Iworld this year was a smaller event than last year’s but as always, everyone enjoyed themselves just as much or maybe more.
This year I represented my country, Mauritius at the iworld and thus it was more memorable. However, since I am also a Rotaractor, I also helped the Rotaract Suzhou booth.
The day before the event, I made gulab jamun to share with the participants at our Rotaract booth. Another friend of mine made Nigerian milk candies though she was not Nigerian. One of our previous members was Nigerian and before leaving the university, she shared this culture of making milk candies.
I also made a poster for Mauritius and I helped make a poster for Rotaract. It was a fun experience. We discovered some new talents and I realised that maybe I had skipped kindergarten because I was really bad at drawing.
On the D-day, about 1 hour before the event, my friends and I decorated our booth. We went to other booths to see the decorations and the countries being presented. We also had a Mauritian wannabe at our booth. 😛
At around seven, the event started with members of AIESEC dancing to their roll call song and welcoming attendees in. The host then proceeded to welcome everyone and to give an introduction about the organizing partners. The event was then launched with them explaining to attendees the purpose of the event and the activities during the iworld. There were some challenges that attendees had to take up in order to win prizes.
As the introduction ended, people went to the booth of their choice. At our Mauritian booth students listened to me describe Mauritius, tell them the story of how and why we are a culturally diverse country. People were amazed by the different people, the beautiful landscapes and beaches and the extraordinary weather.
Many Chinese students knew of Mauritius because they saw it in movies. They were very surprised to find out that there are people of Chinese descent or that there was Chinese food in Mauritius.
I also showed them various videos of interesting places that they could visit; like Chamarel, the Pamplemousses botanical garden, Casela bird park, where you can walk with lion cubs, and even water activites like snorkelling, or wartching dolphins,etc
The event ended at around 9 and everyone was happy, in a good mood, and rich with knowledge about different cultures, countries, cuisines,…
It was an amazing experience to share the story of my country with everyone else.
Deepika Pydatalli 
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