From Teacher to Preacher

By Dr. Jean Norbert Augustin

"From Teacher to Preacher" is Dr Jean Norbert Augustin's autobiography. It is a survey of his life  - beginning with his birth in the late forties to the time of writing (2022).

 

Born and growing up in a very modest Roman Catholic family, he grew up to become a well-respected French teacher – a profession he served for fifty-two years (1967-2019) without a single break!

 

In 1982, he gave his life to Jesus and, in 1983, was called to the ministry, serving the Body of Christ as an Evangelist-Teacher. He was also privileged to attend and participate in a number of Christian conferences – both locally and abroad.

The book relates with abundant details the author's life with special emphasis on his transition from Teacher to Preacher, underscoring -   sometimes with humour and sometimes with gravity.- the many ups and downs he experienced along the way.

 

A good read for foreign readers looking for some insight into life in Mauritius.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr. Jean Norbert Augustin
• Release date: Nov 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215386392

Dr. Jean Norbert Augustin

Dr. Jean Norbert Augustin is a Mauritian citizen. He worked as a high school language teacher for 52 years. He holds a Teacher's Certificate and a Teacher's Diploma. He is now a Bible Teacher and an Evangelist. He holds Doctorates in Divinity and in Missionary Ministries as well as a Christian Broadcaster's Certificate - Grade A. He has published "Bought and Bonded by Blood", "The Day Justice Was Judged", "Voices from the Cloud" and "In Quest of Truth". He is married, has two adult chiidren and four grandsons.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

January 25, 1948 was a Sunday. On that day, a child was born. A baby boy. This sounds like a Bible story, doesn't it? But far from it. It was not Mary’s boy child. It was not in Bethlehem. That baby boy was, in fact, me. The place? Curepipe, Mauritus.

My father's name was Georges and my mother's, Lea. I was the fourth child of my parents. The three elder ones were two boys – Reynolds and Georges junior - and a girl, Marie-Thérèse, who died soon after birth. Hence, I never got to know her. After me, came two sisters – Danielle and Guylène - and a brother, Jean-Marc.

My father was a mason and worked in what was called the Public Works Department. To my understanding, he was engaged in the construction of government public buildings - such as schools, dispensaries, road pavements and the like.

My family was Roman Catholic by tradition. Consequently, I was baptised as a baby and, at age seven, had my First Communion and was confirmed in St Theresa's Church in Curepipe. My godmother was a plump little dark-skinned woman called Louise, whereas my godfather was a man by name Marcel. I met him only once. When I was about 10, my mother, once, told me: Let’s go to Réduit in Moka so you can get to know your godfather. We went and I met the man who, ten years before, had stood before God as my spiritual father but who disappeared until I went in search of him ten years later!

My godmother, however, was a much more familiar and caring woman. She was and remained a spinster for life – just like her sister Vivianne who, by the way, was my brother Georges’s godmother. Every New Year’s day, we would go to visit them and George and I were all too glad to receive a silver coin – 25 cents or 50 cents, at most. Much less than peanuts by today’s standard, but a real bonanza at that time!

My mother was a housemaid. Though unemployed, she had plenty to do with all the house chores and the upbringing of the six children. She had to clean the house, do the cooking, wash the dishes and do the laundry. There was no washing machine at that time. Those were the days when housewives had to take their laundry to the river. To do the washing, they would dip each piece into the water, then place it on a flat rectangular rock, rub it with a big brown block of soap, then rinse it abundantly in deep water to rid it of the soap. To clean the dirtier parts – collar and sleeves – they would use a corncob to rub off the dirt. For the white clothes, there was a blue square which they used to colour water in an oval-shaped tub. They plunged the white pieces of laundry into that water so they would regained their immaculate whiteness. And, indeed, they did! Finally, the laundry was spread out on the grass to dry. Or they would plant two bamboo sticks in the ground, stretch a rope between them and hang their laundry on the rope.

Quite fortunately, there were many rivers full of clear water in those days. Nowadays, most of our rivers have run dry. Maybe they have aged and grown tired, and have decided to hand the job over to their electronic successors, washing machines. For us, children, it was fun to accompany our mothers to the river. That afforded us with a great time to meet our friends, to kick into a ball on the grass, or to play hide and seek in the neighbouring bushes. The bravest and most daring ones would venture into the water, splashing it all over the place. The whole place resounded with giggling and laughter, arousing our mothers’ anger.

I was born in Curepipe - then the most residential town of the island of Mauritius. Indeed, most of the inhabitants of Curepipe were then rich Franco-Mauritians. They lived in magnificent colonial houses, made of wood, beautifully wrought by seasoned workmen. They usually employed a whole team of servants - male and female - to work in every sector of their luxurious houses. They had servants to clean the house, to cook their food, to serve at table, to do the gardening, to do the washing, to drive their cars, to run their errands and you name it.

Situated on the highlands of the district of Plaines Wilhems, Curepipe had the reputation of being a most chilly and foggy place. There were vast forests all over the region, which caused almost incessant rainfalls in winter. People living in other regions - in Port-Louis, the capital, or on the northern and western coasts, especially - would shiver at the very mention of the name Curepipe! Nowadays, with the process of urbanisation, the climate has become less severe, though the bitter winter rainfall is still proverbial.

The reason I'm talking about the Curepipe cold is to say that it, somehow, had its bearing on my health, as a child. Indeed, I very often suffered from influenza, couldn't walk barefoot, and had to always be dressed in warm clothes.

Those were the days of wooden houses, covered with corrugated iron sheets. As we didn't have a house of our own, my parents had to rent the various houses we grew up in. Moving house was a common feature of poor people in those days. That was mainly due to the fact that the landlords were very money-minded and would always ask for increases of the rent. So, we kept moving from one house to another, but always around Curepipe.

The houses we rented were most often in very poor conditions. The corrugated iron sheets, composing the roofs, were rusty and pierced with holes. During summer nights, my brothers and I would use the roof as an observatory to admire the starry sky. During winter nights, however, it would serve as a most unwelcome shower!

Besides, the wooden partitions were not always well sealed, so that the wintry wind would literally whistle through. To make matters worse, they harboured roaches and mice. Roaches, especially, were a terror for me. Up to my seventh birthday, I had long hair with beautiful curls. My mother loved my hair so much, she didn't want to have it cut. It was when I turned seven and was going to have my First Communion, that she reluctantly cut it. But, still, she kept the locks in a pillow cover! I cannot recall when nor how they were disposed of.

As I said, roaches always terrified me. Beautiful as it was, my long curly hair was, ironically, at the source of my fear of roaches. Indeed, one summer night, when it was about to rain, roaches started flying around and one of them found no better place where to land than in my luxuriant locks! I sent loud piercing screams across the house. Panic-stricken, my mother ran up to me to see what the matter was.

A roach, Mum!, I yelled .

Where? she asked.

Here, Mum, in my locks. Quick, Mum, get it out of there! I cried at the top of my voice and with tears running down my cheeks.

Mother stretched out her hand, got hold of the creature and snatched it off my hair.

Nowadays, I'm no longer afraid of those ugly creatures. But I still hate them and find them to be most repulsive. Especially since a plumber friend of mine told me he found a whole swarm of them in a manhole he had opened up to do some water- pipe repair.

Also, I learned from a documentary on a French television channel, that, along with rats, roaches are practically impossible to completely eradicate. No matter how well and how often you clean your kitchen and your cupboards, they will eventually show up. One reason is that they creep out of drains. But the ironical reason is that we bring them home, ourselves. How? Well, their eggs cling to the packaging we take home from the supermarket! Sooner or later, they hatch in the comfort of our warm and cosy cupboards, and we find ourselves with a new imported infestation!

.Nor were roaches the only creatures that were a nuisance to us. Under the wooden floors of the houses of that time was a cave full of dust. In summer and during the sugarcane crop season, those warm caves were infested with fleas. They would creep or fly out of their nests and find their way into houses through the interstices between the wooden planks constituting the floor! Consequently, people's bed sheets, mattresses and children's shirts were convenient harbouring places for those pests. And they would bite and cause you to itch. To get hold of them, people had to spray DDT over the bed and into such nooks as would harbour them. At night, the DDT would leave a heavy smell hanging in the air. Quite fortunately, none of us was ever intoxicated!

The houses were usually a very large building partitioned into four or five compartments. Each compartment was rented to a different family. Most people bred a few chickens for personal consumption on special days like Easter, Christmas and the New Year. It happened sometimes that somebody else’s hens laid their eggs inside the cave, unbeknown to the owner. We, the children, would creep inside the cave to steal the eggs. For us, it was a real treasure trove!

It also sometimes happened that a hen would secretly lay her eggs in the cave or in a bush. She would sit there, quietly brooding her eggs and, some time later, appear with a brood of newly hatched chicks – all to the pleasure of the owner.

Rats and mice were other familiar pests that infested houses. In an effort to combat them, people had to use traps or poison. But those rodents are known to be clever. They would soon know the means being used to exterminate them, hence, perspicaciously avoid being caught.

Should you believe those were our only pest problems, you would be wrong. The other creatures that made our lives miserable - especially children - were lice! Oh, how they would nest in our hair, causing embarrassing and irritating itches! Our mothers would have to fine-comb our hair regularly and wash our heads with soap. By the way, soap, in those days, came in big blocks and bricks and was unscented! I remember the one most commonly available was brown and had a wheel with its spokes stamped into it – unless it was a ship’s helm!

One cool thing about living in a sheet-metal roofed house in those days was the free music that Mother Nature graced our young ears with. Indeed, when it rained - and Curepipe was notorious for that - the patter of the rain on the rooftop, duetting with the croaking of mating frogs in the rivers nearby, rocked us to the sweetest of slumbers. Music above, music below - music in surround mode!

Being a child, in those days, was no fun, at all! Nor was it easy for poor parents to bring up their families. Life was hard, they had to work arduously, and money was rare.

And what about the food? As babies, we were fed a special home-made milk. Mothers roasted flour in a large pan on a coal fire, then added water and sugar. That mixture was then poured into a feeding bottle with a rubber nipple and fed to us.

As we grew up, the food became more and more solid and consistent. I remember my elder brother, Georges, used to put cooked rice in his tea. By the way, tea for the whole family was boiled and brewed in a large cooking utensil, mixed with milk and sugar, then poured into each child's mug. Did I say mug? Well, sometimes what we used as mug was, in fact, an empty metal can with the rim flattened and a metal handle soldered to it! If it was a mug, it would be enameled or in aluminium.

Cooking was done on a charcoal stove. Later on, we had a Primus stove, which was awfully noisy because it used pressured kerozene. When it was in full swing, we could hardly hear our own voices. We had to speak as loudly as we could in order to be able to compete with its loudness. And, when, Father or Mother would switch it off, what a relief we felt! Sometimes we forgot to readjust our voices to the new silence prevailing and continued to yell. It was like some modern-day kid talking with the ear buds of his mp3 on!

In those days, houses were several hundred meters apart. Street lighting practically did not exist. In winter, especially, night fell very early, shrouding houses in almost sepulchral darkness. Electricity supply existed only - and even then, scantly - in town centres.

The best we could do to try to dispel the invading darkness was to use candles or kerosene lamps. When financial means would allow the luxury, we would have a kerosene lamp with a tall glass tube standing loftily above the wick. This offered the advantage of shielding the flame from wind draughts when the door would be open or ajar. Or whenever we had to go out for reasons I'll mention in a moment. Candles and kerosene lamps were not without having their impact on buildings and bodies alike. Indeed, the carbon produced drew long black lines on the walls or dark circles on the ceilings, if these happened