<B>The importance of being curious</B>

His book on the dodo, a major contribution in an almost desert field, will be launched tomorrow. And it could well speak for its author’s personality: when he shares his knowledge, Alan Grihault is everything except doctoral.

Maths alive, Radio stories, Time to rhyme, Once upon a time, Science is fun: all those titles, familiar to those who follow Mauritius College of the Air TV programmes, have in common an unquenchable sense of curiosity, an eagerness to learn, to share learning and … the voice of an Englishman. With 40 years of experience in education, Alan Grihault is the tireless advocate of awareness to the small clues and simple things of life. It is not surprising that he has just written a book, called Dodo, the Bird behind the legend, that puts a new, undeceived light on our national emblem.

From Swaziland to Sierra Leone, Alan Grihault worked as teacher, trainer and adviser with the British Council, the Department of Overseas Development and the European Union. He has lived in more than half a dozen countries before settling in Mauritius in 1999. But he does not to feel like a foreigner.

Indeed, you could ask him plenty of questions on topics on which many locals can’t reply. Very refined, Alan has a gift for human relationship. And he never forgets to stay humble. “I like to speak to the ordinary people. I have not been brought up with a silver spoon in the mouth myself.”

Alan Grihault, the grandson of a renowned engineer, who was also very fond of science, lost his father when he was very young. Spending his childhood in Devonshire, he never really enjoyed the sweetness of a single home. “My mother was a nurse. She had to live in hospitals. And I had to move from boarding school to boarding school.”

Yet he does not forget the real joys that lightened those harsh pre-war times: “Patients were sad for my mother and for myself. So I was from time to time invited to eat cake by some of them. It was real luxury then.” Alan Grihault was never a dull boy. “At school I rather concentrated on sports, from rugby to athletics.” And he did not lose that taste for physical effort. An active member of the Hash House harriers, an international club for healthy runs outdoors, he always seems on the move.

Though he has lived here only six years, Alan first landed in Mauritius nearly 30 years ago and spent five years as adviser in Mathematics (and he met Sarah, now Mrs Grihault). “Free education had just been launched. There was a special need to train teachers.” Alan had thus time to analyse his adopted country. He thinks, for instance, that education is still too much geared on examinations and deplores that “children don’t ask questions” in that context.

It was in fact to raise our awareness on a topic Mauritians don’t master very well, because of a lack of resources, that he decided to write his book on the dodo. An awareness that, he hopes, could lead to the opening of a dodo experience, a dodo park near Mare-aux-Songes. “People still have false ideas about this bird. For example, many believe it could not fly. But can they explain how it came?” Alan’s tone becomes gripping: here is an invitation to a true story: “Once upon a time”….