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Refreshing alouda & limonad
?Alouda, siro?? Mrs Apavou barely has to pronounce those words before customers flock to her stall in the front of Quatre-Bornes market. Sitting behind a counter full of transparent plastic containers holding colourful drinks, she remembers how she started, more than 30 years ago, selling alouda (a milk-based drink) and siro (lemonade), two typical Mauritian drinks.
Every morning, Mrs Apavou gets up before 5 a.m. to prepare the ingredients for her drinks. She mixes the milk with the vanilla essence or strawberry flavouring and adds grated bits of jelly. She also puts tokmaria, seeds that become sticky after being soaked in water. When the alouda mixture is made, she dilutes concentrated lemon syrup with water to make the lemonade.
The way she deftly fills the glasses is a testimony of her years of expertise. She barely looks while doing it but not one drop spills. She drops a spoonful of toukmaria into the bottom of the glass, adds a trickle of evaporated milk and asks "blan ou roz?" The white alouda is vanilla-flavoured and the pink one is strawberry-flavoured. She opens the appropriate tap from the plastic container letting the white or pink liquid splash into the glass and fill it to the brim.
Although she seems to have a constant flow of customers, Mrs Apavou admits that ?trade was much better before.? She explains that, during weekends, a lot of people come for a refreshing drink at her stall but, during the week, they are fewer. She indeed works every day of the week. She is mainly the one who keeps the business going but her husband helps her during weekends when there is a bigger demand.
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