The people of Site Mangalkhan (from the French Cité for housing project) are proud of their identity, as this graffiti on a wall separating the 'Site' from a nearby commercial area shows me. "Mangalkhan, to bann zanfan kontan twa" means "Mangalkhan, all your kids love you".
I was told that the current housing in Mangalkhan was built when a cyclone destroyed the homes of Mauritians in the middle of the last century. Some of those affected were resettled here and given small plots of land by the government. Today you can see that many of the houses have very little space; over the years extensions have been added to make room. On the one hand, this makes the neighbourhood look compact, but on the other hand, the residents have learned to make the most of the space.
