After 10 months? travelling across the vast South American continent, I have come home to a country tangled in a plethora of scandals. The MCB-NPF imbroglio, the myriad shenanigans of Deelchand and his cronies, an anticorruption commission accused of indulging in the very crimes it has been entrusted to combat. And? the usual sharply ascending crime rate, prison riots, political vendettas, police brutality? The list goes on and on.

After the wild immensity of the Amazon, the barren beauty of the Bolivian salt desert, the remnants of the Inca civilization in Peru, the placid elegance of Quito in Ecuador and the colonial splendour of Cartagena on Colombia?s Caribbean coast, many of my friends unashamedly doubted my chances of lasting very long here. I had grown used to the freedom of travelling and the constant challenges it offered my body and mind, they argued.

The beauty of travelling, apart from discovering new cultures, places and facets of yourself, is that it constantly reminds you of home. Mauritius may be small but, to the curious and the open-minded, its 2 000 km are packed, chock-a-block, with most positive experiences.

All along the journey from Brazil to Colombia and back, I would tell myself or whoever my travelling companion was (donkey, Israeli, FARC guerrilla or taxi driver), that the landscape ? forests, oceans, villages ? reminded me of my little island lost in the Indian Ocean and what I love about it.

Our cultural diversity is unrivalled. Admittedly, a country as large as Colombia has many ethnic groups, ranging from Cogi Indians in the Sierra Nevada to descendants of African slaves on the Pacific coast and the Spanish urban elite. Yet, there is very little interaction between these groups and, worse still, a bloody civil war is raging between left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the broken wing government.

We might bicker here but we cannot deny the overriding harmony and the fact that Mauritius is what it is because of the convergence of different beliefs and backgrounds.

For years, Argentina was cited as a financial success story. Its people were the wealthiest on the continent and enjoyed holidays in Europe. Since the economy crashed in 2002, the change has been drastic and Europe has been foregone for Uruguay for their revelling. Those are the lucky ones though as most people can?t even get a job, which is fermenting quite a bit of civil unrest.

Mauritius, on the other hand, was cited as an example of stability in a recent IMF report not only because of its robust-enough economy but also because of its solid political institutions. Not too shabby for a country that has been rocked by a series of monumental scandals.

We have a lot to learn from Latin America too. Brazil is the most multiracial place in the world. There, the colour of a person?s skin means about as much as the colour of his-her shoes ? not much. This harmony really illustrates the wisdom of ?le métissage, c?est plus sage?.

Chile is another encouraging case. It is emerging from a lengthy, brutal dictatorship where thousands of dissidents literally disappeared overnight. Despite this legacy, the economy is going strong and the people are looking ahead. They want the leaders responsible for their miseries to be tried but they realize the danger of living in the past.

I could go on for ages comparing South America to Mauritius. Yet, ultimately our future is in our hands. Even the MCB ? Deelchand ? ICAC morass can, with real political will, strengthen the country by ridding it of some rotten apples.

It?s easy to forget but every day in Mauritius is a recurring miracle. Why am I saying this? You already know it.