Réunion: the postmen of the peaks | Hacker News Reader

Réunion: the postmen of the peaks

theguardian.com

54 pointsciconia18 comments

Oh wow, that's where I come from, at least the Island not that particular remote place.

I'm glad to see this in an international paper. There have been loval and French documentaries since the seventies on those postmen hiking for days across -at the time- dangerous terrain to these isolated communities.

The history of these communities is also interesting as most of them stem from the escape of either slaves into the mountains or poor Europeans who lost had no land or lost theirs when slavery was abolished.

The island is amazing for its scenery, including an active volcano, and its really diverse population.

You lucky thing! My wife and I visited Réunion in 2019 and absolutely loved it.

One thing that struck us was just how much it felt like what it is: a piece of France in the tropics. We had just come from Mauritius which felt quite remote but arriving in Réunion suddenly felt like we were back in Europe.

> each one more inaccessible than the next.

This is a little off topic, but: I've always been curious about this rendering of this idea. If each thing is more _____ than the next, then the first thing is the most _____ in the set. It's not particularly impressive, really! You just have an ordered set and you saw the exemplar first.

Conversely, "each more _____ than the last" implies that wherever you started, it's just going to keep getting more and more _____. That's surprising! It's a new discovery each time.

...do I have this wrong? Does anyone have an explanation for why some people prefer 'than the next'?

I interpret this as a simple thinko, not unlike the expression "I could care less". As Al Yankovic says:

'Like "I could care less", That means you do care, At least a little'

David Mitchell did a longer piece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7O0MFkmpw

I read "next" as referring to the adjacent example, not the temporally later one. So "each one more ___ than its neighbour".

Of course, it's impossible mathematically for each element to be bigger than all its neighbours, for N > 1, but it's OK as a figure of speech.

This song (language is half French-half Creole) talks about this : Bat'Ker - Le facteur de Mafate : https://youtu.be/HguGsHrc4mU?t=7

It is a song about the Ivrin Pausé, the emblematic former Mafate Postman, who walked 253 000 km on foot (6 times around Earth) for 40 years between 1951 and 1991. He died two years ago in 2019.

I also remember learning that some people who grew up in Mafate have never seen the ocean. This is baffling given that the Island is not that large (40-50km wide)

I read this article a few days ago, and the question I was asking myself was: how do people in these isolated communities support themselves? The article mentions people even moving back to these communities from the developed parts of the island. Is there some industry there to keep them employed, or do they live purely from benefits?

Benefits play a large part, and many of the costs for logistics (such as bringing in materials by helicopter) are subsidised.

As far as industry goes, there is none. Activities are limited to tourism and hospitality (it's a famous destination) and farming.

Until 2019, each inhabitant was producing their own electricity with solar panels, but since then they are experimenting with a "micro-grid" to try to manage this resource in a collective way.

They're mostly self-sufficient for food, and then have some revenue from tourism (with lodges, etc) and state employment (civil servants working for the schools, town hall, forestry service, etc).

It's not a high income community and there's a lot of unemployment, but it's not like people are just sitting there waiting for money to fall from the sky.

It's quite amazing to see that people still living so remotely, in 2021. I wonder what most of them are accomplishing by using the mail. Do they have family they communicate with? Maybe children that have grownup and relocated?

You don't have to that far. In Mexico there are plenty of remote communities as well. They don't get their mail delivered though.

They are all quite accessible via roads, but there are places in SE Oregon and northern Nevada that are very far from anything. ~2 hours to get to a town with a supermarket and medical center.

Alaska has lots of places that are only reachable by air or by extremely difficult overland routes that may only be passable during certain times of year.

Supai, Arizona [0] is only accessible by helicopter or an 8-mile hike from the nearest road.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supai,_Arizona

And it's worth every bit of the journey to see the waterfalls.

https://fernweh.photo/2016/11/19/supai-arizona/

The helicopter "pad" and the hiking trailhead are themselves many miles from the nearest town. Supai is often claimed to be the most remote town in the 48 contiguous states.

Even whole regions of the world like Zomia function without national governance. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Asian_Massif#Zomia

yes, the exodus of young people is a big issue. also, communications are very limited and wireless / mobile broadband is excruciatingly slow.

> wireless / mobile broadband is excruciatingly slow.

Maybe that's why they all look so happy.

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