The first impression Ida Coombes gives is of a person with a very strong will. Sitting behind her desk, she recalls in her booming voice ? probably an attribute of her teaching years, how she started IPS from scratch 15 years ago. ?There were 43 pupils to begin with and now we have 250, with more than 25 different nationalities!? she points out with a touch of pride.

She obviously treats this school as her own baby. She has no children of her own but, as she puts it, she ?looks after everybody else?s.? It is touching to see her stoop down to some five year olds to look at their artwork or listen to them read out from their books. The earnestness of the children as they try to catch her attention is evidence of their genuine affection for her.

As she walks through the corridors, she nicely but firmly tells off a little boy who is running and says hello to another. ?I know the name of every pupil here,? she says, leading us to the school?s collection of endemic plants. Ida Coombes is also a great lover of nature. She adores her dogs and her garden that she attends to as much as her heavy timetable allows. And she always finds time for some exercise: ?Every morning and afternoon, I take a walk along Mon-Choisy beach.?

Ida Coombes remembers how when she first came here, she took the isolation and lack of development as an adventure. ?It was exciting! Port-Louis was just amazing then, so beautiful.? She finds that unfortunately some places in Mauritius such as the little villages have lost their charm with development. Laughing at the memory of Grand-Bay in the days when it had only one manual petrol pump, she admits that much of the development has been positive, especially in education. ?It is wonderful that more and more people have the opportunity to be educated now.? Commenting on the controversial issue of oriental languages, she simply says: ?By the way, we?re introducing Mandarin into the curriculum next year.? She has a global approach to education, claiming that Asia is ?the world of tomorrow.?

She is a person interested in cultural diversity and says very directly that she ?could not live confined in one social or cultural stratum.? She encourages the same open-mindedness in her school, organising activities such as Indian studies and Japanese excursions. She is very involved in education generally and thinks that, if she left Mauritius, her best memory would be ?having created a little part of a future for many children although there is still so much to improve on.?