Oil and Mauritius Don't Mix

The 2019-20 Herbert H. Humphrey Fellow class experience was redesigned on the fly as classes and campus activities moved online in March. At the end of their 10 months at Penn State, many of the fellows and their families were not able to return home until their home countries opened borders, and then had to go into quarantine for a period upon arrival. The fellow, Jay and his family, for whom we served as community hosts were from Mauritius, an beautiful island nation east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

With the COVID-19 epidemic and presidential race dominating domestic news, many Americans may not know about an oil spill from a Japanese-owned tanker that has devastated the southeastern coast line of the main island near “…two environmentally protected marine ecosystems and the Blue Bay Marine Park reserve, which is a wetland of international importance.” <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53754751>

An oil spill anywhere is environmentally devastating. It is specially catastrophic for a nation where tourism is a major industry.