Barbecue

So some of you might have noticed that the other day I said I was going to a barbecue, and then I didn’t talk about it. Well I had gotten the day of the party mixed up. It was last night, and again tonight. It was a party being thrown in celebration of the baptism of two Haitian twins. My friend brought me, telling me that at the party it was probably all going to be Haitians, and that I should expect that he and I would be the only white people there, which we were. But it was fun, good food (albeit not much of a variety). And everyone was very nice, and they all had opinions about the premise of my work, telling me that the local creole is “heavier” than Haitian and that they need to speak the local creole to get by. I might get pictures today. Last night, it slipped my mind.

Departmental Museum

Today I went to the Departmental Museum of French Guiana. It's right downtown, and I don't know why I'd never visited before this trip. Anyhow, it covers essentially three things: nature, history, and to a lesser extent, art.

Here's a mini-tour.

These are some old pharmaceuticals, made from local trees.

A stuffed blowfish.

A couple of birds. They showed the process by which the animals are stuffed by a taxidermist but it was too gross for me.

A picture of the migratory trajectories that some birds in French Guiana fly. I don't think you can tell from this picture, but there are little LEDs that light up. This trajectory that's lit shows how egrets fly. They go from my hometown in Connecticut to Cayenne. How fun.

If you don't like bugs, hit 'End' to get to the bottom of the page, and scroll up till you reach the steel ball-weights from a ball and chain. In the meantime, here are some gigantic bugs.

Look at the size of these beetles. Insane!

These are my favorite. They are called morphos, and they're everywhere. Sooo beautiful.

These are ball weights from a ball and chain from the prison at Devil's Island.

This painting is of a scene from the 1880 gold rush in French Guiana. This gold would later be how France repaid its debt from the Marshall Plan. Doesn't colonialism rule?

An outfit that a prisoner at Devil's Island would have worn. Also, one of the few black mannequins in Cayenne, which is weird, because almost none of the prisoners were black. They mostly came from Europe, and were therefore mostly white.

A couple of pictures of famous prisoners.

A model of a traditional house.

The proclamation of the end of slavery (I think it was the second end of slavery, since Napoleon brought it back and reenslaved all the blacks). The picture below it shows the creole translation. It was one of the earliest documents written in the local creole.

A picture of a prisoner being put through mouillage or 'soaking'. Those nearby sharks and the ball-and-chain on his foot are competing forces.

Oh and after the museum, I walked by the Hôtel de ville (kind of like a town hall, but not quite), and a wedding had just taken place there. Talk about a ball-and-chain.

Where I post

Anything good that's supposed to happen today is going to happen this evening, when I go to a barbecue with one of my friends, and I already posted my "reflective" blog topic for the week. So I really don't have much to say. So instead, here's a picture of the sunset where I type my blog. That's worth about 1000 words anyway.

Kids

Dominique's grandchildren are in, and boy, are they a rambunctious trio. The oldest, a girl, is fine. She's generally well-behaved, respectful, not a problem. But the younger two boys, they are a handful. They are loud and they go pretty much anywhere. I entertain them as much as I can, but I'm in an awkward position where I don't mind their bad behavior (I was never much of a disciplinarian), yet I can't just let them do anything they want because I know Dominique wouldn't want them to do certain things. Actually, I have the same problem with the cat.

I think that's a pretty good place to stop.

Colombo de cabri

I’m going to try to avoid letting this blog devolve into cataloging what I eat every night, but I’m making some different stuff now. Half of it is trying to perfect it before I get home and have to figure out what is going into my dinner rotation; the other half is eating as much stuff that is unavailable at home. Tonight’s dinner is halfway between the two. It is a goat curry. I was at the market on Saturday and I saw fresh goat for sale, which you pretty much don’t find here except once in a blue moon. It was $14/lb, so I decided to treat myself to a half a pound, figuring I could stretch that out to a dinner and a lunch portion. This curry’s veggies include eggplant, green beans, wild spinach, and to my surprise, cucumbers. I rarely see recipes that call for cucumbers to be cooked. They ended up tasting like jarred pickles. Anyway, here’s a picture of the final product, along with the cookbook that gave me the recipe. 

No substitutions, please

One of the reasons I enjoy playing soccer so much here isn’t because I’m good, or because it gives me much needed exercise, but rather because of the breaks that we take. We go into the ocean and just unwind, and we talk about all sorts of things. Today, I found out something about the French school system that surprised me. Now France isn’t exactly known for its academic excellence in the developed world, but of course, neither is my home country, so I can’t really throw stones (lest I break the glass walls).But as an example, when I showed Dominique the sections of a sixth-grade U.S. History textbook that talked about slavery and the slave trade, she was quite surprised at just how much discussion there was of it. France, despite its large slave industry in lands that are still politically part of France, doesn’t cover slavery in nearly that much depth, a fact that rankles many of my friends here, especially given the economic sluggishness that continues to plague the former slave colonies.

But I was really shocked to find out that teachers in France can pretty much take off whenever they want, and there is no substitute teacher. Now this isn’t to say that they can take off as much as they want, but they get way more time off than U.S. teachers. It’s not until a teacher is gone for at least two weeks —two freakin’ weeks!— that they start to look for substitutes.  Compare this to the U.S., where every course is supposed to be supervised, and substitutes go from class to class, overseeing what are supposed to be quiet days. France has on its payroll people who are listed as substitute teachers, but apparently, a lot of them have been assigned to full-time positions instead, in order to save money —this despite the fact that education is the largest part of the French budget (I’m not sure where education is in the U.S. budget if you combine the states’ and the nation’s budgets, but I’m quite certain that it’s not the largest part).

Apparently, it’s even worse here in French Guiana. Those of you who are regular readers and have a very good memory might recall that I mentioned in or around Post 100 that most of French Guiana’s teachers don’t come from here, but rather come from France or the French Antilles (Guadeloupe, Martinique), and they come for short periods of time to take advantage of the 40% salary hike that government employees get for working here. As one might imagine, they are not inherently invested in the success and well-being of these students, at least not in the same way as teachers in the mainland, who do not bounce around from region to region, since the economic incentives to bounce around France do not exist. I heard of a teacher who took Fridays off, with no substitute to cover her courses. Joris had a French teacher who was gone for 3 months, and was still not replaced. I’m not saying that these teachers should have been fired (actually I am, but that’s not my main point), but rather, that students shouldn’t be allowed to fall so far behind. It is unreal.

Ponm kannèl

Today I tried my first ponm kannèl, literally 'cinnamon apple' but its English name is sugar apple. If it looks familiar, it's because it looks like a smaller version of another fruit I tried last time, the soursop. It also tastes like one. It's pretty good, not one of my favorites. It's like a pomegranate in that there are a LOT of seeds, and very little flesh apart from that attached those seeds, so it's a bit of a chore to eat.

Soccer

Today was the first time in a couple months that I have played soccer. I am VERY proud to report that I am as good as ever (read: I suck.) Luckily my skills were overlooked due to the fact that both teams were playing against a common enemy-- the ocean, whose waves would creep up to our playing area and steal the ball from our feet. And I keep thinking my shins are sunburned because when I touch them they hurt, but then I realize that it's not sunburn pain that I feel, rather it's a bruise from smashing shins in an effort to get the ball. But still it's nice to have something to look forward to early on Sunday mornings. Plus, it's the longest workout I get all week.

Oh, and this is where we play.

Only

To make my phone calls down here, I have a cell phone, the same one I bought over a year ago. I bought it from this company called Only. Only is the “cheap” brand of cell phone service. The phone cost me 30 euros and is really just a basic, barebones phone. I can make calls and send texts, and take some grainy pictures, but that’s pretty much it. And the reception is less than stellar. Still, it serves its function.

However, over the last few days, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend: None of the small grocery stores where I used to buy my credits seem to have the phone cards. I went to at least 6 different stores, both downtown and near me, all of whom said they were out. One only had cards worth 3 euros, which I bought a few days ago and quickly ran out. Today, after going to 4 of those 6 stores, I finally found another card worth 20 euros. I had to make a quick decision: keep looking and only buying as I needed (thus risking not being able to find replacements) or spending too much money for minutes I might never use. I quickly decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, and I can now make phone calls. Hallelujah.

No weird food today. Check back tomorrow.

Unplanned

Today did not go as expected. What was supposed to be a quick trip to the market got prolonged by a couple hours, after I ran into Jorge, who insisted on spending time together. The fact that it was was raining cats and dogs made it all the more necessary to stay with him in dry places. From there I went home to put away the veggies and fruits I'd bought at the market and headed to a friend's house, the same family I spent my final evening with on the last trip. I expected to only spend a couple hours there, and I ended up spending the whole day there, catching up, talking about all sorts of things, meeting a friend and possible subject.

Then I ran home because I was starving and they clearly were not making dinner for themselves. So I went home and had shark. Again, delicious. Although I think there might have been a piece of scuba gear in it. I don't really know.

Yum

Rather than recounting my day, I'm just going to talk about my dinner because quite frankly, it was the highlight of the whole day.

I took a ride down to the fish market this morning to buy two pounds of fish for about 7 bucks. One pound of fish was carangue, seen alive in this photo. Carangue is my favorite fish down here, and maybe my favorite fish anywhere. It's got the meatiness of swordfish with the thickness of whitefish. Excellent. The other was a pound of shark meat, which I haven't had in a while and am looking forward to trying.



Anyhow, I needed to figure out what to make for dinner with next to nothing in the house. So, I chopped up some onions, green beans, and cabbage, then sauteed them for a bit. I poured in some red wine and added garlic, chopped and whole. Then I threw in some mustard and a bit of water to make it more of a sauce. After a while I added about 4 ounces of carangue. At the end, it was too acidic, so I looked in the fridge, and there was a small tub of cream, right at its sell-by date. I threw in two dollops, and I was done.

The result:

Frickin' delicious. You can serve it over rice, though I served it over kwak, manioc flour. I'll be making this again.

Getting settled

Today was the first day that the market was open. I desperately needed to go, as the food in the house is all a bit questionable. Dominique, who is usually the one who spends the most time in the house and the cook of the house, is not around, and no one seems to have eaten the meals she left behind. So some of them are good, but others have gone bad, like, spit-the-food-out-as-fast-as-you-can bad. Unfortunately, as I lay in bed this morning, still tired from a long couple days, I forgot about this fact, so I jumped out of bed at 11:45 and hurried to get downtown before 1:30 so that I could get there in time to actually buy enough food to hold me off till Friday, the next market day. Despite traveling on foot, having just missed the last bus that could get me into town when I needed, I managed to make it, doing a lot of impulse buys to get the ingredients I'd need for a sauce tonight and fish tomorrow (except I didn't get any fish, but I can pick that up tomorrow, something I couldn't do with the produce). I spoke to the same merchant who was so nice to me near the end of my last trip, and she introduced me to her Haitian merchant friends, who all asked me to come back on Friday to talk (and of course to buy things from their stands). It's so funny to me to hear how they talk to me, because they talk to me like I'm a child. To be fair, they're old enough to be my mother or grandmother, but I'm just not used to being talked down to. As a language teacher, I understand the desire to simplify language so that even a learner can get what you're saying, and it's been a really long time since I've been on the other end of it. It's actually kind of nice.


Anyhow, traveling to and from town in the hot equatorial sun took all my energy, so once I got home, I was done for the day. I spent my day working on my dissertation and making said pasta sauce. Tomorrow morning, I get the bicycle that I borrowed last time I was down here (and hopefully the helmet, which I consider mine since I bought it and it doesn't fit anyone in that house), and I'll be on my way to zipping all over town.

An anecdote

Today was mostly a day to recuperate from the journey: sleeping till noon, walking around, getting reacclimated to Cayenne and picking up a few things that I needed, such as tropical strength mosquito spray and a card to put minutes on my phone. The bike that I used last time I was here has been returned to its rightful owner, and I’ll have to wait for Dominique to return so that she can take me to her friend’s house to get it back. Anyhow, onto the anecdote:




I spoke to Alex today about a topic we’ve discussed many times, namely the intersection of immigration, integration, and language in French Guiana. He pointed out to me that, despite all the institutional pressure to learn French (school, white-collar work, government, etc.), immigrants generally learn the local creole alongside French, though for this language, no institutions exercise any pressure. It is merely the desire to fit in, to become part of this society that they learn the language. I listened carefully, skeptical, as my experience with the Hispanophone immigrant community strongly contradicts this. A few hours later, having written an outline of my first dissertation chapter, I decided to go out to get a pizza. While I was waiting for my pizza to cook, a Brazilian man came up to the window and started talking to the chef (an African immigrant), the employee taking orders (a Guianese woman), a regular customer (a transplanted Frenchman), and me. And even though he was greeted in French by the employee, he immediately switched the conversation to Creole, where it stayed for the rest of the time I was there. So there is definitely something to this notion that Creole is a language of integration. The Spanish-speaking immigrants I’m used to talking to generally don’t see themselves as part of this society, but rather passers-through on their way to France.

Back!

In each of my trips down to Cayenne, I have become increasingly paranoid that during my overnight layover, I won’t wake up in time to make the morning flight out, the one and only flight that can get me to Cayenne on time. This has driven me to pull all-nighters each time that I stay in the airport. As a result, I am utterly exhausted on the plane and sleep like a baby during the flight. Actually, having sat next to a baby on the very first flight, I’d say I sleep way better than a baby (though to be fair, babies are really bad at most things, so I shouldn’t really be bragging). This caused me to miss the free lunch—if you believe that there is such a thing— that they handed out on the plane, which was a disappointment. Luckily, at the layover in Guadeloupe, they actually had food, a pleasant change from earlier trips when there was almost nothing to eat. When I wasn’t sleeping, I had an audiobook to listen to on my iPod, Tina Fey’s Bossypants, a very funny autobiography slash management advice book.

At long last, I arrived at Cayenne, much earlier than my previous flights here. I took a taxi home, and I could tell early on that the driver was taking advantage of me. Instead of going directly to Cayenne, he took me through a nearby town. In his defense, the house where I’m staying is close to the border with that town, but still, it added extra time to the drive. And then when I got here, he tried to charge me an “airport tax”, and that was it for me. Having made this trip twice and having never heard of such a charge, I paid him what it said on the meter and not a Eurocent more. I said if there was an additional tax that wasn’t going to show up on the meter, he should have said so before the trip, or he should have put it on the meter. He was pissed but he left without issue, only telling me I should look it up.

And unfortunately, no one was home in time to open the house for me, so I had to wait for someone to get home. Or so I thought. In reality, Joris was home and simply didn’t hear me knock. After an hour, his father — who lives rather close — came looking for him and found me waiting on the back terrace. He was able to call him, and lo and behold, I was able to finally get in the house after an hour. And now, I will finally be able to sleep.