Paradise Found Read Free

one can use.”
    “Property has value.”
    “One home, like this, is all you need,” Bessye waved her arms.
    Victoria paused for a moment, lifting her forefinger to her lips to ponder an answer. She glanced about the simple one-story cottage with its whitewashed walls, cotton curtains and unfinished wood floors with hand-woven scattered rugs. A carved crucifix on one wall and a framed faded photograph of Victoria as a young girl offered the only adornment. The upholstered furniture sagged from wear and the wood tables were scratched. The home grew older, as had her mother. As had she.
    “You are never content with what you have, Victoria,” Bessye said. “You always want more.”
    Victoria swallowed hard. “When I accompanied you to work as a teen, I observed the tourists with their designer fashions and listened to their stories of cities where buildings reached the sky, where stores were enclosed in large buildings, where every description of hard goods and food were available at all times and where women were educated and equal to men. A world beyond the Indian Ocean. Is it so bad that I wanted to be a part of that world?”
    “You have always possessed a will of your own, a will so strong it could not be contained on an island,” Bessye said with a sigh. “Yet, you have come back. Perhaps the world is too big and one can get easily lost?”
    When Victoria left the Seychelles Islands, friends and family predicted she would never return. They were wrong. Life had literally taken her full circle and around the world as well. Though she had sworn never to return to Mah’e, life had a strange way of altering one’s direction. Victoria knew the time had come to return and reconcile with her past. Her mother was part of that past.
    “Not lost. Found.”
    Bessye met her gaze. “You or golden opportunity?”
    “I’m not doing anything wrong. The Seychelles government encourages private investment, especially in the tourism market.”
    “Ah, so you are willing to sell out your own homeland and people for Rupees. You are willing to sell your soul and the spirits of your ancestors for money. Larzen i bon, me i-tro ser.”
    Money is good but it is too expensive.
    The heat and the conversation in her mother’s house were stifling. Victoria rented a taxi and headed to the north side of Mah’e into Victoria, her namesake capital and only town in the Seychelles Island chain. Overlooking a natural harbor, protected by the inner islands of Ste. Anne and Ile au Cerf, it was a picture postcard island town. Definitely not a city. The nearest big city, Nairobi, was an ocean away.
    She peered out of the taxi window at the landmark Clock Tower at Albert Street and Independence Avenue and past the pastel painted Indian-owned stores lining the streets. The British colonial influence was still prevalent, though the nation had won its independence in 1976. Her destination was the colorful Sir Selwyn Clarke Market.
    In Mah’e, resources were limited. On an island, everything must be imported. Only fruit, fish and tea were plentiful as evident in the local market.
    After paying the driver, Victoria entered under the archway and wandered about the market, taking in the scents and sounds of a life she had left behind. Spices wrinkled her nose and the mixture of French and Kreol spoken was like an ancient tune rediscovered.
    Vendors hawked everything from paw paw, breadfruit, bananas, to exotic spices like saffron and vanilla pods, and colorful batik fabric. She passed the fresh fish stalls. Mackerel, job fish, tuna, parrot fish and octopus glistened in the strong daylight. The pungent aroma of salt fish lingered in the air. She fingered jars of fiery chutney and pickled chilies. Deeper inside the market, she passed stalls displaying local crafts like baskets and pottery, rows of colorful vegetable stalls with eggplant and palm heart, and the meat stalls with crates of squawking chickens. Snowy white cattle egrets perched above,