupees to buy building materials for our new boutique on Magon Street.
Under the British system, the streets in the City were built straight, North to South and East to West. And land was divided in square or rectangle shape. My family ran a boutique in Camp Yoloff, a heavily Muslim neighbourhood. The boutique was part of one large “la cour”, owned by a Muslim gentleman, who was a legal clerk at the City magistracy. Legal clerks in many less developed jurisdictions, were powerful intermediaries who were often privately compensated for their favour. I remember one time my mother had to discreetly tip our landlord for assistance in a litigation case.
The ”la cour” which our shop was part of, had a relatively large land area. I believe it was a couple of arpent, a French unit of land measurement which is roughly one acre. Our shop was located at the corner of Aleppo Street and Yoloff Street, a standalone stone building with corrugated roof. At the back of the building we had a makeshift fence made of flimsy wooden poles, planks, odds and ends tin and recycled metal sheets from empty kerosene or oil drums. Luckily, we had our own small private primitive kitchen cum bathroom as well as a “basin”. Basin is a Mauritian term for an area, nothing more than a sizable concrete or stone slab with a drainage and a water tap, where we washed our dishes and clothes.
Along Yoloff Street was a row of townhouses, separated from our boutique by an entrance to the interior of the La Cour. If you had pictured the townhouses as seen in England or Canada, think again. It was just a row of six or seven rooms, each room had a door opening on the main road and one door opening to the interior of the property. Each room represented a house for a family, be it Indian, Muslim, Creole and Chinese. Facing the back door was a small makeshift kitchen always leaking when it rained. There was not much furniture in each domain, and the floor was the bed. But customarily the tenants kept the floor spotless and shiny. A layer of wax was applied to the floor. When the wax dried, the floor was polished with a coconut brush, made up of a slice of dried coconut top, looked like an overturn bowl. With hands on hip, left foot firmly on the floor, the right foot on the coconut top brushed the floor to and fro in a fine African rhythm.
By the main entrance to the property were a communal bathroom, toilet and basin. The bathroom had no light nor tap water, you brought your own bucket of water for a bath. The toilet, likewise, had no electricity nor tap water, but had a water tank cistern, often not in working condition, installed up five or six feet with a long metal chain which when pulled dispensed a flow of water to the toilet bowl. The basin had only one water tap which dispensed water for a limited number of hours each day. The tenants gathered round the basin to wash clothes and dishes. Clothes were washed with a bar of soap on rectangular flat stones, and pot and pans were scrubbed with crumbled charcoal with the help of a piece of dried coconut fibre. Tenants socialized while waiting for their turn to access the water. It was a good place to gossip and hear things that had happened in our neighbourhood. In the courtyard, there was a small area for drying clothes, on ropes attached to two wooden poles. And some open space area with small shrubs, frequented often by domestic chickens, ducks and goats.
We did not have any fruit tree in our La Cour and I felt disappointed when other La Cour in the neighbourhood had fruit trees, such as mango, guava, jambalac, mason, pomegrenate and even lychee.
Along Aleppo street adjacent to our boutique was also a row of townhouses which were of superior built. Each townhouse was one room unit, built slightly elevated, with two or three steps in front of the door that opened to the street. Our landlord lived in one of the units and I always said hello to the family whenever they sat on the steps for relaxation. The rent here was a tad higher than those townhouses along Yoloff street.
The other two sides of the property were fenced from the streets by a row of cactus plants. The cactus plants were irregular, about four to five feet tall, and were home to lizards and camaleons, I guessed they felt protected. Rats also roamed and hide within the cactus fence for protection from the local cats. While learning bike riding as a kid, I often crashed into the cactus fence, I had my share of serious pricks.
One day there was a great commotion in the La Cour, and I and my sisters and brothers could not help joining the crowd that had gathered, curious of what was happening. It turned out that the Police was here to arrest a young Creole girl. Her father and mother were divorced and she lived with her father elsewhere in the city, but she often ran away to be with her mother living in our La Cour. We felt sorry and sympathized with the poor little girl.
In our La Cour, we had a tenant, a single mother with a teenage daughter. She lived in one of the several detached structures erected inside the courtyard. The mother was big and fat, a rather jovial lady who got along with us very well. She was a prostitute and entertained regular clients. Her daughter always brought a pail of dirty water from the house, for disposal into the basin of the courtyard, after each client’s visit.
It was also in the courtyard that the body of a deceased tenant was exhibited for the night before the funeral procession the next morning. Also, bed mattresses were custom made in the courtyard. The craft man used two long rattan canes to beat balls of cotton placed on a large cloth on the ground, mimicking the beating on a drum. The cotton balls in time loosened into fluffy cotton, which were filled in a mattress shaped thick cloth shell, the opening then stitched closed. To prevent the cotton from shifting inside the shell, a long needle with thick thread, was inserted from one side of the mattress to the other side at six or eight evenly distributed spots, and each end of the thread was tightened and secured with a large shirt button.
La Cour was part of the Mauritian culture and I would say a great culture that I had enjoyed every minute of it.