Souvenirs

Having secured my first round of interviews for tomorrow, I decided to spend the morning looking for souvenirs, both for myself and for others. I managed to find a place that sold a number of different spices that I wanted to give to people, spices that can't be found in the U.S., such as roukou and lemon salt (which is quite powerful here). I then went to a stand that had a picture I wanted to buy, but it was too expensive. However, there were so many other good things there that I kept picking out more and more stuff, and the lady who ran the stand ended up giving me a great deal, adding extra items but not charging me. I mentioned that I was here doing a study on Haitian Creole, and she in turn mentioned that she was Haitian. We started talking in Creole, and she claimed to not mix the two creoles, which I was skeptical of, considering she's been here since before I was born. However, when she tried to point out the differences between Haitian and Guianese French Creoles, I found out why she didn't mix: She had trouble with even the basic sentences of the local creole. This isn't in any way a criticism, of course, but rather just goes to show the diversity of linguistic experiences that a person can have even in this 250,000-person community known as French Guiana. Some people can live here for 30 years without ever bothering to learn to speak one of the lingua francas, while others feel extreme pressure to fit in and try to hide their language. In any event, at the end of our conversation, she invited me to visit her when I come back and knocked off another 10 euros from the already reduced price because now "ou se fanmi mwen" 'you're family'.

As a side note, my apologies for not posting this last night. Now that I use my own computer and try to get wifi in a stairwell, the battery frequently gives out with no warning. Last night, this happened as I was about to post.