As the representative for a French overseas department, the island of Réunion, a land of racial and ethnic intermixing, where the population has been forged in the course of the last three centuries by the successive contributions of Europeans, blacks from Africa or Madagascar, enlisted men from India or Pakistan, or even Chinese, every day I experience the profound truth of the remark by Saint-Exupéry, "In being different to me, you are not doing me harm, brother, but enriching me!"