Travels From Eureka, Moka, Mauritius Island To Rodrigues Island:

Daughter Wendy - 7th. Generation Leclezio in front of our ancestral home still standing strong through the commitment of our cousin, Jackie de Maroussem. Heartfelt thanks Jackie for the continued upkeep of our patrimony!

Eureka:

That original cradle and tabernacle of the Leclezio family for well over a century.

Eureka, that temple and imposing edifice to the material wealth of the Leclezio family. One of the most notorious land barons of Mauritius! 

A family that boasts of a number of extraordinary people among its ranks.

Eureka, the place of my birth 68 years ago!

From: Bellevue, WA.

Bellevue, WA.

That sophisticated high end residential area of Washington State.

Bellevue, the home of the Bellevue Square Mall, that temple of consumerism, located within a short walk from our home.

Bellevue and Medina, home to Bill Gates and also home to our branch of the Leclezio family for over 25 years.

From: Faben Point, Mercer Island.

Famous Faben Point - Mercer Island on Lake Washington.

Once upon a time the home of Sam Israel, one of Seattle's most notorious land baron. (Google: Samis Foundation for this man's fascinating history.)

From the dream of ending my days surrounded by my wife, my children and my grand children, thoroughly spoilt by all the very best that money can buy on 300 feet of Lake Washington waterfront on exclusive Faben Point on Mercer Island. A property that I originally secured for a few million dollars from Sam Israel located only a short distance by boat from the Bill Gates Estate also on the sun bathed east coast of Lake Washington.

Feeding corn daily in the early morning to the migrating Canadian geese on the Faben Point only low bank Lake Washington waterfront property.

To: The realities of life very far from that rich and or poor past...

To: Allee Tamarin, Rodrigues Island!!!

From here:

I now yell: "Eureka!" Although far from my children and grand children, I have finally found: Peace, the meaning of real Love and the secret of lasting Joy!

For Rodrigues Island is where God has patiently led me to finally understand and find out that  true Joy and lasting happiness can only be born out of true love shared freely by all.  No amount of money can ever buy that conviction.

Dreams:

My unfulfilled dreams for my future with my family huddled around us on 300 feet of waterfront were born out of the unreal realities of my childhood and adolescence growing up in Eureka and Trou d'eau douce while also jetting all over the world living in the five star hotels of London, Paris, Geneva, New York, Toronto, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban to name just a few. Over a period of 68 years I have traveled from being born with a platinum spoon in my mouth to using plastic forks and knives at best nowadays.

Like my ancestors, for many years in the past, I thought that I needed millions upon millions of dollars to be happy. I believed that millions upon millions of dollars were needed to gather and settle our 5 children and our 25 grand children around us on the Lake Washington waterfront property that I had bought from multi millionaire, Sam Israel. That was my belief. That was what I worked for. That was my life's end goal.

Over the last fifteen years, God would prune and tailor my dreams to fit His plans for me. Thus, patiently, over those years God led me by the hand along most difficult, unexpected and unchartered paths. I would have never wanted to trace and, indeed, I would have never wished to find such trails had I been left alone to continue to mark out my road map strictly according to my travel plans through life for my happiness and that of my family.

But, obviously God knew best where to lead me and how and when to open my eyes to the rewards of letting Him carry me over those unchartered paths.  God knew that I needed to step into some of the footprints He had personally set out for me along difficult trails. Indeed, today I know for sure that God had already traced out a road map for me up steep hills and across some thorny scorching hot desert sands long before I was born. God wanted, the very best for me. He knew that I needed to go the full circle to fully appreciate and understand the different flavors of life. As the old Jewish saying goes: "No vase is whole until it has been broken!"

After seven years of soul searching in 'exile' on Rodrigues Island, very far from all of my originally very much missed and fondly remembered familiar past, God decided that it was time to open my eyes and my ears to His agenda for the sun set of my life. God wanted me to discover how to live a happy life in His light with very little on this anti stress tiny island. Like my neighbor, Mama Kaya who just celebrated her 90th birthday, (see previous post) nowadays I also feel light due to the immense love of God that fills all voids in my heart. To understand that love, I had to live it out and experience it first hand as it is portrayed by many of my close neighbors of Allee Tamarin, Rodrigues Island.

Peace! Peace at last! In Rodrigues, no more stress about either keeping up with my ancestors or my father's lifestyle. No more straining and stressing in North America to be 'up with the Jones'! In humble Rodrigues living among down to earth people placing all their trust in God's Love and Providence, there is no source of stress to disturb my inner peace. All evils and devils of vanity, greed, control, jealousy and hatred have been drowned by an ocean of love. The result is: No more need for cancer surgeries! No more life threatening heart problems through a vicious circle of anxieties. No more stays in ICUs wondering if I would live to see the next hour or die! All that bliss through the Providence and the power of God's love blatantly present within the heart and soul of most of my immediate neighbors. 

Today, at 68, I finally fully relate to St. Paul's advice: 'In all things be thankful". I praise and thank God for leading me to discover that it is never too late to finally happily accept and fully appreciate a lifestyle so very different and although so very far removed from everything I had ever known!

How I ever got to Rodrigues Island is in itself a miracle. 

I left America to go visit my birth place, Mauritius, in November 2005. There I was diagnosed with a cancer that, according to the surgeon, I had nursed for at least 5 years. After surgery and chemotherapy, I developed heart problems. All my health problems were possibly stress related according to my surgeon. Similarly, the doctors in the US had opined that the ALS my first wife, Wendy, died of after 35 years of marriage could have been stress related! Without medical insurance, my health problems made my return to America very problematic and I opted to stay in Mauritius. 

Eventually, out of the blue, in November 2007, God had, over two years, meticulously organized a varied set of circumstances that would lead me over the deep blue sea to land on the totally unfamiliar shores of Rodrigues Island.

There, over the last seven years God would put a number of illiterate and most humble extraordinarily ordinary people on my path.  In the winter of my life, the humble ways, the innocent words, the casual actions and natural examples of my newly found friends taught me the power of unconditional love free of all hatred and criticism. Without asking any questions or passing any judgments, the locals had accepted my second wife Eve and I as their own. Indeed, our close neighbor, Mama Kaya, loves to make Eve and I feel truly part of the family by calling us: "my lovely daughter and my great son". She will often add that she never would believe that, in her old age, God would give her two more children on and above the twelve she had already had! 

All these testimonies of love issued from the tabernacle of the matriarch of the Philippe family unequivocally demonstrate that to live a close knit family life you most certainly do not need millions upon millions of dollars. Quite to the contrary, my materially 'poor' neighbors vividly highlighted the many rewards of a truly rich life around an extended family circle. In Rodrigues, traditionally the family circle still reaches out far and wide to family members across generations. The elderly need no homes to be parked into while waiting for their meter to run out of time.

Today, after I have witnessed the strong family bonds that tie 'poor' families together, I understand that much needed unconditional love is an essential ingredient in their recipe for survival. I believe that what is generally regarded as 'poverty' is in fact the greatest wealth of those families living together and depending on each other around the clock. It is precisely because different generations of families have very little that they have to share all of whatever they have with all around their table. That truly then becomes a table of plenty. For love is at the center of that table where all is shared and shared and shared. Because they are always looking out for each other, without measure, each and every one will freely and happily share his time, his labors, his sweat, his fruits, his bread, his corn, his beans, his cassava at that familiar table of plenty. That is the  tradition of many families in Rodrigues. I believe that Rodrigues is blessed with so much because sharing with love is at the very roots of the Catholic church. The embryonic tightly knit Christian community brought forth all they had to share in common as Jesus and His disciples had taught them to do.

Table of plenty - Voirons Monastery

Mama Kaya, the matriarch overlooking over the welfare of three generations of descendants identifies best with St. Paul when she tells me: Our entire family is just one body. No one can say to another I am more important that you or you or you or again, I do not need you or you or you. We all need each other and we all need to be full of Christ's mercy and forgiving love for each other in order to stand up and to stand out as one family. 

Mama Kaya went on to explain: God created us because He is Love and He needed creatures to love. Likewise, without the love we show to each other we cannot live happily and pass on God's love. No family can stand solid like a rock unless it is full of that love. In fact nothing can stand unless it is full of something. Then chuckling and with a lively twinkle in her eye, Mama Kaya pointed to an empty 50 kg bag of corn and said even that old bag of corn can no longer stand! Look it lying down as if dead. That is because it is empty!

Now, thanks to Mama Kaya's extended family huddled together in a tight circle around the matriarch of our community of Allee Tamarin I am, to some extent, vicariously fulfilling my own dream of living surrounded by our children and grand children all located in homes just a stone's throw away from me. This is how my great, great grand father, Eugene Leclezio lived after purchasing his huge estate of Eureka, Moka. This is also how my great grand father, Sir Henry Leclezio had lived in old days Mauritius. In Eureka, Moka, up on the hill, he lived surrounded by his 17 children living all around Moka and St. Pierre during most of the hot summer months. For part of the winter, he and his whole family would migrate twenty miles down to their second homes on the east coast of Mauritius to Trou d'eau douce. My grand father had walked in his ancestors footsteps and lived accordingly. Tight unity and strong family bonds had been the enduring strength and the hallmark of that transcendent Mauritian family for generations.

Obviously most of the old fashioned world has changed since. However in 2014, it is clearly evident that what makes the incredible strength of Rodrigues society is definitely the strong family bonds that have endured the test of time here on this remote island lost in the Indian Ocean. 

A slow moving clock ticking slowly and only marking Rodrigues time has to this day left the old fashioned society of Rodrigues unaffected by the modern voids and stressful  ills found in the transient societies of the modern world. 

I regard it as a rare privilege, a true gift from God, nowadays to see so many neighbors living out daily my dream of close family unity. Those neighbors, especially Mama Kaya and her large family circle fulfill my vision and hope to be surrounded in the evening of my life by our children, grand children and great grand children. Although, that was not to be God's plan for me, He alone knows how I delight daily to watch Mama Kaya and her progeny share so many precious moments of their lives on each other's doorsteps! In gratitude for the joy that brings to me, I am thankful to be able to still say: Praise be to God for leading me to warm bright sunny Rodrigues Island to fulfill my dream even if only vicariously in the winter of my life. 

The irony of it all is that my 'rich' neighbors view me as rich and consider themselves poor. Obviously, paradoxically, I regard them as very rich while I feel very poor in their midst. Whenever Mama Kaya's words: "My family is my only wealth' ring in my ears, I wonder just to what extent does Mama Kaya realize the vastness of her precious wealth in today's world.

Mama Kaya's 90th. Birthday celebration on September 6, 2014 was to be the culminating point of all that I had soaked in and all the oral lessons I had listened to over the last seven years. Over that period, God had led me to observe numerous details of profound humble love in action daily through the joy of sharing everything and listening to all everyone had to say.

Indeed by the time I walked away from Mama Kaya's birthday party, I felt like I was also walking away from my graduating ceremony from a very different school of higher learning. I had personally never attended any, set in the same mould, typical University. But going home up the hill on the night of September 6, 2014, I felt that I had just come from the cream of any Ivy league University sitting atop any famous hill of any number of cities in any number of large fully industrialized country. I looked at my immediate recently found highly civilized world and loving neighbors as capable of lighting up anybody's way to the City of God. 

By contrast, I have met a number of fellows who have graduated from Ivy League Varsities atop famous hills. Unfortunately, 'learned' folks typically tend to look down upon the rest of the humble illiterate human beings that we are all and that I fully enjoy living with as being lost and rudderless in a dense fog with nowhere to go. Ironically Mama Kaya maintains without any pretension or sophistication that it is precisely because she can neither read nor write that her only rudder has been Love. With God as captain of her ship and Jesus, Mother Mary and Father Laval as crew, she has been able to sail through mighty tropical storms and still waters without hunger or thirst to the present safe harbor she has reached at 90!

In the dark of the night, with no street light to show the narrow way, I felt so light that I felt like I was walking on thin air. The steep hill I was ascending was no longer steep at all. At 68, I felt proud to have finally graduated from such a stand alone university, The 'Love Varsity', on minute Rodrigues Island lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. My diploma was etched deep in my heart. It had been passed down to me by the most senior dean of this very private school of high learning on the occasion of her 90th Birthday. What a memorable event!

Mama Kaya had explained to me that because she could neither read nor write, she had had all the time in the world to be impregnated by all the natural beauty around her open air 'Love University'. All God's creation around her were her professors to enjoy for free. That is why she is constantly singing the praises of the Creator of her vast campus from where she naturally acquired her wealth of priceless knowledge. Because Mama Kaya had been too poor to ever have a TV or a radio, she had had the time to listen to and to communicate full time without distraction with all of God's amazing creation. During our conversation, Mama Kaya reminded me so very much of St. Francis. A living instrument and messenger of God's peace, Mama Kaya talked to God, talked to Father Desire Laval in her home and backyard every day. At length she talked to her children, her grand children and her great grand children counseling them as best she knew straight from her heart filled with love for them. Mama Kaya talked to the birds, those beautiful gleaming red Cardinals that flew in and out of her yard to share food with the chickens, the ducks and the guinea fowls. Mama Kaya loves to listen to their singing. It mingles melodically with the notes of the wind whistling through the narrow leaves of the Gum trees that shade her house and animals from the blazing summer sun. At 90, the joy of listening to nature, the art of sharing  and of dialoguing with family or stranger alike, the art of teaching with contagious palpable love had all come to her naturally!

Mama Kaya further explained that all hills and all rough paths she had had to travel across had always been leveled out by the awesome power of the love within her heart. Her heart was so filled with so much love that it could act like a gigantic grading blade over any hill or rough rocky prickly path. Such a grading blade operated by a heart filled with love is the only one that, in the end, is capable to put us all on the same level and make us all one in the eyes of our Maker! 

No wonder, I had felt light going up hill on the night of Mama Kaya's 90th birthday. Mama Kaya had successfully taught me how to turn my own heart into a powerful grading blade capable of leveling all paths playing fields. That came from the awesome power of the priceless diploma I was finally carrying in my heart. I was filled with such intense joy that not only the hill had been made flat but the dark night was most bright. I could hear an inner voice telling me: "You are alive. You have been set free. Mama Kaya has rolled away the stone. Go tell it up all over the hills and the mountains. 

The next day Mama Kaya confided in me that although it was extremely rare for people with my background to come to Rodrigues Island to attend and graduate from her most unique Love University, the mere fact that I had trampled over so many social taboos and stigmas was part of the reason why she felt that I deserved to graduate ' Summa Cum Laude'. 

After seven years of devoting myself to intense learning and after seven years of many sacrifices in 'exile' far from home, far from children, grand children and family, only the intense love of God and neighbor could have made me feel light going up the hill. My seven years of commitment and patient learning and sacrifices had all paid off beyond expectation. 'Love University' had bulldozed away the crippling weight of years of stress from my shoulders. I was ready to yell to the whole world that on September 6, 2014, I finally held a rare 'Summa Cum Laude' in the field of free love where lasting happiness blossomed without fading. And all I had to pay was attention by way of fees! 

For years, I had symbolically portrayed my years of being weighed down by stress in American society through the table in our living room. The table top is a 512 year old Douglas fir cross section I sawed from Snoqualmie Pass in 1983 in Washington State. 

I cut the supporting base from a huge log that had landed on  a lonely white sandy beach in Rodrigues. It comes from a century old Sapele Mahogany that drifted here carried by wind, currents and waves along maritimes routes marked out for it by God. I love to show off my table as being an illustration of my own life. Tiny Rodrigues is carrying the heavy weight of years in America on its shoulders.

The table will remain as a souvenir of the past. But the weight of years of life in America has been cast off by the power of love found after I drifted on to Rodrigues shores according to God's agenda.

Love given freely is love received to be passed on just as freely...

With a Summa Cum Laude degree, may be, I can in turn follow in Mama Kaya's footsteps and share and teach for free what I studied and learnt over the last seven years only at the cost of paying attention to God's beautiful creatures and creation.

But, how could I possibly put in meaningful enough words the naturally magnetic and electrifying compelling actions of Mama Kaya?

Nonetheless, I hope and pray that I can now, through words, actions, pictures and prayer reach out and touch the heart of all those craving for and chasing after happiness and lasting joy along all the dead end high ways of the modern world.

After I obtain the curriculum of 'Love University' from the most senior dean of the free love department, Mama Kaya, I will start offering free lectures on this blog. Mama Kaya's dream to go international with her curriculum vitae will have been fulfilled within her lifetime.

Praise be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia!