Beginning of the Horse Year
This is the second Lunar New Year I'm spending in my house in hell (Mauritius). Somehow there are fewer fireworks compared with the last Dragon year. Well, during the Snake year I wasn't here - I went back to Hong Kong, then to Australia to see my 91-year-old aunt (technically my first cousin once removed, but I've always called her my aunt). She's 92 now and still very healthy.
It's almost four years since I moved here. The scenery is paradise, but the people are definitely from hell.
2022 was the most difficult year for me - probably the lowest point of my life. I never want to go through anything like that again. The only bright side is that I learned "trust no one." That lesson is hard for me. Compared with life in Hong Kong, I was probably spoiled. It was easy to ask anyone for anything - not money, but simple help, or borrowing something from a neighbour or even a stranger. I was almost never rejected.
Here, it's a completely different story. If you ask a local to lend you something - even if they're family - they either say no, lie about it, or ask you for money. So "borrowing something" is basically impossible here.
The lying culture is something you have to learn to live with. Even simple things like delivery: except for the big supermarkets, it's impossible for anyone to deliver on the date they promise. There's a new grocery store near my place. When they first opened, I went in and asked for lemons. The shopkeeper told me, "Come back tomorrow." I went back the next day - still no lemons. She asked me to wait for her call. Ten days after I had already bought lemons from the supermarket, she messaged me saying she finally had them. But they were limes, not lemons. I still bought some because I had asked, even though I wasn't asking for limes.
And she lies about herself too. She told me her second husband didn't care about her or her son from her first marriage. Later she told me she had only been married once. These aren't even white lies. I don't understand the point of lying about things like that.
I tried to make friends here, but it goes against my principles to be friends with liars. I love learning languages and new things, but they've put me off so much that Mauritian Creole isn't as interesting to me as it used to be.