These are a little embarassing in retrospect but they are so sincere. (I redacted some misanthropy, however. I should hate for former acquaintances to stumbled upon this and read that I thought they smelled of plague…)
GUADELOUPE
September 27th, 2004
Dear all,
Hello!!! I hope that you are all doing well. I apologize for going a little incommunicado for awhile but it has been difficult getting to a computer and getting a decent connection.
I am doing very well here in Guadeloupe. I am still trying to get settled and so I may continue to be a little spotty in terms of communication for awhile.
My first few days here have been spent mostly with two other assistants: Tom (Brit) and Toviah (American). For awhile it was just Tom and myself staying in a temporary residence in les Abymes. My feelings toward Tom oscillate between being grateful for having someone to explore with (especially when we walked to Pointe-à-Pître at night) and resenting his aptitude for getting us into awkward situations.
Tom looks to experience “local colour” like a Boy Scout trying to earn merit badges. So, when we were passing by a bar in St. François and the three or so patrons inside started calling to us, he was easily drawn in. We were enthusiastically greeted by Francis (yeah, Francis from St. François … I found it a little redundant but you can’t TELL people that …) who insisted on buying us a round of ti-punch, a particularly Guadeloupean drink made of honey (though normally it is sugar cane syrup), rum and a spritz of lime. The drink was served in what looked like a large shot glass, I naturally assumed that it was to be drunk as such, so I “necked it,” as a Brit would, and did, say. It was not until I was done that I noticed the other patrons staring at me. (Drinking really spoils one’s peripheral vision…) We must have stayed at that bar for an hour and a half, Francis buying us several rounds of drinks. Don’t worry, I think that I am an internationally understood allegory of a light-weight, after two drinks Francis was ordering me juice.
Toviah’s arrival brought her lovely contact person, Rita, a Moroccan woman who grew up in France and lived in London for three years. Rita has been responsible for making this past weekend wonderful. On Saturday we went to the market in Pointe-à-Pitre, ate fruit, watched a group of drummers performing in the streets (where a drunk and sweaty Corsican tourist in hot pants kept trying to dance with me) and then went to the beach in Port-Louis, which was incredible. I don’t have time to rhapsodize about the serenity of the beaches, or the deliciousness of the coconut sorbet that Rita introduced us to … I will have to save that for another e-mail.
I’m afraid that most of my personal correspondence will have to take the form of letters, which is better anyway. Sadly, I don’t have a Guadeloupean address to give you yet. Please be patient with me.
I think of you all constantly!!!
Love,
Megan
GWADA
October 1st, 2004
All right, I suppose I should pick up where I left off: beaches and sorbet.
On Saturday, Rita took us to the beach at Port-Louis. As my first beach excursion in Guadeloupe, it was absolutely ideal. Port-Louis is where I made the acquaintance of the amazing coconut sorbet that they sell here. It is made out of coconuts, sugar, milk, ice and ALMONDS. (I suspect that it is the almonds that make it magical.) As much as I want to find the recipe and re-create the taste sensation at home, I’m afraid that it would lose something once removed from its tropical context … its “aura,” if you will. (How do you like THAT blatant Benjamin reference Chris Giampietro and Adam Van Wagner??) Really, the sorbet is fantastic; I estimate that it has the deliciousness factor of gelato.
Plage du Souffleur, Port-Louis
On Sunday, we went to Ste. Anne, a similarly beautiful beach where we (Toviah, Rita, Tom and myself) met an assistante from Ireland, Victoria, and her boyfriend, Aidan. They had hitchhiked from le Moule to Ste. Anne, as it was Sunday and the buses here don’t run on Sundays. Apparently, hitchhiking is rather commonly done here.
On Monday, Toviah, Tom, Bridget and I paid Victoria and Aidan a visit in le Moule. They live in the back of a retired Spanish teacher’s house, where they have a coconut tree and goats in the back yard. It’s pretty cute. We spent the afternoon talking over two bottles of chilled white wine, bread, cheese and omelets. As the sun started setting (it sets really early here, around 6 pm) we headed out to the beach. The beaches vary greatly in Guadeloupe: whereas the waters are relatively calm in Ste. Anne and Port-Louis, le Moule is quite wavy. We swam in the dark for awhile until it started raining. We then found a little shelter on the beach to sit in and drank some watered down ti-punch.
When the rain let up we wandered into the city center of le Moule to visit a Jazz Bar that Victoria and Aidan liked to frequent. The bar was officially closed because it was a Monday, but there were 4 people inside that opened it up to us. They were very kind and friendly and when we mentioned our interest in learning créole they immediately launched into a lesson. Spotting a bottle of “inferior” quality rum in Victoria’s bag, they also insisted that we sample “real” rum (Damoiseau).
One last little story: On Tuesday Tom and I took a bus out to le Gosier, where Rita and Toviah met up with us. Rita decided to take us to the hotel Novotel for an aperitif before going to dinner. Apparently, the Novotel is where any touring bands are lodged when they come to visit Guadeloupe, so we met Steel Pulse, a reggae band that is scheduled to play tonight, at the bar’s patio. I guess it was rather novel for them to run into anglophones in Guadeloupe, there are very few, so they invited us to come back the following night to hang out. I’m not really sure if we’re going to go to the show tonight, but it was a fun little rastafarian encounter in any case.
Oh!! I have a phone number!! PLEASE feel free to call me!! I think that Guadeloupe’s country code is 590. Anyway, here is my number
06.90.59.26.69
I am sorry this is so long!
Love,
Megan
ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY
October 11th, 2004
I just wrote a HUGE mass e-mail and then lost it. Needless to say, I am a little heartbroken at present but will do my best to recreate it.
I feel like so much has happened this past week that I don’t know where to begin. I will start with my weekend …
On Saturday I walked in to Pointe-à-Pitre to listen to the street percussionists and buy fruit at the outdoor market. (I was re-enacting my first Saturday in Guadeloupe.) Passing through the fish section of the market, I ran into Rita and Toviah and spent the rest of my day with them. We idled the afternoon away in Rita’s house, drinking this avocado-and-banana blend that she invented, using avocados from her own tree. Around dusk we headed off to Dolé in Basse-Terre, where there is a thermal waterfall. (The word “thermal” here suggests that the water was warmer than in actually was. I would say that it fell between “tepid” and “warm.”) The marvelous thing about Guadeloupe is that there is never a bad time to go to the beach (or waterfall): at night both the water and weather are still warm, likewise when it’s overcast, and rain only layers your aquatic experience. By the time we arrived–it was a 45 minute drive through the verdant and mountainous countryside of Basse-Terre–it was fully night. By-passing the basin at the bottom, where most people go, we climbed up into the rocks and let the gushing water massage us. It was like a geological spa.
I will gloss over my Sunday by saying that I went to the beach (Ste. Anne) and ate more sorbet.
As you may have noticed from my brief e-mail last week, I finally have an address. Last Monday Tom, Toviah and I moved into an apartment in Baimbridge, which is half way between the airport and Pointe-a-Pitre and within walking distance of my school. For anyone that will be visiting, I have to warn you that it is nothing special–we joke that we’re living in the Projects of les Abymes–but it’s dirt cheap and conveniently located near an Indian restaurant. My favorite features are its artful graffiti and its interior “garden,” which looks more like a science fiction landscape. Our landlord, Doloir, is adorable; he brings us citrons from his jardin and showed me a shortcut for my walk to work.
That brings me to teaching; I started last week. The title “assistant d’anglais” is tragically misleading, as I am the only English teacher in the entire primary school. Most of the kids have never studied English, so I am basically starting from the very beginning. It will be interesting to say the least …
The kids are adorable. The crowd around me and follow me around the school grounds like I’m the ice cream man. For some reason they all wear green shirts, so I feel like I giant walking through a forest of small, child-sized trees. They like to practice their random scraps of English on me, saying things like “hello!” “how are you?” and “you’re pretty.” (Yeah, they’re really sweet. They also colour me pictures and pick flowers for me.) One afternoon I was leaving for lunch with a small fleet of children when a little boy suddenly blurted out “give me 5 cents.” WHAT?!? I almost fell off the curb. Why would you KNOW that??? If you’re going to take the pains to learn that in English you might as well up the ante.
Today in class I was trying to get the kids to ask me basic questions like “what’s your name?” “how old are you?” and “where are you from?” When called upon, one little boy proceeded to ask, “what’s your telephone number?” Precocious! (And a little troubling, considering that he couldn’t have been more than 11 years old …)
I must go. I regret that this e-mail isn’t as good as the one I lost. 
I hope that you are all well. Feel free to send me photographs of yourselves!!! I forgot to bring pictures …
Love,
Megan
LE NOUVEAU BEAUJOLAIS EST ARRIVÉ
November 22nd, 2004
Hello, I hope that everyone is doing well. Life is lovely in Guadeloupe; yesterday morning I was shook awake by a 6.3 earthquake! Much to everyone’s annoyance, I loved it and kept hoping for reprises. (I wasn’t disappointed: there were several mild aftershocks. It wasn’t anything frightening, it just felt like there was a Tyrannosaurus Rex scampering by.) They are predicting that there will be more seismic activity in about 3 weeks or so. I really shouldn’t be so excited, though, I guess there was some damage done in Les Saintes, a little cluster of islands off the Guadeloupean mainland. Tom and Toviah were considerably more troubled then I was, and Tom kept cutely referring to the tremors as “the wobbling.” It sounds like something Winnie the Pooh would say.
For some reason, due to the earthquake, all schools are closed today, so I walked to the fruit market this morning and bought some guavas. I eat a LOT of fruit here. I’ve never had so many bananas in my life.
Aside from sporadic cancellations, school has been good. My students are mostly really cute, I‘ve already singled some out for abduction. The differences between American elementary school teachers and Guadeloupean primary school teachers are striking, literally. I saw one of the teachers in my class slap a student, which was incredibly shocking to me. Other assistants have had similar experiences, and while Rita says that corporal punishment is illegal in France, it doesn’t seem particularly enforced here. It is amazing how the teachers can YELL at the kids too. One teacher, Mme. Francis, is particularly biting. She’ll yell things like “J’en ai marre de toi!” (I’m sick of you!) and told a kid to “disappear” when he failed to successfully locate England on a map. I just kind of stand there, embarrassed, not quite knowing what to say.
One thing that never fails to crack me up about my students is how anal they are about neatness and presentation. If you have them write something down they never fail to ask things like “can I use a blue pen?” For Halloween I handed out these sheets with a little poem on it and pictures to colour and they felt that they had to ASK my permission to colour. When I told them that YES the sheets are to colour, they then asked, wide-eyed: “and we can choose any colour?” Oh, the existential anguish that colouring activities bring them … They use RULERS when they have to underline anything, or draw lines connecting things. Tom once had his students draw faces, and they took out COMPASSES to do it.
I am addressed various ways by my students, most commonly “Miss” or “Madame.” My personal favorite is “Mme. Anglais.” I still get bombarded on the playground, one class in particular seems fond of hugging me. (I’m a Beatle, Cassie!!) Just last week I acquired another piece of student artwork… I rather love it.
In other news, I found another great beach on the tip of Grande Terre; it looks like a surrealist landscape. The almost constant rain has unfortunately hindered much exploration, though, so I don’t have much else to report.
We are having a make-shift Assistant Thanksgiving this Thursday. We use any flimsy pretext for a fête; Toussaint, birthdays, the election (that was just depressing, though). It seems like there is CONSTANTLY some sort of gathering.
I should get going, my time has nearly expired. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! It is the holiday I most regret missing.
Love,
Megan
OÙ SONT LES NEIGES D’ANTAN?
December 17th, 2004
Seriously, where ARE the snow(den)s of yesteryear? I think that I half expected the snow to follow me to Guadeloupe. I also have a hard time believing that there *really* are places where it doesn’t snow. The weather continues to be warm, however, and I continue frequenting the beach. The closest I’ve come to snow’s frosty consistency is the delicious coconut sorbet, my obsession …
The lack of seasons leaves me feeling suspended in time, and I find it hard to believe that it’s already December. The festively decorated bus I just got off of assures me that it is, though.
I just finished with my last lesson before the break yesterday. I was somewhat astonished to find that the students celebrated Christmas in school; isn’t France supposed to be zealously secular? Sometimes I wonder if Guadeloupe gets away with things not condoned au métropole (Antillais refer to continental France as the “métropole”), such as hitting students … Being a typically politically correct American, I played “Holiday Bingo” with my students, in which both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa were included.
Teaching the vocabulary was a startling experience: I can understand that none of the kids had heard of Hanukkah before, but most of their TEACHERS had no idea what it was either. (One teacher thought that maybe I meant Thanksgiving and another one asked me if it was celebrated exclusively in the United States.) How is that possible?!?!?! How can you be a presumably well-educated Westerner and have never even HEARD of Hanukkah? My least favorite teacher, M. Balourd, once told me that the problem with American media is that it’s controlled by Jewish people. (M. Balourd is deliciously tactless, and once spent an entire rant telling me that he believed in the “necessity of terrorism.” All of this, of course, was in reference to the World Trade Center.) If that’s the case, you’d think that everyone would at least know about Jewish holidays… Anyway, I think that I now have the only students in all of Guadeloupe who know the word “menorah.”
Observing primary school here has made me realize how pampered my experience really was. My elementary school memories consist of games of four-square on the playground and reading in whistle seats in the climate-controlled library. There is no playground here–kids just run around on the blacktop, screaming and eating crackers–and I don’t even think that there is a library. My school is a little low budget (Raizet is a rather low income area): if it were a residential area, it would probably be a trailer park, it even kind of looks like a series of strung together mobile homes… If it was a film, it would be The Blair Witch Project. (Sorry, I’m having too much fun with these comparisons.)
Student-teacher relations are really different here too. I remember that in elementary schools teachers were (somewhat) your friends and “trusted adults.” Raizet 3, in contrast, has the atmosphere of a Truffaut film; I feel like I’m in a scene from Les 400 coups in Mme. Francis’ class.
Oh my, I’m already almost out of time. Please excuse any typos/grammatical sins, these e-mails are almost always composed in haste.
I hope that you are all doing well!!!!
Megan Justine Doll
COLOMBIA!!!
January 5th, 2005
Hello! I hope that you all had enjoyable holidays. As many of you know, I spent my Christmas vacation in Colombia. It was an amazing experience that I wish I could wisely recommend to everyone. (Well, actually, I find myself saying “you HAVE to go” a lot, regardless of Colombia’s volatility.) I had a lot of time to think in the airport of Santo Domingo and came to the conclusion that going to Colombia was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, my words fall out from under me when I try to explain exactly why.
Almost everyone that knows me knows that I’ve had a Colombia-fixation for the past two years or so. This accounts for certain behaviors, such as bringing books entitled “COLOMBIA: Drugs, War and Democracy” to Cassandra’s wedding and dragging Adam Van Wagner to see “Maria Full of Grace” with me. (I like saying your full name, Adam Van Wagner.) I imagine that most people hoped that going to Colombia would cure me of my fascination. My parents are especially included in this set. I once told my mother that going to Colombia was necessary for my “personhood.” I like annoying her with skewed logic and grandiose statements like that and “I transcend time.” Anyway, this trip has only served to fuel my interest, I can’t wait to go back, I have such a crush on South America.
I suppose I should explain exactly how it is that Colombia came to be such a point of interest for me: I met Mauricio–known by most of you cryptically as “my Colombian,” because I like to (whimsically) withhold his name, almost EXACTLY as Basil prefers not to speak of Dorian Gray–on the streets in Florence. I LOVE saying that. It’s true, though; we started talking in the Piazza della Signoria in the summer of 2002 and have been conversing ever since. Our hanging out, however, has been hampered by continental differences. Life is SO beautiful when traveling to Italy takes you to South America two years later…
I feel very lucky to know someone with the patience and generosity to show me Colombia and devise elaborate Megan-depositing-and-pick-up plans so that I was never left to wander the streets unsupervised. (That must have been really annoying.) I feel like so often, when traveling, you fumble through a place, squandering time on mediocre or over-hyped attractions (take that, Leaning Tower of Pisa) and missing more enriching things. After only 10 days I would never claim Colombian expertise, but it was nice to have a consultant to tell me “you should order the hot chocolate with mammoth slices of fresh cheese mixed in it.” (His EXACT words.)
I ate a lot of things that you wouldn’t generally associate with me: assorted fried foods, fish eye balls and pig(?) intestines. While none of the aforementioned were particularly palate-pleasing, I managed to find something that rivals my passion for coconut sorbet: nispero juice. I have no idea what the fruit is called in English but I think that I’ve tasted it in the fruit market in Guadeloupe. If I’m correct the inside of the fruit is white and has a somewhat marshmallowy taste and texture. Anyway, the fruit is blended with milk and ice to create a rich, thick juice. (Zapote is almost equally delicious.)
I’m afraid that I’ll have to condense my account of my time spent in Colombia, lest this turn into a 10-page e-mail…
I first flew into Bogotá and spent about 3 days there. Bogotá is a much prettier city than I had expected, although I naturally stayed in its more savory parts. I visited Monserrate (where there are two chapels located on top of a mountain overlooking the city, it’s really amazing and I tragically didn’t bring my camera), visited the gold museum and an art museum and did some quality urban wandering, punctuated by frequent coffee breaks. On my last day in Bogotá we went to an old salt mine that was converted into an expansive underground cathedral located outside of the city. I’m proud to say that I’ve now seen the world’s largest underground cross.
Bogotá
We flew into Barranquilla ridiculously early on Christmas Eve and spent the holiday in a house which, as Mauricio describes it, reminds him of the house in 100 Years of Solitude; it has been in the family for 180 years [WHAT? NO WAY, THAT HAS TO BE WRONG. NEEDS TO BE FACT-CHECKED.] and has known myriad occupants. His family is huge–his mother is the oldest of some dozen children–and story-saturated. Most of the night was spent talking on the front porch, with someone assiduously refilling my tiny cup of aguardiente. I mostly sat and listened, feeling slightly spectral in my anglophone muteness, but entirely appropriate for a magical realism house.
I spent almost all of Christmas day drinking amber rum with Mauricio and his cousin, Gabriel, and Gabriel’s friend Juan: rum on the balcony of Juan’s apartment, rum in the car, rum with fried fish on the beach, rum in Gabriel’s apartment. If Gabriel and Juan had gone swimming (apparently Barranquillans don’t use their beach) I’m sure the rum would have followed me into the water.
The next day we left for Cartagena, a rather enchanted walled city (the historic part is walled, anyway) filled with brightly coloured Spanish colonial architecture. We spent most of our time in Cartagena wandering about the city, visiting various museums and drinking juice. On our last day in Cartagena we took a boat out to this cluster of islands in the Caribbean with Guadeloupe-beautiful beaches, where we ate a LOT of fresh seafood (shrimp, lobster and fish with coconut rice) and hung out with monkeys.
Cartagena
That clearly didn’t do justice to the experience, but I think that is already more than most of you care to read.
***************RANDOM THINGS THAT I LEARNED:************
*You can carry a machete around the city, but it has to be covered in newspaper. (Otherwise that might be dangerous.)
*There are neighborhoods in Bogotá that the police don’t even try to regulate.
*There seems to be a universally acknowledged South American hierarchy in which Colombia comes in fourth (just out of the medals!), behind Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia are apparently low on the totem pole. (This all came up when I joked that Panamans were Colombian rejects …)
*Juan Valdez has his own chain of coffee shops in Colombia. I can’t explain why, but that is just funny to me.
*In a pinch, fresh mango can cover for coconut sorbet on the beach.
*There is an entire narrative built around Barranquilla’s carnival, personified by Joselito Carnival. Evidently, the carnival ends when Death kills Joselito, throwing the revelers into a mock mourning in which coffins are paraded through the streets. (I am told that people get really emotional over it.)
*Carlos Vives is audio dessert
MOTHERS LITTLE HELPER
January 21st, 2005
Last week I attended my first Créole atelier with Bridget. Formerly considered a patois, Créole is now an officially recognized language, though children are still reprimanded for speaking it in school. Créole, which started out as a slave language, is mainly French-based, though it draws upon African dialects and borrows some Caribbean, Spanish and Portuguese words. It cuts a lot of the fat out of French (none of this “est-ce que” nonsense), and communicates in concise, almost abrupt-sounding sentences. Whereas French is, to my ear, a rather mellifluous language, Créole is comparatively textural, accented with “chhhps” and “ooos!” (In soup terms, my favorite kind, it’s like velouté vs. gumbo.)
Learning a little about Créole has helped me understand the Guadeloupean accent, particularly their r-dropping tendencies. For instance “bonjou” is “bonjour,” “bonswa” is “bonsoir,” and “e Ie zafe?” is “et les affaires?”
My original motivation for studying Créole was to try to understand some of “Chowlo and Sapoti,” a brief 1-2 minute sketch that comes on after “Muñeca Brava,” our 6 o’clock Argentine soap.
The opening song to “Muñeca Brava.” What’s funny is that they played the ENTIRE song, so the credits ended up being 1/10 of the show.
“Chowlo and Sapoti” normally features the title characters, two middle aged local men, conversing in angry-sounding Créole. (At least one of them is always annoyed.) Unfortunately, Chowlo just turned himself in for a hit-and-run accident, so that may be the end of “Chowlo and Sapoti,” though Tom SWEARS to have had a live Chowlo sighting just recently.
It’s funny, the things you end up watching when abroad. I am thinking very specifically of my dad getting into the “Powerpuff Girls” and “Chicken and Cow” while working in Prague because they were the only English programs available.
This last Saturday I went on a 5-hour hike through the Guadeloupean rainforest to the Chutes de Moreau with 10 other assistants. This was quite different from the last time I went “hiking,” in which I wore sandals and walked the well-maintained paths in the Cinque Terre. (SUCH a recommended experience, though.) The rainforest trails were not so clearly marked, impressively muddy and strewn with slippery rocks and roots. Needless to say, there were plenty of falls and by the time we trekked out of the rainforest at dusk, we were positively filthy. The first time we had to cross a river we all removed our shoes and stepped gingerly across it, taking care to stay as dry as possible, only to find another river 50 meters later. From that point on we walked through rivers (there were several) without even bothering to take off our shoes.
Sadly, because of the earthquake in November there was a landslide that prevented us from making it all the way to the falls, so we stopped on the river near by to rest and picnic. I stupidly had one little glass of rose wine and felt dangerously tipsy the entire trip back. Wiser people are probably shaking their heads right now, but I had no idea that I would feel it SO much. It was as if I had had 5 ti-punchs. (“Ti” = Creole for “petit.”)
I hope that everyone is doing well. My thoughts are with you all, please forgive me if I’ve been a less than stellar individual e-mailer. (I DO write letters, though, unlike some of you … MOM. Nah, just kidding, you’re my best guy!)
Megan J. Doll
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, THE DANCIN’EST HEMISPHERE ON EARTH!
February 11th, 2005
(I expect that only Cassandra and Chris will pick up on that obscure reference…)
Hello, all! I know that I just wrote, and I apologize for bombarding you with mail, but I have more to say. Due to Carnival (yay!!! or, as my French children would say, “ouais!!!”), I had this past week off, allowing me to visit Dominica with some other assistants.
Dominica is an anglophone island nestled between Guadeloupe and Martinique. It’s only a short 2-hour ferry ride from Pointe-à-Pître–I am SUCH an advocate for sea travel–and on clear days you can see Dominica from certain points of Guadeloupe.
Dominica was volleyed back and forth between England and France until 1763, when the French lost it to the British under the Treaty of Paris. The most important consequence of this is that Dominicans drive on the left side of the road, rendering me petrified every time I’d see someone approaching from the other direction on the treacherous, winding mountain roads. In 1978 Dominica gained independence, which means that it is now self-sufficient but poor. For this reason, there are a lot of Dominican immigrants in Guadeloupe. (Dominicans and Haitians are probably the two largest immigrant groups in Guadeloupe.) A lot of people in Guadeloupe are anti-Dominican because, according to them, “they steal.”
In addition to language, economy and independence, other Dominica/Guadeloupe differences include currency (Dominica is on the East Caribbean dollar vs. Guadeloupe’s Euro) and terrain: Dominica is sheer mountains with nothing to rival Guadeloupe’s beaches. (I’ve become such beach snob, I’m not sure how I’m going to manage Minnesota’s mango-less lake beaches…)
Dominica is also a very Green island, as in the party, not the colour. (Well, it’s green in that sense as well.) We stayed, for instance, in an eco-lodge called Three Rivers. (Joanna Carroll, I thought of you: Dominica is for YOU.) The owner, Jem, a former London cabby, talked our ears off over pineapple wine about how Dominica is becoming a Mecca for eco-tourism and about the funding he’s received from the U.N. to build a sustainable living centre.
Middleham Falls, Dominica
Dominica’s rugged beauty makes it ideal for hiking. Though my feet hadn’t recovered from last week’s rainforest trek, we did yet another hike to Middleham Falls. Afterwards, we went down to Roseau to check out Dominica’s carnival. Again, island differences presented themselves. Whereas Guadeloupe’s carnival is full of French pomp and circumstance (ornate costumes, marching bands comprised of drummers and conch shell-players, wafting incense) Dominica’s is much more informal. Large, semi-sized trucks with platforms containing musicians and speakers would sporadically pass through the street, followed by a train of dancing revelers who would pull people in from the sidewalks to join them. Guadeloupe’s carnival was more of a spectator sport.
Even the street food was different. (Street food fascinates me.) Guadeloupe’s vendors are mostly bokit* and crêpe stands, and people selling coconut sorbet, flavored ices, nuts, popcorn, cakes, etc. Street food in Dominica, however, included rotisserie chicken (eaten, but less of a “street food” in Guadeloupe), French fries and, a personal favorite, grilled/baked plantains.
So, that’s Dominica, for you. You should check out their flag, it’s pretty playful. I must go hang out at the post office now. Given the queues in French post offices, I will definitely be hanging out there for awhile …
Dominica’s flag
Megan
*Bokits are circular sandwiches made with fried bread, often enhanced with piment (spicy!) sauce.
LITTLE EARTHQUAKES
February 25th, 2005
DEEP THOUGHT:
I was at St. Félix the other day and found a bunch of sea glass on the beach. At first I (naively) thought that these bright green fragments were a natural phenomenon until the other assistants offered the more probable explanation that they were bits of broken bottles that had been smoothed by the sea. (I’m no geological genius.) I was initially disenchanted: my find was nothing more than exalted litter. The more I thought about it, though, the more I liked the idea that nature took an assault against itself and made it its own, rendering it innocuous… sort of like the way the gay community re-appropriated the word “queer.” Now I look at my sea glass and think of gay pride …
*My French “Guide Pédagogique” calls what I’ve always known as pie charts “camemberts.” That makes me laugh, what’s pie to us is cheese to the French. I wonder if my world view would be more cheese-informed if I had been raised in France … it seems inevitable. For fun one day I tried to “see cheese” in my quotidian surroundings. It was harder than I thought; I ended up seeing all red objects as eccentrically shaped novelty goudas. (Not even a French cheese.) It was the best I could do. I guess not everything comes as easily as metaphors for gay pride.
*Guadeloupe has a crush on Brazil. It’s true, you see an insane amount of people with green and yellow “Brasil” shirts. I can’t quite figure it out. I feel like if given the option, Guadeloupe would rather be a department of Brazil.
Also popular here are Bob Marley and Che Guevara. (Internationally adored icons, I suppose.) Have you ever thought about how twisted it is the Che’s image has been turned into such a (capitalist) commodity? Seriously, he has his own merchandise line here; notebooks, planners, t-shirts. (I’m waiting for the lunchbox.) Is this some kind of cruel joke? I bet Che would be PISSED. It would be like making a Brigham Young brand of beer. (Ooo! A Mormon joke!) I’m sure that this is a banal epiphany that everyone has eventually; mine happened to come on a Che-themed Guadeloupean bus.
*I saw a French action film last week, Banlieu 13. (It was billed to me as being Tarantino-inspired. Apparently the Tarantino/French cinema crush is mutual, unlike Guadeloupe’s love for Brazil, which I suspect is unrequited. As I write this I am imagining Guadeloupe lamenting “Brazil doesn’t even know I exist!” Poor Guadeloupe, most people don’t…) Anyway, the film reminded me of an important lesson: other countries–even France–make bad movies too. The difference is, their’s generally don’t get exported. (There is a reason why the Astérix films didn’t make it to the U.S.)
*The French have incorrectly adopted the term “fashion victim.” To an English-speaker like myself, of course, a fashion victim is a bad dresser. The French, however, seem to think it denotes a fashion maven or a clotheshorse. I snicker when I read interviews with French actresses who boast “je suis une vraie fashion victim.” Oh, Judith Godrèche (hot blonde from I’Auberge espagnole), if only you knew …
This explains, I suppose, why Toviah’s students thought it was an appropriate question to ask if she was a fashion victim. (I found it a little rude at first.)
*According to “Lire” magazine France’s top 5 favorite books are:
-The Bible
-Les misérables
-Le petit prince
-Germinal (ouais!!)
-The Lord of the Rings (that’s 3, you’re cheating, France)
Zola had the most number of books in the top 100. Anyone who knows what a girlish crush I have on M. Zola knows that I wholeheartedly agree. (Who can help but love an author who unfailingly drags his characters through the mud?) Hemingway was the most popular American author, which I can accept, but noticeably absent was my guy (Fitzgerald). Surprisingly, however, Uncle Tom’s Cabin made it in France’s top 100.
I apologize for the randomness of this e-mail. Not much has happened lately, save the 5-something earthquake last week, to which this e-mail owes its subject line. I hope that everyone is doing well.
Love,
Megan
IN WHICH MEGAN GOES FOREIGN
-OR-
LIMING IN ST. LUCIA
April 8th, 2005
Hello! I hope that everyone is doing well. After my last nonsensical e-mail I figured I ought to take a little break from writing mass e-mails but I am now back with a vengeance. Most of you know that I had the pleasure of my parents’ company during Easter vacation. (Most of you also know how strangely obsessed I am with my parents, I’m terribly vain about them.) It was very exciting for me to have someone to show Guadeloupe to. I even got to do things I hadn’t done before, such as touring the Domaine Severin (where I discovered the “universe of rum, spices and crayfish”) and doing my scuba diving baptême in Basse-Terre. (Scuba diving is a trip, I felt like an underwater astronaut.) I’m pleased to report that I think my dad took as much to the coconut sorbet as I do.
For the second week of vacation (because the French vacation—and strike and frequent the pharmacy–like only socialists can) I went to St. Lucia with my friend Helen. Helen is a Macalaster grad, I actually met her in Minneapolis at Big E’s Soul Food a couple of weeks before going to Guadeloupe. Because there are no ferries that go from Guadeloupe to St. Lucia on Mondays, we were obligated to spend the night in Fort-de-France, Martinique. I wasn’t sorry, as I’ve always harbored a certain Martinique-curiosity. First of all, Fort-de-France is MUCH prettier than Pointe-à-Pître. I was told that the French government favored Martinique over Guadeloupe but I didn’t expect it to be so evident. Caribbean cities tend to underperform aesthetically but I would say that Fort-de-France is the prettiest one I’ve seen so far. (Well, prettiest ISLAND city, I suppose.) As it was the Monday following Easter, EVERYTHING was closed. That didn’t prevent me, however, from seeing the “blood”-splattered decapitated Josephine statue in la Savane.
Little known fact(s):
*Josephine (of Napoleon and Josephine) was actually born in Martinique on a sugar plantation.
*Though slavery ended following the French Revolution, it was REINSTATED by Napoleon in 1802. This lasted until 1848 when slavery was abolished thanks to Victor Schoelcher. (Slavery was abolished in Guadeloupe a month later than in Martinique.)
On Tuesday we had a productive Martinique-an morning before our boat left, visiting both the Pre-Columbian Archeology Museum and the Schoelcher Library, a beautiful Austrian Secession-esque building that puts anything in Pointe-à-Pître to architectural SHAME.
After Dominica, I felt that sea travel was incredibly romantic but this last trip has since modified that view. Both the trips to Fort-de-France and to Castries were rather rough and I found myself surrounded by vomiting passengers. It was less than picturesque. Apparently, outside and on the upper deck is the best place to be to avoid sea sickness. (This also happens to be the best place for pirate imaginings.)
Our first two days were split between Castries, the capital, and the Rodney Bay area in the North of the island. Castries rather reminds me of Roseau, Dominica: less than lovely but rich in good food smells. There are lots of random food stands and stalls scattered about the city—zoning doesn’t seem to have caught on in the Caribbean yet. It was at one such stand that I had my first soursop juice—a delicious juice with a somewhat milky colour and consistency that Helen thinks is made from corossol. On the Great Juice Spectrum, it ranks below nispero and above cythère. (Cythère is a juice that I discovered in Guadeloupe. I saw cythère translated in St. Lucia as “golden apple” but that means nothing to me. All I know is that it is nothing like apple juice. It has a pleasant green colour that bears a faint resemblance to radioactive ooze. The visual is half the fun.) I’m really going to miss the juices here… American juices are so insipid.
The second half of our stay was spent in the South, in Soufrière, where we visited the Diamond Botanical Gardens and spent the afternoon in its mineral baths. Lovely. The next morning we went snorkeling in Anse Chastanet (nice, but not quiet as good as the Îlets Pigeons in Guadeloupe) before heading back up to Castries. On the long bus ride through the mountains, Helen befriended a rather adorable (utterly parental) American couple from Williamsburg, VA. (I should explain that “buses” in St. Lucia are really just white vans with a capacity of about 12. They run quite frequently, though, so they’re really efficient.) Anyway, they were staying at a hotel near ours and invited us over that evening for wine. It was interesting to talk to them; I suppose their perspectives were quite different, coming directly from the states as opposed to having lived in the West Indies for six months. They seemed much more struck by the sometimes squalid architecture and rum-riddled crazies. (There’s something rather haunting about rum-drunks.) They kept comparing St. Lucia to the US whereas Helen and I kept comparing it to Guadeloupe.
Helen has done more traveling around the Caribbean than anyone I know, and seems to be of the opinion that the independent islands (as opposed to Martinique and Guadeloupe, departments of France) seem to have more island-pride. I don’t really feel qualified to say anything of the sort, but people in St. Lucia were incredibly friendly and vocal about their St. Lucian pride. I lived a Simpsons-esque moment at Fort Rodney when, munching on some oat crackers that Helen had bought, a park ranger greeted us saying; “I see that you are eating our national cookie.” I feel that there is a higher rasta-quotiant in the anglophone islands. French and rasta don’t really mix… My magnificently dread-ed Guadeloupean friends says that it is actually hard to find work in Guadeloupe with dreadlocks. This is unfortunate, as there could never be too many dreadlocks in the world, as far as I’m concerned.
This last trip has made me think a lot about tourism in the Caribbean. I’ve always sort of distained cruise ships, as they reduce one’s experience to landscapes and seem to ignore local culture. But backpacking around the Caribbean is FATIGUING; the constant, unrelenting sun is enough to turn a person into an existentialist assassin. (I can suddenly identify with Camus’ Mersault.) I suppose the heat is lovely when you step off a giant cruise ship and on to white sand beaches with a piña colada in hand, but burdened like a pack mule in chaotic Castries, it’s a little less than enchanting. I’m really not sure what the best way is to travel around the Caribbean…probably somewhere in between the two.
Okay, I should explain the title quickly: According to Addia, an assistant from Jamaica, Jamaicans say that they “go foreign” when they travel abroad. I love this. “Liming” is another bit of Caribbean slang: According to Helen, idle British sailors used to loiter in the ports eating limes to ward off scurvy. So, “liming” now means “hanging out” in West Indian English. Oh! By the way, my US phone was lost in tragic purse incident and I’ve lost all of the numbers saved on it. If you could do me the favor of sending your number, I would be very much obliged.
Love,
Megan
RANDOM NOTES
April 20th, 2005
I had the strangest experience last week. After the teacher left in one of my classrooms, a student started acting up, so I sent him out of the classroom. He continued to be a disturbance, however, throughout the rest of the class period, saying things like “You’re OLD and mean” and various créole insults through the window. I didn’t understand the créole insults, of course, but the kids were rather scandalized. When the bell finally rang and we all headed out for lunch, a swarm of kids followed me. “He doesn’t respect you, madame,” they said, “you’ve got to SLAP him.” They then proceeded to demonstrate with unnerving zeal how to administer a proper slap, shadow boxing the air. It was BIZARRE to hear these children advocating for corporal punishment. (The thing is, the classes in which the students get slapped are also the most disruptive. It doesn’t appear to be particularly effective.)
Other odd things about school in Guadeloupe:
*Teachers will answer their cell phones in class.
*When a teacher is absent (and this happens a LOT), their students are divided up and sent to sit in the back of other classrooms, where they read, colour or play games.
**********************
My very French moment: Last week I ate at an African restaurant in Moule with Helen and Florent, a philosophy teacher originally from Paris but teaching in St. Martin (he was in Guadeloupe for a concours, long story). Florent is the happy embodiment of a LOT of French stereotypes, possessing all the requisite philias; cinephilia, oenophilia, bibliophilia, etc. If I ran into him in Paris, there would be a baguette tucked under one arm and Les fleurs du mal under the other; he’s THAT French. A male Marianne, you might say. Anyway, he started talking about the one REALLY good restaurant he knew of in Guadeloupe, where the chef was absolutely brilliant. I ventured the foolish question of “What kind of food is it?” meaning “is it French? créole? Italian?” Florent looked at me in amazement and responded, “It’s HIS food, it’s ART.” He then launched into an explanation of how you can’t place a genre on truly original cuisine. This all may sound incredibly pretentious or tedious to some of you, but people like me study French to be treated to such tirades. (I was redeemed later on in the meal by sharing identical feelings on the importance of coffee at the end of a meal. Whew)
Last weekend, when we were talking about how French cinemas and television are required to show a certain number of French films, as opposed to American films, Florent muttered “we have to protect our culture.” I agree, of course, but it makes me laugh to hear these words issued from the personification of France.
LOVE YOU ALL (likely),
Megan
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