That was actually supposed to read "Mauritius blew my mind," and there's proof of it right there. This small island nation in the middle of the Indian Ocean is considered part of Sub-Saharan Africa, but I'm pretty sure that's only for statistical purposes. This is a vacation destination for the wealthy of England, France and South Africa -- and us, I guess. Ask any student on this ship to truthfully summarize his or her time in Mauritius, and a good 96 percent of the time you'll get some answer involving beaches and booze. This isn't any sort of commentary on the nature of the students or the program. That is literally all there was to do, and it is all you're supposed to do there. OK, I guess I did do a little (hungover, exhausted and nauseated) deep-sea fishing (with explosive results), and I saw some cool churches and temples, but seriously, come on.
Don't think I'm complaining, though. Every self-respecting college student needs some semblance of Spring Break, and this was it for us. Most of our plans involved renting villas or staying at coastal resorts and hotels, which occasionally turned out to be a lousy idea. More on that in a moment.
We were promised, to raucous applause, that Mauritius had island-wide free wireless Internet access. Now, this may not seem so fantastic to you folks keeping score at home, but we have endured five weeks of having to pay up to 50 cents a minute for extremely slow, quasi-infuriating "broadband." The lesson here may be that sometimes there are more important things than Internet, but let's get real: It is absolutely necessary when available. I made the mistakes of a) promising all of my friends and family individual e-mail correspondence whenever they wrote me and b) writing this very column, which basically means that I've had to spend way more money than I'd ever like to spend on anything to purchase Internet minutes. People also have to book flights for independent trips, pay bills online and do other things of that nature.
So now you can comprehend our shining optimism upon hearing about free Internet for 60 whole hours. Sure enough, as we pulled into port, the "free wi-fi" network showed up on all of our computers. Spirits were high, and we connected, only to realize that for some reason, we couldn't actually use it to access any Web sites. There was panic, there was confusion, but there was still no Internet. To add insult to injury, we couldn't even use the ship's Internet while in port, which is normally the one place you can get a reasonably fast connection, because fewer people are using it. Unable to feed our addiction, we wandered the island without any real purpose. The food and drink flowed freely. Unfortunately, so did the lawlessness.
We were told Mauritius would be one of our safest ports, and perhaps that led students to lower their guard. But there were certain crimes committed against Semester at Sea participants that I'm currently not at liberty to speculate on or discuss. I'd say more, but they haven't even addressed us about it, and rumors -- which fly through the ship like a mighty cloud of mosquitoes through the deepest, most malaria-ridden jungle -- are just so untrustworthy.
I had a great time, though. This picture I just painted for you might sound pessimistic and grim, but I can assure you that this is still the time of my life. I am learning more in any given day either on ship or in port than I would in 2 weeks at school. As far as classes go, any Cavalier who doubts the academic validity of this program should know that the faculty are doing their damnedest to keep students challenged and on task. My impression is that if they stepped up the workload and class difficulty to the level upon which U.Va. is insisting, the real value of this program would crumble to the ground. I am going to come out of this thing so much mentally healthier and worldlier than I was when I came in, and I'm sure that the feeling is mutual among my peers.
The reason I signed up for this program in the first place was out of intrigue from the bad publicity that our school seemed to be giving Semester at Sea while acquiring the program during the 2005-06 school year. As I suspected, its reputation has nothing to do with the policies and the program itself, but rather with the students. This is known as the "floating mattress," but aren't rumors of rampant sexual acts in our own libraries just as locally widespread?
College students want to drink. Semester at Sea limits the amount they can do so on the ship, and the consequences are quite severe for sneaking any alcohol back on board from a port. College students want to get it on. The ship has a seemingly infinite supply of free condoms to limit issues brought on by the getting-it-on. And I already told you, the classes really aren't that bad.
Next week: India and how it probably doesn't have free internet.
Erik's column runs whenever it washes up in a bottle. He can be reached at silk@cavalierdaily.com
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