Sweets

As many of you know, I have a big sweet tooth. Here in French Guiana, there is a lot to satisfy it. One thing that I'm quite grateful for is the presence of the French pastry industry. I can always get a good pain au chocolat at one of many local bakeries. I've had amazing cream puffs, and occasionally a piece of cake. On Saturday, I bought a Gateau basque. For those of you from the northeastern U.S., this tastes exactly like the cake version of a Stella D'Oro Breakfast Treat. If you've never had one of these cookies, I pity you, as they are AMAZING. But there's also a lot of local goodies. The last time I was here, I posted about having accras. Accras are the French word for what's known in Guianese Creole as marinad, or in English 'fritters'. At a local Haitian place, you can get 8 banana fritters (about the size of a doughnut hole) for only 2 euros. Today, I was at the market and I bought some sispa (literally 'six pieces'). This is a local specialty, about the size, shape and color of a rice-cake, but much denser. It's made principally of taro flour, flavored with sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and cocunut. Pretty good, but not great. There are also local jellies that are great. Chadeck (like a grapefruit but way bigger), mango, banana with honey or rum, pineapple, lime, and even tomato-vanilla (not a fan). Then there's the ice cream. I LOVE the flavors here. Peanut, soursop, guava, coconut, pineapple, and more. I have to be VERY careful to limit my intake of these to one liter every three weeks or else I'll need to buy a second ticket to get back. There's also a not-so-secret code about how to buy three particular fruits that aren't sold at the market. If you see a yellow flag, it means patawa is for sale. If you see a red flag, it means açai is for sale. If you see a white flag, it means komou is for sale. I haven't yet gone into any of these establishments to but the fruits but I plan to soon.

Making strides

The last couple of days have been pretty darn awesome, I have to say. Last night, after I got home early, I watched the show A Kouman ('Huh?') for the first time. This is a short, 8-minute show that spotlights the different languages spoken in French Guiana. Last night's language was Russian, spoken by people working for the Space Center.

Then, as I was marinating some fish, I had a nice discussion with Dominique (my landlady), Alex (her significant other) and Alyssa (his daughter) about my project and Haitians/immigration in French Guiana more generally. This is a very intellectually engaged family, and it's nice to be able to weigh in and show my knowledge too. Too often, I'm reduced to sitting by, observing, taking in the discussion, but not being able to participate. While I'm learning a LOT about French Guianese society, I'm really not in much of a position to contradict people or add new knowledge to the discussion. But last night, I felt like I was on an equal footing because of my knowledge of the Haitian community here and elsewhere.


After firing off a few text messages setting up my first training sessions for my interviewers, I went back to my fish. I made my first 'pimentade'. A pimentade is a fish stew made by marinating fish in lime juice, onions, garlic, salt & pepper for a few hours, then sauteing more onions and garlic with tomatoes in a pot. After a few minutes, you add about a cup of water with a teaspoon of roukou ('lipstick tree spice') dissolved into it. Once that comes to a boil, you add the fish and its marinade, and cook it till it's fully cooked. And then you enjoy it. It's really good. I'll be bringing plenty of roukou home with me.


Then today, I had my first training session. I'm really glad my advisers told me to do this, because it is not at all intuitive to do these interviews. Essentially, they have to be able to strike up a good rapport with people, make sure they're always talking, respect the time limits for each part of the interview, and never correct people even when they use words that aren't Haitian. All of this can be quite difficult, and this person didn't seem to be a natural, but that's ok, because she has what she needs to be able to work on it at home, to get more comfortable with it, to speak with people who are actually Haitian (rather than me playing a 40 year old Haitian man).

Once that was done, I went to the library, except I went to a different brach, where a friend of Dominique's works. The other branch was taking its sweet damn time getting back to me about whether I could have a library card. When I went today, they told me I'd already been approved, even though no one bothered to tell me. So I have to go back tomorrow with 31 euros, a proof of Dominque's address, and a passport-size photo (which I have left over from my international driver's license). I'll also be allowed to use the internet there, which means no more paying by the hour.

So all in all, a pretty good couple of days. More news soon.

Post 100

A big topic of discussion among those I talk to the most is the potential independence of French Guiana, and this post is a synthesis of the views of locals I’ve spoken to as well as my own views. As you might know if you’ve talked to me or read a bit about this place, French Guiana is a department of France, the largest one in fact. This means that it is as much a part of France as any of the departments of the mainland, or for those of you reading from the U.S., it is as much a part of France as Hawaii is a part of the U.S. At least in theory that’s true. In many important ways, French Guiana is not part of France. Take this small example from my life: When I studied abroad in Paris in 2005, I was told that my bank had an agreement with one of France’s largest banks, which is present here. If I used my American card at any of this bank's ATMs, I would not be charged any special fees. Fast-forward to last year’s trip to French Guiana: I used the French bank's ATMs exclusively, and when I got home, I found numerous charges on my statement for using the card overseas. When I went to my bank to find out why (after all, it had been 5 years; perhaps the agreement had been dissolved in the interim), I was told that it was because it didn’t honor that agreement in French Guiana; it was “only in France” that it was valid. When I explained to the manager that it WAS indeed part of France, she expressed sympathy but said that she couldn’t do anything because it was corporate policy not to recognize French Guiana as ‘France’. A friend of mine from the mainland said he called his cell-phone company, Orange-France, to complain about service here. He was told that here it’s Orange-Caraïbes, and that the France division was unconcerned. And of course, that’s just some of many ways French Guiana is marginalized. It is so marginalized that friends here tell me that their friends in the mainland don’t realize that French Guiana isn’t an island. One woman, whose home I visited when looking for a place to live, told me that even her friends in Martinique and Guadeloupe (other French Caribbean departments) don’t even want to visit her in Cayenne because they didn’t want to get attacked by pumas (which are not found here in the city, I promise). The specificity of the French Guianese situation is hardly recognized by France, which treats it in many ways just as it does all its other departments. So you have thousands of little black, Amerindian, and Asian schoolchildren reading the textbook Nos ancêtres les Gaulois (Our ancestors from Gaul). Of course, these children are not descended from the inhabitants of Gaul, nor are they even anywhere close to where Gaul was. It also sends all sorts of goods from the mainland to French Guiana. Yet in other ways, the French government recognizes that here, it is different. As with the other overseas departments and territories, France gives a pay increase (40% here) to those government employees willing to accept positions here. They also institute an ‘Overseas Tax’, meaning that not only are things more expensive due to the cost of shipping, but also there is an additional layer of price-inflation. So you might pay as much as 8 euros for brand-name cereal, or 84 euros to fill your tank with the highest gas prices of Europe. And of course, France has no intention of letting French Guiana start importing directly into the region, so coffee from the neighboring country of Brazil goes to mainland France first, only to return here, and the prices get doubled. Meanwhile, the government has gone on TV saying that French Guiana’s economy is great, due to the investments in the European Space Center, located in Kourou. As if to rub salt in the wounds of the residents, President Sarkozy has had his Minister of Overseas Departments and Territories propose a new, modern instantiation of the Jardin d’Acclimation. The Jardin d’Acclimatation was an expo from the 19th century where people from France’s (largely tropical) territories were brought to Paris and put on display, as though the visitors were going to a zoo (which was actually the original purpose of the site). They were forced to brave the cold weather of winter wearing nothing or next to nothing as visitors marveled at the ‘savages’ found in France’s vast empire. So of course, who wouldn’t want to recreate that? And believe it or not, some people from the Amerindian tribes here actually agreed to it. And this weekend, some of those tribes that agreed to participate ousted their leadership in revolt over this. All this leads me to address the question of independence. Why, if life is so bad and the French so oblivious or unresponsive to the needs and desires of French Guiana— the only part of South America to not have its independence— do the residents not vote for their independence? Part of the resistance is the French infrastructure that exists here. Residents of French Guiana benefit from having a very comprehensive health care system. Although France’s health care system is the best in the world according to the World Health Organization, French Guiana’s doesn’t quite measure up, but it’s still quite good and citizens here can go to the mainland for treatment if necessary with no special papers. The largest employer in French Guiana is the French educational system, which is responsible for all the schools, including the university. Most of the teachers are not French Guianese, but rather are people taking advantage of the salary boost that comes with working here, in order to save a bit of extra money for the future. France also has a generous social safety net, and immigrants flock to French Guiana to take advantage of it, making this department the most immigrant-heavy of the whole nation (29.7% immigrants in 1999, compared to the number two Paris, which was 15.7% immigrants). Without the infrastructure of the French government, what will happen? One likely negative consequence is the exodus of French mainlanders (called ‘Métros’) as well as immigrants, leaving white- and blue-collar jobs unfilled, and possibly unfillable. The quality and quantity of social services will surely go down, as a small nation will find it more difficult to maintain the services that a nation of over 60 million people can provide. In short, an economic collapse that leaves its citizens stranded is a very real, very scary possibility. Moreover, cronyism and nepotism are rampant here, which can make it difficult to get a good job if you’re not already well-placed. If there’s a vote for independence, citizens will have to find some way to make sure that those in power do not stay there, adding to the political instability of the newly independent nation. There also needs to be a plan for development. There is really very little that is produced here, and much of it is destined for elsewhere. For example, thanks to the ‘Green Plan’ of the 1960’s, there is now an active pineapple industry, destined to send pineapples all over the world. There was once a lot of gold to be found here (and indeed, many people are still mining gold illegally in the Amazon), but whether there is enough to sustain the economy is something I don’t know. But as it stands now, if the country were to get its independence tomorrow, it would be catastrophic. There’s simply not enough to get by. One way French Guiana could quickly get money is by using the European Space Center to their advantage. The station is here because, despite the frequent rain and other bad spells of wether, there’s really not much danger from Mother Nature; there are no tornadoes, hurricanes, tidal waves, or earthquakes. Moving the space station to one of France’s other Overseas Departments is not really feasible, and the governments still want to go into space. So French Guiana might be able to lease it out. Conversely the space center is the reason why France is mostly likely to fight French Guianese independence. Of course, in many ways, the economy will bring costs down itself: going off the euro, importing things directly, avoiding a surtax on all goods, the right to have sales at any time of the year instead of just January and July. These will bring the cost of living way down. They might also cause a housing slump, though, as prices for homes here are ridiculously inflated for their condition and location. In sum, independence is scary. But is it really worse than being colonized? Both situations have their obvious drawbacks and advantages. A compromise position, having more autonomy, was rejected not long ago after a fear campaign by those wishing to maintain the status quo. It will be interesting to see whether the price of independence is something that people here are willing to pay.

University

I had wanted to show you pictures of the brand-new university campus and compare them with the old, dingy campus that generations of students had to endure. However, my disk readers for my memory card have given out on me, so for the moment there will be no new photos until I resolve the situation. However, this is the new campus. Quite pretty, very modern. Post 100 tomorrow.

no posts

Sorry no posts last night and not really today. But for post 100 i've got something good in mind. just one post between this one and number 100.

Random thoughts

The housing developments here all have names. Some are named after important people; others are just given names to have them (such as Les pépites ‘The flecks’). The one next to my house reminds me of my childhood: The Trinity (the name of my church choir and the source of my online handle for e-mail, Instant Messaging, and many other sites).

I had an AMAZING pizza the other day. First thing to know about pizza here: it’s all thin crust, with very little outer crust. Second thing: every pizza has a tomato sauce and comes with cheese and black olives, along with the option of chili sauce/oil. This pizza was then topped with cream, seafood (definitely shrimp, maybe some fish too), and ripe plantains. I loved it, and I have every intention of creating a similar pizza back in the States.


One thing I’m really going to miss when I go back to the States is French journalism. It’s so serious, and you come away feeling like you’re actually informed about what’s happening. I saw a debate, and the people actually debated each other, rather than shouting talking points over each other. Sensationalism occurs, and there is some People-style journalism, but journalists seem willing to engage people in power and really press them.


The pictures I promised: The first picture is the local spinach (zépina-péyi in the local creole). Note the red in the leaves—it stains the other food that you cook with it, like beets do. I prepared that with just some olive oil, salt, and some spicy cucumbers (konkonm pikan, pictured in the second photo). Spicy cucumbers are about the size of a kiwifruit, and taste like cucumbers with a lot of tiny seeds and a teeny, tiny kick of spice in the aftertaste. I had these two as a side dish with some fish and garlic mashed potatoes (with yogurt in place of sour cream).






Finally: I saw a chicken crossing a road the other day, but by the time I thought to ask it why it was doing it, it had already disappeared.

Work

First a brief apology: I was not able to get the photos I promised from yesterday's post onto my USB key for tonight. Hopefully tomorrow.

Today I was a workhorse. Last night after posting here, I posted an ad online looking for participants and interviewers for the study. This morning, I received several phone calls, and I think tomorrow I might be able to start arranging a training session where the interviewers practice their craft by interviewing one another. My goal was to have this session by the end of the month, and it looks like I'll at least come close, which is good. I spent the afternoon at the middle school again, and found three girls who seemed interested in being interviewed, and if their parents are interested, I'll have lots of willing participants. As a side note, the girls confirmed the wisdom of me hiring someone else to do the interviews when they simultaneously burst into laughter when I spoke Haitian Creole.

And when I wasn't recruiting, I was hard at work on my dictionary project, getting lots of entries in today. I've got over 500 entries from the creole side of the dictionary, and I'm well on my way to having over 1000 by the time I leave.

So things are looking up, which is good, because I get worried from time to time. I get a bit shy and awkward when it comes time to ask for something I need from people who are strangers or in an authority position. This can make it very stressful when I need to ask people to participate. I much prefer when people offer to help, because I feel way less guilty about taking them up on that offer.

Slow day

Today, kids had the afternoon off from school (as they do every Wednesday), so instead of going to the junior high, I went downtown to the library to look up some reference materials then made a quick stop at the market to pick up some veggies. Pics tomorrow. I then went home, locked my bike to the fence, and now cannot find the key. So I'm back on foot for now.

On a side note, I'm only a few posts away from post number 100. Any thoughts on what should be in the 100th post? Comments are open.

Pictures

I could talk about my day (morning buying stuff for the bike like a kickstand and a sorely-needed cushion for the seat, afternoon spent talking to middle-schoolers), but I want to hold off on that. I've been putting off showing these pictures for no apparent reason. The first three are pictures showing some of the Brazilian influence here (and as I type this, there are a pair of Brazilian girls sitting next to me). The first is a billboard with both French and Portuguese on it.

The next two pictures are the aftermath of the market. This is what remains when all the merchants have packed up their wares and their stands and go home for the day.

Pumped

This morning I took care of my bike. I oiled up the axels and gears with some WD-40, and pumped up the tires (and the jam, thanks to my iPod). I took it for a test spin, and got ready for tonight. Then this afternoon, Dominique took me to work, where the students in quatrième (ages 13-15) were travelling around the school to hear different people talk about their careers. She invited me to join her in her presentation, so I got to tell all the kids what I did (after they stopped giggling at my accent), and specifically what I was doing in French Guiana. We asked the kids whether they spoke Haitian Creole, and some said yes. There was one group that was particularly stunned that their variety of Haitian was not identical to what is spoken in Haiti. They asked me to say something in Haitian Creole, so I said, M chita bò Dominik ‘I’m sitting next to Dominique’. They quickly corrected me, saying that I should have said, M asiz bò Dominik. They had no idea that the word was borrowed locally and not used in Haiti, rather than just being one of the many common words between the two creoles. I told the kids I’d be there in the library all week if they wanted to come talk to me. We’ll see if any of them take me up on my offer, but in any case, Dominique took me to meet other people in the school who speak the local creole, so even if the recruitment of kids is unsuccessful, I’ll still meet people who might be able to help me.

I should also mention that it’s not just the kids who don’t realize the influence of other creoles. I met a group of adults who were able to talk quite eloquently about the mixture and changes in the local creole. For example, they mentioned a change in progress in Guianese (the local Creole) in which kids were starting to use the singular in place of the plural, and the example they sought to contrast the kids’ version with — the example of ‘good’ or ‘correct’ creole— was actually a version that had been borrowed from Martinican Creole into Guianese. When I asked for clarification, and provided them with a chance to accept the traditional form or the Martinican form, they said ‘Oh they’re equivalent. There’s no real difference.’ Even those with extreme sensitivities to language and proper speech cannot know everything about the history of their language, but it was nice to see the lack of awareness in such different groups. It makes me think I made the right decision in coming here.

Nothing

There's nothing to report. Today I accomplished mostly nothing. So in lieu of a blog post, enjoy this picture of the moon.

Lessons learned

Today I woke up late. Nevertheless, I managed to have a productive day by chatting with the daughter of Alex, Dominique's significant other. First I asked her some questions about the limits of Creole grammar. When we talked, it reminded me very much of some of the lessons I learned in class, especially the following: It takes a while for certain people to get what you're looking for. Rarely, people understand linguists' goals without needing to be coached or reminded repeatedly. This is understandable. Linguists have their own odd little goals in mind, driven by theories of how languages are organized and what sorts of constructions should be impossible. Most people are not linguists, and they want to know the best, most natural way of saying things. My questions aren't about what the best way to say something is, but rather, can you say this at all? For example, in English we can't say 'He speaks very well Spanish', though that is the word order in French. Sentences like that are what interest linguists (or at least those of us who try to document languages). Another lesson is about insecurity: Sometimes people say they don't speak the REAL language, but rather that other people, especially older people, speak the real language. Again, linguists try to describe the language situation as it is, though it's important to note differences among age groups.

We also talked a bit about Haitian Creole speakers, and she told me that Haitians around her age (which as I gather is just a bit younger than me) and possibly even younger than here tend to be the ones who most mix their creole with the local creole. So I might be able to find some interesting people to interview using her connections (and in return I'd help her with her English, which she regrets not using more).

Objets trouvés

In English, the place we look when we lose something in a particular public places is called the ‘lost and found’ while in French it’s the ‘objets trouvés’, or ‘found objects’. Today was full of good finds. I found my USB key (which I had left in the internet café the night before, but recovered it because the employees had put it in the —you guessed it— lost and found). While I was in town, I did a bit of shopping. The first thing I did was buy two shirts, because I’m going through clothing rather quickly down here, and since I no longer have the habit of washing my clothes in the shower to save money, I figured it would be good to save Dominique a bit of money and get a couple of cheap, quick-drying shirts (9 € apiece from the ‘All for 5 €’ store. Psh). I then did some comparison price shopping for items for my bike, and I’m very glad I did because the first place I looked was particularly expensive. Then, with a bit of time to kill before the bus came, I decided to go to the market. While I was there I saw these, called durians.



They are large (about the size of a honeydew) and so prickly that I couldn’t even hold one comfortably. So the merchant let me try a teeny tiny piece free of charge. The texture is almost like that of an avocado (complete with the large pit) but the taste is really quite distinctive. After she was so nice (and the fruit so good), I decided to buy some pre-cut durians and the merchant not only knocked a euro off the price, but she let me take pictures of that fruit and also this one,



which I didn’t bother buying this time because I’d spent enough money. With still more time left, I went to the university library, told the librarians what I was doing there. They helped me find some studies that I hadn’t seen before. So I stuck around and read the studies, including one on relativization, roughly, joining two sentences by putting one inside the other, as in the sentence before this one. I came home feeling refreshed, and I am pleased with the day’s finds.

I want to ride my bicycle

No real news to report today, except that I got a bike. A friend of Dominque's is lending me an old bike that she doesn't use. I can't ride it just yet because there's no air in the tires nor oil on the gears. I'll also need to buy a helmet, lights, a lock, and a kickstand. But still all that is cheaper than buying a bike. Now I'll be able to commute all over Cayenne in one-third of the time.

Heat

I went to the market today to pick up some fruit. I've found that it's really not a good idea to buy anything else there, because Dominique keeps making big meals for lunch, and I get home late from the internet café so all my dinner food goes to waste. So today I bought bananas, tomatoes (for sandwiches), and a slice of tayove (picture tomorrow, after I've tried it). On the way back I felt a bit dehydrated, so I got some juice before getting on the bus. It didn't help. There were so many people and no air conditioning, that i nearly passed out or threw up. Luckily the bus cleared out well before my stop and I was able to recover. But the rest of the day was spent relaxing and working on an article for publication.

Bathrooms

When I was looking for apartments, I was caught off-guard by the fact that all the showers were in a different room than the toilets. I remembered way back in my French classes in junior high that we were told about this. And of course, I've lived in France before, but there it was different: the showers, toilets, and sinks were all separate. And the last time I was in Cayenne, the shower and toilet cohabitated quite peacefully. And after I'd gotten used to the whole separation of toilet and shower, I used the bathroom at a friend's apartment (something I rarely do), and there was a bathroom complete with all three. This was an apartment reserved for French government employees, mind you. Oh, and even when they're separate, there's no predicting which room the sink will be in.

Observations

This is how the street leading from my street to the downtown looks when I get here:



And this is how it looks when I leave:

Last night was the American dinner. I made the chicken in Coke gravy that I discussed as well as the onion soup potatoes. I also improvised some carrots with thyme, and they might have been the best carrots I've ever made. God bless French butter. Anyhow, everyone loved the meal, and remarked that it was nice to have something that wasn't spicy for a change.

Today, I was working diligently in the hammock, when all of a sudden I heard little feet scratching beneath me. I thought it was the cat, but when I looked over, I saw this guy:

Caught me quite off guard. He was about 3 feet long, and ran surprisingly fast when I went to take a picture of him.

Video blog 2

Short post

Today's the American dinner, so I don't have much time. However, I'll take a bit of time to talk about who I'm cooking for.

Jorge, my Peruvian friend who's leaving for the mainland soon and hopes to not return

Samuel -- his older friend who lets him stay over in the spare futon

Yoan -- A French kid of university age who moved to Cayenne as a kid

Leo -- the owner of the apartment. Originally from Nicaragua, he's now a French citiwen and aorks for the government. He studied at one of my schoo's sister universities in France.

Maribel and Nicolas -- Mother and son. I really have no idea how they're connected to Leo (maybe a daughter or a niece) but they always seem to be at his place. Nicolas is adorable, and loved it when I gave him an American quarter.

Discovery

I think the blog has taken on a very different tone from the last trip. Last time I was here, there was a bit more discussion of the different facets of life here, and I think that's disappeared as I've gotten accustomed to life down here. I miss that bit of complete naïveté. Now I'm mostly deling with expected obstacles. I'm also here for quite a bit longer this time, so I don't feel like I'm running around in circles trying to figure out how to proceed. Things just aren't that chaotic. I have worked hard to not be complacent, getting paperwork in order, making connections, though I still feel like I'm a ways off from getting the interviews organized. I don't think I'll have difficulty setting them up, but I'm a bit concerned that I won't get enough people to show up. Still, I have six weeks to get 8 people to show up for interviews, so if I make a bit of progress next week recruiting interviewers, I'll be okay.

In any event, today I spent the day downtown with friends. I went to the market and picked up stuff for tomorrow's meal, as well as a couple of new fruits that I'll post pictures of tomorrow, after I make them into juice. And the time I spent downtown was quite productive, getting some work done that had been neglected.

Chillaxing all cool

Today I just took a bit of time for myself. I slept in after a late night, skipped my morning exercise, and walked to town, where I saw a HUGE bird flying overhead.




I went to the market, where I picked up some peanut punch—shockingly good. I also perused some of these prints, which I’m thinking about buying.

Jorge is leaving soon and I’m going to prepare an ‘American’ meal for him and our friends on Sunday, so while at the market I checked out what was available for big meal. I’m really not used to cooking ‘American’ cuisine, and it was hard to think of what he’d like. As a result I think I’ll be making chicken in Coke gravy and onion soup potatoes, along with some carrots and peas.
I came home in time for lunch, where Dominique, her partner Alex, and I had a great conversation. We talked about a whole range of things, including creolization of language and culture, the role of memory in French society (specifically, they were telling me how the French place a huge emphasis on remembering the Holocaust but try to tell the residents and descendants of their former slave colonies to forget about the wrongs done to them), and the history of the Amerindians and the Deaf in France. I did a few dictionary entries, and came back to town.

Long day

Gonna shorthand because I had a lot to do today:

Went to town in the morning, fixed my phone, bought a cookbook that I regretted buying soon after because of its lack of specificity (saying that I need 'cod' is not enough information to determine how much cod I need), and bought plenty of anti-mosquito spray.

Went back home, did some work, ate lunch

Did the laundry for the first time, airing clothes out on the line, hoping that monkeys and I don't have the same taste in clothes

Came to town, ate dinner with friends, came to the internet cafe, sent a bunch of e-mails, talked to Matt.

Ash Wednesday

Today I went to the market with Dominique, my landlady, who's really more like a host mother than a landlady. She helped me pick out fish, some palika and some loubine, and showed me how to properly clean them. We also picked out some other stuff, which I'll get to later in the week when I finally get a chance to cook for myself (she's been making lunch all week), and by the time I get home from the internet café I'm too tired to cook. We did however pick up some ramboutan, pictured here. It's okay, but I won't buy it again. It's not that yummy.


After doing a bit more work, I went to town to view the last of Carnaval. On the way, Dominique's partner/boyfriend/companion saw me walking along the road and picked me up, saving me about 20 minutes. We talked, and I convinced him to speak to me in Creole, which was nice. I might ask him to be a consultant, that is, someone who I can ask detailed questions to about acceptable and unacceptable sentences.

He dropped me off in time to see the end of the Ash Wednesday parade. For Ash Wednesday, it's the day of mourning, so everyone dresses in black & white. Notably, I haven't seen a single ashen cross on anyone's head. If seeing a costume from Mars Attacks wasn't enough to make me realize that the holiday had been thoroughly secularized, this was it. Well, this and the fact that today was the first day that shops started to open again. The other thing about the Carnaval parades that I haven't yet mentioned is that they are not restricted to organized groups. Anyone can just tack themselves onto the parade. Ideally, they follow the theme of the parade, but not strictly always.

Djab Rouj

I spent most of Mardi Gras working, in a hammock. As a result, I didn't even have time to type out a blog entry before I got to the café like I usually do. So as a result, you'll just have to deal with pictures from the Mardi Gras parade, which traditionally is the day of the Djab Rouj, or 'Red Devil', and for which everyone wears red and black.

Working hard

Now that I’m settled in, I can get to work. This morning I spent most of my time on my dissertation project, adjusting the forms I need to get approval from my university to do this project. Luckily, for the stage I’m at right now, official approval isn’t necessary, since I’m just piloting the project. Still, I want to be sure that I can use the data I get own here in the final project if at all possible, so getting the approval soon is better.

After lunch with my landlady, her significant other, and her son, she and I went food-shopping. This was surprisingly difficult because these are jours gras, i.e. the days before Ash Wednesday. While not officially days off, in the Caribbean, they are frequently taken off anyway.

The evening was spent in the internet cafe, and I've got an hour walk back home. It's actually kind of relaxing.

Carnaval as promised

The Carnaval parade was kind of fun. People get all dressed up for it, not only those who march, but also those who just go to watch it. Lots of kids are dressed up in gear that U.S. kids would put on for Halloween. I wasn’t able to get there until well after the parade had begun, since I’d just moved into my new place. As a result, there aren’t a lot of great pictures. Plus I made the mistake of moving from a spot earlier in the parade to near the end, which meant it was more crowded. Then it started to rain really hard, so I left. Anyhow, the pictures and video give you an idea of what it was like. More videos posted shortly.

My projects

I think I’ve gone a while since I discussed why I’m actually here in French Guiana, so I’m going to describe the two projects I’m carrying out down here. The first is the dissertation project. For the dissertation project I’m looking at two very similar languages, Haitian and Guianese French Creoles. These languages both emerged during the time of French colonization of the New World when the African slaves of different language backgrounds interacted with each other and the French colonists, most of whom spoke a regional variety of French (quite different themselves from today’s modern French, and even from the standard of the time). If we didn’t know their history, we would not hesitate to call them dialects of a single French Creole spoken throughout the Atlantic. Their history suggests that they could have emerged independently of one another. In the last 50 years, Haitians have started coming to French Guiana in droves, to the point that now, 11% of Cayenne— the capital city and my temporary hometown—is Haitian. The dissertation project itself considers how Haitian Creole changes in contact with the local creole, Guianese; for example, I’ll be looking for words that don’t exist in Haiti, as well as at word order differences. To do this, I will look for speakers of Haitian Creole to be interviewed in two separate and consecutive interviews by a Guianese person and a Haitian person, respectively (also TBD). I will then find someone to transcribe the interviews for me (again, TBD), though this is something I could try to do myself if I don’t find anyone in time.

The second project is what I call the dictionary project. Guianese French Creole has been neglected by linguists in recent years. The last really good grammar was in 1972, and even that was fairly incomplete by today’s standards. There is a dictionary, but it’s very amateurish. For example, if you look at the word bat in English, you’ll probably find at least two entries, one for the animal and one for the inanimate object (and possibly one for the verb to bat, as in to bat one’s eyes). This dictionary would lump these two totally unrelated words together. So, with the financial assistance of my boss, I purchased a dictionary making program, so that I could make bilingual dictionaries for the language. Here are a couple of screenshots.



The first is the basic screen I work with. I put in a word in Guianese French Creole on the left, and I can add different senses of the word, translations for any language I want (I’ve chosen French, English, and Portuguese), the pronunciation, the etymology, and examples. When I’ve done that, I can just hit ‘Reverse’ and it creates the French equivalent for the bilingual dictionary. I can also adjust it so that it creates an English bilingual dictionary and a Portuguese one too.




In the second photo, I can expand the Creole side of the dictionary to get a better look at the words. You’ll see I’ve also added illustrations, including a picture that I took of a fish that had just been caught from the ocean. With this bigger view, you can see that the dictionary is a bit busy and hard to read. This is why it probably makes sense to release separate dictionaries for each language, rather than a single quadrilingual dictionary.

Part of the dictionary project is also a grammar project, in which I try to find the details of the language that have been overlooked. This includes things like when do you change the basic word order of a sentence or of its smaller parts like the subject or the predicate; it also includes things like how you form new words, where stress goes on a word, and when certain tenses require you to use certain words (e.g. in English you can’t say *I have praying, you have to say I have been praying). This is why I like to have conversation partners. They help me figure out what’s permitted and what’s not.

Anyhow, I realized in the last post that I’d talked a lot about the projects without ever explaining them, so I wanted to put it out there.

Carnaval

The Carnaval parade was today, but technology and I are fighting, and technology's winning. Expect longer posts tomorrow.

I’m too tired to think of a good title

This morning, after doing my daily exercise routine (sit-ups, a few push-ups and running for 15-20 minutes, soon to be 20-30 if I can get used to running in the heat), I set out for town to mail a couple things to the US and ran into a couple of friends who I hadn’t seen in a while. I then went to a book signing that was supposed to include an author whose dictionary I had reviewed in The French Review a couple years ago, but for some reason, he wasn’t there. After receiving a message from conversation partner number 2 that she would have to cancel, I hung out at the hotel working on my dictionary project until about 1:30, when I went to visit the last bedroom. It was perfectly fine and the couple (French husband, Cameroonian wife) renting it out was very nice, even giving me some homemade soursop juice and letting me take pictures for my dictionary of the fish they had caught. And at 400€, it was by no means overpriced. But it was a bit far from downtown, and although there was a bus kind of nearby, it was not going to be easy to get back home at night and on Sundays when there isn’t quite as much service. Also, the price and the steep steep hills would make riding a bike unfeasible. So I called the third lady from yesterday and confirmed that I’d take the mezzanine. I then sent a message to all but the couple from today confirming that I wouldn’t take their offers; I’ll send the couple a message tomorrow.
I picked up my galette créole, a typical dessert for Carnaval, and I brought it to a friend’s house, where we were having a couscous royale— essentially a giant stew of vegetables, lamb, chicken, merguez sausage, and raisins, served over semolina. I helped a bit with the preparation, which was fun to do after going so long without cooking, and just chit-chatted the rest of the time. We wrapped up with the galette.

(coconut filling on the left, guava on the right)

Tomorrow is Carnaval and I’m SUPER excited about it. I doubt I’ll have more than one video up tomorrow night, but over the course of the next week, I’ll be able to put some up, I think. The camcorders each take about 1 hour of recording before the batteries run out. So there will be way more footage than any of you will care to view.

Mo èstébékwé

So today I did some more apartment hunting, although really, it was bedroom hunting, since none of them are studios. The first was far away, inexpensive, but a bit dingy and not particularly inviting. The woman who’s renting out the room and I had nothing to say to each other, and she has a small child. But the price was good enough that I couldn’t say no out of hand. Then I went to another place that was a bit removed, but along a bus line. This was very inviting, a bit more expensive but within the range I had wanted to pay. However the woman was very insistent that I be clean in the common areas, which is something I can do but it’s not my default setting, and it was clear that she wanted the place to be immaculate. Plus I wouldn’t be sharing the apartment with her, but rather with a guy who didn’t seem particularly outgoing.
Then I was supposed to meet a friend downtown, but about a half-hour before, I got a call from a woman who was proposing a place to live but was a bit vague about the details. She told me she’d meet me in the library, and so I went in there, and I ran into one of my Creole professor’s friends, who had worked with me last time and who lives around the corner from where I lived last time. We chit-chatted only briefly (and softly, since we were in the library, after all). The woman then picked me up and we talked about my project, and it turns out she knows a LOT of Haitians (including the friend of mine who took me to her friend’s birthday party last time I was here). When we got to her house, not far from the second apartment I’d seen today, she told me why she had been so vague: I wouldn’t have a bedroom. I would have a bed surrounded by mosquito netting on a landing on the upper level. The netting is thick enough that I’d have some privacy but it’s significantly sheerer than a wall. Still, the woman is so well-connected and the price is so cheap that I will probably end up taking it. Plus, she told me that there are monkeys in her backyard in the morning. How cool is that? If I’m lucky, they’ll sing ‘Daydream Believer’, but that’s probably a bit much to hope for. I have one more place to see tomorrow, but if it’s not amazing, I think I’ll take this last place.

The woman I was supposed to meet to be my Creole conversation partner had to cancel because her son got sick. But just before that, I walk into the Internet café, and what do I see?




What the what? That's my school's basketball team on TV. Here. I was dumbfounded (that's what the title of my post means, by the way)

Low-key night.

Go wash your butt!

This has to be my favorite insult that I’ve learned in any language. I was going through my pocket guide to Guianese French Creole (a surprisingly useful little book), and I came across the section where they talked about insults. It started with Alé lave to gogo, which translates directly as the title of this post. I laughed out loud in the middle of the Chinese restaurant where I had lunch/escaped from the rain. This restaurant wasn’t great, but it filled me up.

Women (et al.)

People might have noticed that I don’t talk much about women in this blog, and there’s a good reason for that— I don’t really know any down here (hmm, maybe that’s not a good reason, but it’s a reason). That’s about to change thanks to a gender-neutral post I put on Blada yesterday. I put up an ad looking for people to converse with in Guianese French Creole (the local creole), offering to either buy them a drink or do an even exchange, half an hour in creole and half an hour in English (OK, I admit it: I gave into the French tendency to call it ‘American’). At around 8 a.m. this morning, I received a phone call that roused me from my sleep. I had hoped that it was for an apartment, but alas, it was a woman looking to meet this weekend for an English conversation. A few hours later and after my first time running on the streets in an attempt to exercise, I received a second call. This call was even better, because the woman asked me what I was doing here, and I told her I’m here to study how Haitian Creole changes when Haitians have started to interact with people speaking the local creole. And she was very happy to hear this, because she is in fact of Haitian descent. She says she speaks Haitian and Guianese Creoles and also Guadeloupean Creole, the native language of her baby-daddy (her words, not mine).
The rest of the day was fairly low-key. I made some phone calls to find an apartment, with most telling me that the apartments have been rented already. I saw one today which was really nice; it had everything (except, curiously, a place to keep my clothes). If I take it, I’ll put up pictures of it. It’s on the pricey side, but it’s less expensive than the tiny room I had and is twice the side. The neighborhood, like most of Cayenne, isn’t pretty, but at least it’s safe and fairly easy to get to from the bus. It’s also right near the Montabo hill, which in an earlier blog post I called the first really pretty spot I’d found in Cayenne. The biggest problem is that it’s only available for a month, though there’s a small possibility that the person who wants in April might be willing to put it off for a month. If I don’t like the place I’m visiting tomorrow, I’ll sign up for one month and continue to look for a place starting in April. At least I’ll have a three-week start, and with any luck, I’ll find one that’s a bit cheaper and have it even out.
I also bought an umbrella after getting soaked from head to toe on the way to the apartment. It cost 6 euros, and broke the first time I opened it when the button that you press to open it popped off. I then spent another 8 euros on an umbrella that I’d seen a bunch of other people carrying around. It seems to work well.
Oh and I still haven’t received any requests for postcards. I promise, the postcards make French Guiana look really pretty, and it’s nice for me to have people to write to.

Still searching…

Another day, another night stuck in the hotel. After hitting something of a dead end with ideas for finding a place, I decided to de-stress a little. First, on my way to the market, I decided to pick up a newspaper to look in the classifieds (which were barren), but when buying the paper, I mentioned my plight (yes, apartment hunting can be called a ‘plight’) to the owner/cashier. He actually rents out a room, but it was currently occupied. He took my name and number and told me he’d call me if he stumbled upon anything. At the market, I bought for bananas for lunch/stress-eating. I also found these, called ‘ramboutans’ (pronounced kind of like ‘rom bhutan’), but I haven’t worked up the courage to actually eat them.



After that I went to the cybercafé. Once there, in a burst of ingenuity (or at least in a quick fizzle of it) I decided to check the Interwebs. Lo and/or behold, I was able to find a bunch of listings on blade.com, French Guiana’s answer to Craigslist without the creepy personal ads. I sent off five or six e-mails to people, so hopefully I’ll receive answers soon: All the ads I responded to were posted in the last week, so there’s a good chance that something’s available and in my price range.
I made a quick stop at a couple of bookstores to pick up a couple of books to help with the dictionary project, which occupies my downtime. I even picked up a copy of The Little Prince, recently translated into Guianese French Creole. For the rest of the day, I hung out either in my hotel or in the house of Jorge’s friend (where I had a homemade fish dinner), working on the dictionary for most of the time.
Let me know in comments if you liked the previous video entry. They’re quite quick and easy to make, and I think they provide a nice change of pace. But let me know what you think.

Video blog 1

Preparing for Carnaval

Below are some pictures of how Cayenne has begun preparing for Carnaval (similar to New Orelans' Mardi Gras).







A kid with an object for the parade.