Rotary International has a Group Study program that arranges for business people to visit their counterparts in other parts of the world. The aim is to promote understanding between peoples. The visiting business people are not Rotary members, but are teamed up with a Rotary member who acts as their team leader.

Rotary of Oyster Bay hosted a dinner at the Sagamore Yacht Club on Wednesday, May 12, to introduce four members of a Group Study program to their members. The visitors come from Rotary District 9220 comprised of Mauritius, Reunion, Madagascar, Djibouti, Seychelles, Coromos and Mayotte. The seven islands are located in the Indian Ocean, east of Africa and south of India.

The group was led by Rotary Team Leader Sylvester Panoel Randriamanana, a mineral engineer from Madagascar. Two visitors came from Reunion: Bernard Souprayenmestry, in charge of the electrical system for the island and Chantal Leonard, who works for a pharmaceutical company.

The fourth member of the group was 24-year-old Jean Paul Edwards of Mauritius. He has been working as a marketing consultant with a financial services company for the past year, and just returned from a four year stint in Sidney, Australia where he got his degree in management from the University of Western Sidney. He plans to get his MA in a few years.

Cliff McLean, 1999-2000 District Governor Nominee, was involved with making arrangements for the visiting business people to see that they are able to see what their counterparts' businesses are like here. He has worked with the Group Study program for the past 10 years - since he and his wife Carol visited northeast Brazil with a Rotary group.

The youngest member of the visiting team, Jean Paul, had a harrowing trip experience coming to the US. It took 35 hours instead of the 20 to 22 hours it should have taken. The entire group trip had glitches, but he solved them all in good humor. He didn't receive his plane ticket from Mauritius to Reunion and bought his own. When another arrived from the Rotary group he tried to cancel one but found out both were canceled when he tried to meet up with his group. He finally booked a flight to Paris only to arrive at a different airport and missed the group which went on to Boston, unbeknownst to him. He arrived in New York without the needed destination address that would have let him enter the country. Six hours later the group arrived at JFK to meet him.

Jean Paul was not affected by the mishaps. He charmed his way out of them all.

There was another glitch. Mr. McLean said they expected a computer expert and another career specialist to arrive and entire itineraries had been planned for them in advance. When they didn't arrive, new plans had to be made.

That didn't stop the group from being taken to New York City by Julian Koenig which included a visit to the Whitney Museum. A very pleasurable first for Mr. Koenig.

Sylvester Randriamanana, the team leader has a Paul Harris Fellowship with two rubies, which means $10,000 has been donated to the Rotary Foundation in his name. He is the father of three married children and has one grandchild. He spoke at the Bayville Rotary meeting Tuesday night, May 11, about the Polio Plus 2002, a plan to eradicate polio. This night, he left the program to his team members.

Bernard Souprayenmestry has been married four years and he and his wife have two sons, 3 and 1 and are hoping to have a daughter, next. The language of Reunion is French. The population is 700,000. The islanders are a mix of French; Africans who are descendents from the slave trade; and descendents of slaves from Madagascar and Comoro; Muslims from Pakistan and Indians from Malabar. "They all live together very nicely," he said.

Bernard is a dispatcher who manages all the electricity on Reunion Island. He chooses the best way to produce it - between coal and gas. They have no nuclear power. They have created a new process of using coal and bagast - fiber from sugar cane - to create electricity. They will send the technology to Vietnam and Brazil - two other countries that need electricity and have sugar cane as a raw material.

They also have some hydro-electric power from mountains and reservoirs.

Most of the homes in Reunion have electricity except for places like Mafat, a valley town that is only reached on foot. They are considering giving them solar powered electricity. The government's intention is that everyone should have electricity.

Chantal Leonard spoke very softly. She was asked by Rich Cieciuch if it was hard being a working woman in Reunion. She said no, "It was an easy position, even though most women work in the home." She originally came from Belgium, was educated in Paris and came to Reunion to work in a pharmaceutical company that supplies hospitals and pharmacies.

She was the guest of Rich and Karen Farley. Mr. Farley said they took her to see the new movie The Mummy, and she spent her time in the movie screaming.

Jean Paul Edwards spoke with what someone said was a "perfect Australian accent," that was touched with a slight French accent. His eyes sparkled as he talked. He said Mauritius has a population of 1.1 million people on the 800 square miles of the island. It is densely populated, he said.

As with the other islands, there is again a mix of ethnicity there. He said either the Arabs or Greeks discovered the islands - whom was first is still being investigated.

The first settlers were the Dutch in 1635; in 1710 the French arrived with African slaves. In 1810 the English brought Indians to work in the sugar cane fields. In 1968 the country declared their independence. In 1992 they formed their republic.

In 1968 the Labor Party formed the government, following the English model; in the 1990s it was the Socialists who took over. Recently, the son of the first prime minister was elected to office and the Labor Party has taken over again.

There are four main industries in Mauritius: sugar cane, tourism, textiles and financial services. Tourism is a large industry for the island, with 600,000 visitors a year coming mostly from France, Reunion, Italy, Germany and now England. The English are now coming because the Seychelles became too expensive, he said. The beaches are beautiful, he said because the island is surrounded by lagoons and coral reefs.

The third industry is textiles which means they manufacture pullovers, shirts and T-shirts that are sent to America, but mostly to Europe.

The financial services industry is the newest addition to the industry of the island.

The District 9220 Rotary Group are most interested in eradicating polio with the Rotary Polio Plus 2002 program. They have a big game fishing competition each year with the funds going to the President's Trust Fund which is used to finance nurseries for mentally handicapped children. There is a program on the Internet to collect 10,000 stamps for a matching grant to buy bathtubs for the handicapped, said Jean Paul Edwards.

A tradition of Rotary is to present the host groups with visiting Rotary Flags. Oyster Bay gave their flag with a picture of Sagamore Hill, the 26th President Theodore Roosevelt's home to the visiting team. Jean Paul gave Rich Cieciuch, the chairman of the meeting, a Rotary of Mauritius flag. It showed a mountain with a sad tale. It is called the district of the Black River. He said slaves were hiding in the mountain and were being chased by soldiers. Rather than be captured, they climbed to the top where they killed themselves. Sadly, the soldiers were coming to tell them that slavery had been abolished.

Mr. Cieciuch said he had just returned from seeing Massada and the story had extra meaning for him as a result.

As the meeting ended, Peter Clemens, in charge of the Group Study Program for Oyster Bay, presented the guests with white Oyster Bay caps from Buckingham's.