Ellishya Potiah is a young seller of food on a space adjacent to the taxi stand in the very heart of Central Flacq. Married to Akish, she has gladly got imbibed in the work culture of her in-laws who, by profession, are renown food sellers in the village. The young couple gladly launched themselves into the same line of business creating and sustaining a job opportunity in the last four years. Nobody owes you a living, she says.

Ellishya hails from a family where schooling, education, training and working for a decent living is important for this gives meaning to life. Her brother and sisters are in the teaching profession. She could have, with a strong possibility, been in the education sector as an early childhood educator. After completing secondary schooling at the Rajcoomar Gujadhur State Secondary School, she has trained and worked in Australia in a Child Excellent Rated School. But Ellishya decided at some point in time her place of work, comfort and welfare would be in her homeland. So here she finds herself as a respectful recipient of a well-grounded culture of work.

She is at her post every day of the week for, she says, people have to eat everyday of their life. She has among her regular clients people of every walk of life but the majority are those of modest families having come to this ‘little town’ for business purposes at the National Transport Authority, the District Council, the District Court, the offices of the Central Electricity Board and Central Water Authority. She recognizes those who come from around her home village but even those from Curepipe, Grand-Gaube, Goodlands and Quatre-Bornes.

Early to wake is early to start work for if well begun, it’s half done. There are basic constituents to assemble: herbs, spring onion, carrots, chilli sauce required to produce the tastiest fried noodles that can be obtained in this part of the village. The bowls of noodles is the common denominator for all, men, women, young and old, and students. Whoever comes without the required money or being a destitute will have a bowl filled normally. Oliver Twist has no time to ask some more, Ellishya opines philosophically that nobody should go without food. Her generosity has earned her respect among the public and among her colleagues. These latter are vendors on the other side, on the way to the marketplace. It’s here that she buys her daily requirement of fresh christophine (chouchou) for she has accompanying niceties like saomai, boulettes, bouillon and minced lamb meat and egg, ‘long’, and cheese. The vendor folk has developed a solidarity and a language sometimes the smile saying it more than words would say.

Life would be dull was it not for the environment around. It’s colourful and lively, it’s noisy with fast moving vehicles moving up the single lane and middle-aged women walking cautiously in their coloured dresses whether on a religious festival or for the weekly Sunday bazaar. Everybody is in a hurry, and the place belongs to all of them which makes it nobody’s place. Ellishya is not intimidated by the hurlyburly being an unavoidable element of these human activities. Every activity must be sustained she says, the result being at the service of her fellow Mauritian citizens. Her business acumen and teaching traits are the powerful foundation she possesses for personal advancement.