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.