?Stand on your own feet.? This seems to be the motto of Patricia Day-Hookoomsing. The Managing Director of CCL Management Consultants left the United Kingdom for Mauritius 32 years ago.

Sitting at her desk, although slightly flustered by the photographer?s presence, Patricia Day-Hookoomsing gives the impression that she is an assertive woman. ?One week before I was due to come to Mauritius for the first time in January 1972, my fiancé wrote to me that there was a lot of tension in the country because of a build-up of political instability?, she confides, adding with a little smile that she decided to come anyway. One month later, a state of emergency was declared?

One of her first memories is seeing jobless young men sitting idly ?en bas la boutique?. Living in this period of stagnation was a ?defining experience? and contributed to forge her enterprising character. ?We didn?t have much and had to work to survive.? Her matter-of-fact attitude to life reveals her firm character. One instinctively feels that she?s a person who is not to be messed around with.

Patricia Day-Hookoomsing thinks that being a foreigner did not hinder her from getting a job. ?It was mainly because I was over-qualified (she had a degree in Latin and French, with a secretarial diploma) and married (so it was supposed she?d be having children) that I had problems finding a job?.

But as perseverance pays off, she finally got a job as Debtors? Clerk in a well-known firm for Rs 400 per month! Being someone who needs challenges, she tried out various jobs until 1975, when she started teaching in Lycée Labourdonnais. Although she stayed there for 14 years, Patricia Day-Hookoomsing never forgot her desire to be in a decision-making post. She continued studying, even if she had children, to obtain the appropriate diplomas to fulfil her ambitions.

In 1989, feeling she had no future in her current job, she left for CCL Management Consultants. She recalls with a touch of pride in her voice how at that time it was ?simply wasn?t done? to change jobs like that. Listening to her, one can sense that she is a woman who likes challenges. Now she is at the head of this firm but she also finds time for such activities as being Chairperson of a High-Level Committee for Agenda Responsive Budgeting Initiative, whose function is to judge how responsive the budget is to gender.

In fact, Patricia Day-Hookoomsing does not hide her feminist inclinations. One interesting comment she made was that women who have decision-making positions in Mauritius need to be assertive and that Mauritian men tend to see this as aggressiveness. A woman in a post of responsibility is therefore to some extent perceived negatively by Mauritian men?

Patricia Day-Hookoomsing?s life in Mauritius reveals what a determined person she is, open to change and fully capable of standing up for her rights as an individual. However, she admits that ?Mauritius is not an easy country to live in because it is small and far-away?. Sometimes she misses the anonymity and freedom in Europe: ?Having a coffee on your own without anyone giving you a second look makes such a nice change.?

Nadia peerun