On the last day of my vacation in Mauritius, I decided to visit the dentist. With my non-existent US health insurance and my previous check up sixteen months behind me, I wondered what to expect. All I can say is, I was pleasantly surprised.
Dr S’s office occupied the garage of a converted house in Quatre Bornes, a bustling, polluted, congested commercial area that’s full of shops and also the seat of the Medisave Clinic (built by my father). Just how his ambulance gets through, I don’t know.
I entered the empty, unfurnished waiting room and noticed a hand-written sign on the door “By appointment only”. Dusty chairs lined the wall, with a single magazine rack bearing 5 year old copies of “Business Magazine”, now defunct, which was at that time Mauritius’ answer to the Economist. The absence of a receptionist excited me.
I pushed the door ajar and noticed a statuesque man in grey scrubs beckon me in with a friendly smile. “Come on in! You’re right on time!” A small desk, overflowing with paper and a small chair sat on the left, and a large dentist’s chair with console and sink in the middle of the room. An autoclave behind us hissed. No computers, no cabinets, no fluids, no bandages, no dental assistant, nothing.
“Take a seat!” he gestured friendlily.
“I noticed you’re a one-man-band,” I ventured.
“Yes,” He explained. In the next two minutes, he explained his career history. He had qualified as a dentist in Europe, then spent twelve years all over Africa. His longest stint was in the Gambia, Western Africa, where he served on a team of five dentists for a million people. He told me that the religious mission he worked for abandoned the country within a few months of his arrival, but he and his team stayed on, and braved hundreds of patients a day, most of whom had travelled hundreds of miles for treatment.
“Then I came here,” he chuckled. “And I wanted a quiet life, so I started a practice on my own. I don’t have an assistant as I don’t want to grow my business too large. I’m done with that.”
He expertly pulverized the tartar behind my incisors with his ultrasonic probe. The procedure took seven minutes.
“You’re good to go,” he said. “Watch the top gumline, it’s receding. Otherwise, you’ve good very good teeth. No need to come back every six months, for you I’d suggest an annual checkup. No horizontal brushing please!”
“What do I owe you?” I asked
“Nothing,” he said grinning.
Despite my protests, he refused to accept any money, saying he would only charge me if I ever moved to Mauritius myself.
The experience highlighted a common theme I discovered in Mauritian businesses: the pursuit of satisfaction often trumped the pursuit of bigger business.
With that, I left a box of highly garish Fererro Rocher chocolates (sweet irony) and left
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Alam Kasenally was born in London and began travel writing at age 5. His first essay, “Why I want to live in America” was written on a jagged scrap of paper and described his enchantment by the World’s biggest cars and “buildings that touched the sky”. He has since lived in Mauritius, France and Hong Kong and has finally achieved his life-long dream of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His passions include kids, improv, flying, swimming, the quest for the perfect pain au chocolat and writing. In his spare time, he’s an entrepreneur, working on bringing technology to education.
