So, over the past few months I have been doing what any good Me does when
presented with extra space:
FILLING IT WITH CRAP.
As with 100% of the other kinds of stuff I seem to collect when I'm not Feng-Swayed
(terrible pun, sorry), I give le crap far too much meaning. Alas, the consume-less tagline that seems to work for most ("Keep only what is beautiful and useful"), only seems to have the opposite effect on me. "Beauty?" I ponder, as I pocket a name-tag that I confiscate from
a student who is colouring rather than listening to my glorious lesson on the days of the week.
"Marbles are useful" I muse, as I pry one out of the hands of a cursing 11-year-old who just finished slapping another well-spoken pre-teen in the face.
Sometimes le crap is given to me, rather than sto...I mean, confiscated. Like the smiling Mickey Mouse face given up for adoption by a clammy-palmed five-year-old: One day, she just realized that her Hannah Montana (pronounced "ANNA-UH, MON-TAN-AH-UH") pencil case was too confining a home for Mickey, and she handed him over to me.
Admittedly, the designer paper airplane was not a cadeau.... it's just that...well.... though I support all students with aerodynamic dreams, it became clear to me-- upon unveiling the image trapped in the folds of this engineering masterpiece-- that in this instance, my student was less focused on the aero than the dynamic part of his career. And that was simply not coo.
For those of you that have already begun to fret: don't. You can rest assured I will not be bringing le crap with me back to Vancouver.
Instead, I'll be mailing it directly to Toronto so it can be the first delivery of Un-Sway to Feng my new place in September.
PS The plastic mistletoe was a Christmas gift for "La Dame D'Anglais"-- the packaging already torn open. E-Bay be wanting my Klepducational Collection baaaaad.
Maybe you didn’t know you had it in you, but you do. They did. And so do I.
They picked up her car—all ten of them. One had been holding a lighter in his right hand for several minutes, the coarse metal beginning to wear on his thumb. Tender. It hurt but he liked how it felt when the heat seeped in through to his bloodstream.
The others (aside from the one that was still massaging his cell phone pad) flexed.
This was the moment they had been waiting for. All of those nights, standing in front of the mirror. Coconut oil on their pectorals: their big break.
Alexandra stood next to a wilting tree, eyes greener than yesterday. Bigger. Stunned.
“One, two, three, LIFT!”
Later that night, she would tell me, between fits of laughter, how the neighbourhood drug dealers (that had, six months earlier, thrown rocks at my very own personal stalker) had lifted her car out of the ditch. Now I’m the first to wave at them when I walk by their street corner.
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They call me fat—all of them.Most of the time, the compliments come one right after the other:
1)My morning jog: thighs exposed to the woman at the kiosk who always invites me to her house and often throws recyclables under the bridge, into the un-water. “It’s right by the ocean!” she says, referring to home, pointing half-heartedly SouthWest. “Come by before you go to Canada. And hey, haven’t you gained weight?” She caresses her legs, implying I should watch mine, and then cackles, toothless.
2)Apres-lunch/avant-cours: the adorable child without the necessary diagnosis of ADHD yells out “LA CHINOISE, LA CHINOISE, LA CHINOISE!” and hugs me. His Special Ed teacher rolls her eyes, predicts my post-family-departure sadness, and there-there’s me with a “you’re a little chunkier now.”
3)Home time. So tired. Must. Stop. By. Neighbours’. House. To. Say. Hi. Otherwise. Am. Im.Po.Lite.
All I want is a hug, but I get a belly rub and “Let’s just say our little one is not so little anymore.”
I flip out. Unsuccessful.
The next few times I just laugh and respond “Maybe. Maybe you’re right” They laugh back.
I’m gonna write from the heart. None of this “if I write in a journal it’s cliché and I’m wasting my time; when I write I should be thinking about publication and things that I know others will appreciate.”
The reason I like writing and the reason I started doing so in the first place is because it’s a safe place for me to express myself. Paper doesn’t judge and neither did I until I decided one day that I wanted to start sharing my work.
Even now, as I’m writing solely to “express myself”, the back of my mind is going “pssst…Caro, maybe this’ll be interesting enough to post on your blog.”
Oh, to have grown up in a world where productivity is everything and nothing at all.
Sometimes I write down what I’ve already “accomplished” with my day in my agenda just so I can cross it out later.
Getting to the point: right now I feel like a failure in many aspects of my life. I’m in debt, so economically I’m in the shit. Friendship-wise, I have people that I care about deeply here, but that I feel aren’t willing to open up as much with me as I am with them. I find myself often feeling frustrated because many of them appear to be uncomfortable when I attempt to share anything too personal.
It’s not that I want to recount every last detail of my life with them. I suppose what I mean about being able to open-up revolves around being able to share ideas. Ideas about positive change, about things one would like to happen in the world, far-flung initiatives that one wants to take, and so forth.
I miss talking about books, about dreams, about my feelings. I miss talking about my feelings so much. And having somebody there to my validate my fears and my sadness, and to share similar experiences with me.
This is perhaps the reason as to why I am longing so much for a partner at this point. As is expressed by the Swedish proverb “Shared joy is double joy, shared sorrow is half-sorrow.”
In this exact moment, I feel like the joy in my life is half of what it could be and my sorrow, double.
I have moments of desperation where I all I want is to have a partner, assuming his presence and our rapport will “solve” this longing that I have. But why? Why can’t I address this longing to "share" right now?
The desire to share= the affirmation that one is not alone=the desire to know one is loved and can love.
And how Caro-centric of me to assume that everyone is capable of sharing their love through words! Yes, words are an integral part of who I am, but others share their worlds and demonstrate their love differently.
And there is no denying that love is everywhere, in abundant and unconventional forms.
The love that nature transmits when you allow yourself to remain serene within its power, the love that a friend demonstrates when they make the effort to send you a valentine your middle-of-nowhere address, the love that your elderly neighbour shows by giving you a jar of guava jam just because she saw you walking down the street.
Love is ubiquitous, and perhaps I haven’t taken the time to savour it as much as I can. When one finds romantic love it’s as if one has scored a Costco bulk package of heaven. You have it all concentrated at once, and because it is so easily accessible you begin to think it’s the only real source of love, and perhaps the deepest.
But how can there be a measurement for love, when it is such a pure and noble sentiment, consuming the heart differently, not so much in terms of depth but in presence?
Using this logic, I retract my previous use of word “failure” to describe my current state of being. To be human is to want to love, and be loved. To fail at being human is to stop desiring these things. As long as one is missing, searching for, and ultimately uncovering love, one is human. And being human is succeeding.
So today I Sinon, Ca va’ed and actually got a good result out of it.
For those of you foreign to this popular Guadeloupian activity, Sinon Ca-va-ing is the act of engaging in a short and casual conversation with a friend or acquaintance with whom you (think) you have nothing to say to.
The procedure usually goes along the lines of the following:
You spy your neighbour from the other side of the street as you make your way home from work. Although the last time you talked was approximately, mmm…twelve hours ago, you know they’ll be coming back for more conversation if they see you. Admittedly, they are wonderful, fabulous, generous, beautiful people, and you would be happy to talk to them all the time…if they would just cut out the Sinon, ca va-ing.
So you try and avoid eye contact and speed up your pace, thinking about the discount cookies and imitation nutella that await you for as snack back home on this blisteringly hot afternoon. But just as you squeak open your front gate, thinking you’re home free, you hear that dreaded word…your name.
You turn around, and there she is. Your neighbour. Bra-less, fearless, glowing, and full of love. But she’s about to Sinon, ca-va you, and you can barely handle it.
“Bonjour!” you say, acting as chipper as possible
“Bonjour” she replies, making you note that it’s been far too long since the last time you saw one another. You smile politely.
“Eh, bon, ca va?” she asks you
“Oui, ca va, ca va, et toi?” you inquire, knowing the answer before she utters it.
“Oui, ca va” she responds
And that’s when it begins. The Sinon ca va-ing, that is. It is always preceeded by a punctuated, awkward silence, a bit of foot shuffling and nervous giggling, a few follow up questions like “et ta collocateur, ca va?”/ “et le travaille, ca va?” and then finally, as if with violins and symbols crescendo-ing in the background, the phrase is spat out “et sinon, ca va?”
What drives both my roommate and I crazy about the whole phenomenon is not so much that Sinon, ca-va-ing is a repetitive and a redundant operation. It is, instead, the fact that neither individual is comfortable enough to admit to the other that there is truly nothing interesting to report. That they have been ca va-ing just fine for the past twelve hours and that truly not much has changed in their lives since.
The phenomenon had been driving me so up the wall lately, in fact, that I began to realize that this was—indirectly—perhaps one of the main pillars of my homesickness: the fact that there are plenty of incredible people around to talk to, but that I have a really difficult time conversing with past the formalities and small talk.
I began to think that it was hopeless; that I would be doomed to this spiral of Sinon-ca-vaing with fellow Capesterrians for the rest of my stay, limiting my more expansive conversations to my roommate and other fellow language assistants. This thought made me think and feel lonely.
And then my Step dad gave me some food for thought. Loneliness is real, he assured. And being far away from family and friends, in a different culture is real as well. But as people, most of us tend to be a bit neurotic and create our own kinds of loneliness, within our psyches— loneliness that can follow us wherever we go, unless we are prepared to address it.
So this is what I have been trying to address throughout the past week—this loneliness and neurosis within that tells me I am a “failure” at engaging in meaningful conversation with locals.
Last week, I decided to take sinon ca-va-ing head on.
On Sunday, a man sinon, ca va-ed some friends and I and we responded “no,” because it was raining and we had planned to go to the beach. He suggested we take cover at a pizza place, and half an hour later, we were feasting and watching a local carnival band parade by.
On Monday, a woman who I give English lessons to Sinon-Ca-va-ed me, and instead of simply ca-va-ing back, I began to tell her about my desire to learn the Gwo Ka (the local drum here). Two days later, I was sitting across from one of the most well known Gwo Ka players in Guadeloupe, learning one of the seven basic Ka rhythms from him.
My roommate seems to be subconsciously following the same trend. A gas station attendant sinon ca va-ed her last night, and—by slightly changing her response—she somehow ended up bringing home a roast chicken and French fries for dinner. (A real treat, in our crackers-n-cheese abode).
Moral of the story? Loneliness sucks. And so does sinon ca-va-ing. But don’t let either deter you from getting to know yourself better, meeting others, and learning a bit a about life.
Below I reflect on being a tourist in La Habana, Cuba. Similar to the preceding post, I touch on how feelings of (in)sincerity, economic disparity and apartheid awaken a great sense of discomfort in my being. I wonder what is on the horizon for Cuba-- politically and economically. Change is in the air, it seems-- but is there a collective direction?
For some reason I seek to isolate when uncomfortable with the imposed barriers, accentuating them even more. Desire for sincerity ironically impedes my own, creating a bubble of mistrust and redundant suspicion. Idealism and cynicism interlock, muddling my objection to simply observe and be.
I don’t wish to incite jealousy in anyone; I wonder about incentives alternative to money, alternative to the possibility of seemingly eternal landscapes and alternative to starch egalitarianism.
Once you have everything you think you need, what comes next?
What common struggle outside of hegemonic well-being can be shared?
What can create and inspire the same creative and political energies?
I wrote the following post after spending the day doing a guided tour of the countryside in Vinales, Cuba. I want to assure everybody that the pessimistic nature of this post does not at all reflect my entire opinion on the tourism industry in Cuba, nor does it intend to put words into anyone's mouths (especially my family that was there on the tour with me). It is instead simply a reflection on the contradictions and insincerities that tourism industries can create-- especially within a country where vast economic and political differences exist between citizens and visitors.
That one time that we spent the day walking through the Cuban countryside was. You know. What it was, in that way. In that red earth and green leaves kind of way; dry rocks and tepid skies with dry caves and no bats but plenty of wrinkles…kind of way.
When we went by their house—the tobacco farmers’—I became annoyed with myself. You know me- I hate faking sincerity.
I felt like, you know, we show up there and they’re supposed to be happy to receive us; thrilled to be performing “the ceremony of cigar making” to their affluent, camera happy audience (myself included), when really, they may feel subjected to the tourism industry’s equivalent of the Myth of Sisyphus—rolling tobacco leaves again and again and again as Sisyphus did with the boulder—with no foreseeable end or goal in sight except the chance of survival.
This was the way I felt two days ago—when we, as a group, reimbursed said individuals’ hospitality by exchanging money for cigars, and forcing first names and smiles.
It was not that I did not find these individuals charming. Indeed I did. But I felt uncomfortable at how our relation to one another felt so fabricated; you know….like the exchange that we were having was itself an elephant in the room even though that was the reason that everyone was there to begin with. (“I’ll let you appropriate my culture a little if you give me a shot at your culture’s level of consumerism”). I think I would feel much more comfortable with those sorts of interactions if everyone were ready to confront any awkwardness head-on from the beginning. You know? Like “hey, thanks for having us here. I’m North American, and yeah, I know there’s economic tension between us, and I feel a little (a lot) awkardness having so much disposal income and knowing that my desire to smoke a Cuban cigar could greatly affect your lifestyle this month.”
But instead the conversations are all “oh, how long have you been living here?” and “how many cigars does your father smoke a day…” blah blah blah. So for me, it really produces the opposite effect. The whole fabrication of “a day in the life of a campesino” actually feels like to me “a day in the life of people lying to eachother.”
For those of you that are fervent Friday-Night-Facebook-Stalkers, your creeper archives can surely attest to the fact that this past Vendredi was a shit day for me. After having announced to the entire town of Capesterre (police people and grocery store clerks included) that my father would be arriving on the 10:30pm flight from Puerto Rico, he did not.
In a surefire and successful attempt to mock me, Her Holiness the Deity of Foul Fridays decided—in addition to leaving me without an excuse to bake and consume copious amounts of welcome Chocolate-Chunk-Banana-Muffins— that I should spend the whole night on the toilet, with explosive diarrhea, truly wishing someone would just kill me once and for all.
For the first couple of hours of my malady I played the strong card; I folded laundry and engaged in intellectual conversations about German cinema with my roommate in-between trips to the loo. By eight o’clock though, neither Estela nor I were convinced by my declarations that I was“ooooooohhhh-kay,” that it was “juuust a little tummy ache” and that it was “ alllllll good.”
Our skepticism of my declarations could have easily been based on the fact that I couldn’t stand up without subsequently folding in half, clutching my stomach as if I were clutching my purse in downtown Rio de Janeiro; cognizant, too, that my relatively tanned face was now approximating the colour of an SPF 75 sunscreen, Estela and I hypothesized that things were perhaps not so peachy in the intestinal department after all.
It was in this moment in time—in my debut as a phantom contortionist— that Montezuma’s Revenge began to take on psychedelic dimensions. After about my twentieth session in the W/C, I flopped onto my bed, exhausted, took a giant gulp of the 2-litre orange pop that I used as an excuse to “rehydrate” myself, and began dreaming.
I dreamed—not that the world had decided to put an end to war—but that I was swimming in an ocean of orange pop. A giant ocean, a sweet ocean, with placid swells and tranquil waves—an ocean where
I splashed and chatted with my dear friends Estela and Raquel, and occasionally gulped some carbonated yellow number 5
for the sake of it. I closed my eyes and floated on my back, allowing my body to be rocked back and forth by the gentle pull of the tide, not lucid enough to realize that I would most likely be getting devoured by an army of mosquitoes if I were to truly to basking in a sea of sugar. All of a sudden, I felt a kind of intrinsic sense of urgency, and opened my eyes; there was Raquel waving at me like a madwoman, warning me of something. “OH SHIT!” I screamed “YOU’RE RIGHT! I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM NOWWWWWWWWW!” And I got out of bed and went about my (excruciating) business.
As I sat there on my favourite, donut-shaped chair, I realized how lucky I was to have such good friends in Guadeloupe. Friends who—even in dreams—remind me when it’s time to wake up and get my shit together.
As you may or may not be able to decipher from my latest pathetic attempt at “free verse,” (see last post) working for the Public School System in Guadeloupe has me conflicted on a variety of levels.
To begin with, the rapport between teachers and students is entirely different from the way it is in Canada.
Here, if a student makes a mistake, she or he is (in my experience) immediately scolded, and is (in my opinion) made to feel “stupid.”
For example, if a student is asked to write something down, and she misspells it, one could expect the teacher to say something along the lines of “what are you doing?! What is this? Erase it immediately!”
As you can imagine, those who commit more serious mistakes are in for punishments of a more grave nature: a child who slouches while lining up outside the classroom is shoved against the wall in disapproval, one who laughs at another in class is asked to stand up on his chair for five to ten minutes as his classmates remain seated; anything more “daring” usually results in a “light” whack to the back of the head or a twist to the ear. I kid you not.
To be honest, I don’t know why I haven’t talked about this before with you Canadian lot.I definitely mentioned it to my roommate and fellow Language Assistants during my first week at work, but after that, denial was most likely the reason as to why I said nothing to anyone.
As a foreign teacher, I find myself in a very uncomfortable position. To be working within a school system that endorses physical punishment—having grown up learning that said method of discipline is violent and ineffective—leaves me feeling morally conflicted.
While I certainly do not practice any “physical punishment” myself, I do feel like a bit of an accomplice-by-default at times. You see, my English lessons work in the following manner: I teach classes of twenty to thirty-five students for 45-minute long lessons. While I am solely in charge of giving the lesson, the classroom teacher is required to stay in the room to assure that the students are well behaved.
Thus, even though I spend approximately 40% of my time telling students to “please be quiet” and to “look and listen,” they nonetheless have a tendency to ignore me and continue talking/throw spitballs/sing/draw/crawl on the floor/laugh. That’s when the teacher comes in. Most of the time, they will speak to the child harshly and “shush” them. But every now and then, they will whack the students, and it is then that I feel like a terrible person and an awkward teacher.
In direct correlation to all of this is the fact that—even without physically punishing students—I feel so unlike myself when I’m in “teacher mode.”
Before my first day of class, I received numerous speeches from a plethora of teachers telling me that I had to be “strict” and “distant” with the students at the beginning, so that they would comprehend that they would not be able to “eat me alive.”
Scared shitless by such a warning, and more than lightly traumatized by my experience as a basketball-assistant-coach-in-a-tumultuous-Montreal-suburb-at-the-age-of-17-who-no-one-respected-because-I-was-a-softie, I’ve tried to maintain a straight face for the past month and a half.
To an extent, I believe it’s working. I’m almost certain that if I were to be my chipper, smiling, giggling (snorting) self all the time, the students would not take me seriously and would walk all over me. At the same time however, it’s exhausting—it’s like I’m acting all day long; I put on my “cold teacher” mask in the morning and don’t take it off until the afternoon, when all I want to do is crash on my bed and watch merengue music videos from the 80s to cheer me up….
And even at recess, guys! Even at recess I don’t know what to do. Because the students are so exited to see me (being Canadian is quite the novelty in Capesterre J) but at the same time, they try and touch my hair, they crowd around me, they ask me a billion questions…. and even though they’re adorable and I politely answer their questions, I have to sort of delineate that “power differential” between teacher and student, and I try to not engage in too much conversation with them.
Sigh. There are some moments, however, where I don’t feel like such a biotch. Magical moments in which I’ll be teaching a phrase, and then the phrase will turn into a musical performance/rhythm involving clapping hands, stomping feet and smiling faces—the students shush, they smile, I smile—and I let out a deep breath. I am myself for a moment. And it feels so good.
Guess I just need to work on my musical career to further my 7-month vocation as a teacher…
In any case, I’ve decided that I’m going to speak to my “Professeur Referrant” about the matter; I’m going to tell her that I feel uncomfortable with certain methods of discipline employed by the teachers. Additionally, I’ll ask her if it’s appropriate (in terms of cultural norms) to approach the teachers that I work with and ask them to please not whack the children while I am teaching. I think, in this way, I will not feel like an accomplice of something I disagree with, and maybe, in speaking to the teachers, I can learn a little bit more about their views on discipline. What makes it all a little more complicated, is that the teachers are truly, genuinely very kind people. Outside of the classroom, they are so so so sweet—they are always asking me about my time in Guadeloupe, offering help should anything ever come up, etcetera, etcetera so…it’s not like they’re “bad guys.”
Donc, it’s a hairy situation.
Anyway, if anyone has any alternatives as to how to handle such a prickly affair, do let me know. I would be delighted to receive any suggestions. (I love the word “delighted.”)
I could go onto about five other different reasons as to why “growing up is weird” but I will stop here for tonight. It’s 10:20 pm (PAST MY GUADELOUPIAN BEDTIME) and tomorrow I have to start getting ready for Ramon’s visit! (My pops arrives on Friday for ten days J )
Anyway. Hope everyone is well, and thanks for reading.
Good morning, Maria Carolina. My name is The Isle of Guadeloupe, and I would like to present you with the ideal Toussaints Vacation Package. Listen, and prepare to drool...
On Monday, October 26th, at approximately noon, you will recieve a very fancy looking letter from the government of France. Praying that Michel Foucault has been appointed as the Sociological Spokesperson for Gringo immigration, you will tear the envelope delicately, with a smug smile on your face...it's about time that La France offered you citizenship. You are, afterall, Simone de Beavoir's intellectual BFF;Jean Paul Sartre held your hand tenderly as you waded through the muddy notions of "being and nothingness" last year, and you watch "Amelie" about twelve times per year. "I'm totally being offered the legal right to purse my lips at irrelevent points in time for as long as I l live," you will think, sighing with joy.
But alas, Maria Carolina, you will have trompe-ed your poor, little, helpless Canadian soul. Instead of an abstract invitation to join the "imagined community" of France, your eyes will meet a short and cold convocation to the Office of Immigration and Integration in Point a Pitre, asking you to complete the transactions that will permit you to legally reside in France for the next six months.
What will be most spectacular about this letter, is that it will tell you that you have to be at a hospital for YET ANOTHER MEDICAL EXAM, two hours ago, and THEN in the capital city for your official meeting in one hour.
You're totally pumped. This kind of incongruency is your idea of the perfect holiday...Recieving a legal invitation two hours too late... partay time!
You'll go home and call the good folks. They'll promise that "il n'y a pas de soucis", and to come to Point a Pitre on Wednesday and you'll have the meeting then. You smile with joy and agree.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009 You'll wake up at the beautiful hour of six am with the sweet sweet kisses of muthaeffin mosquitoes and the off-tune sing-song of hypothermic sounding roosters. In honour of the fantastic day that awaits you, you will break your fast with stale cereal doused in tepid, concentrated guava juice, because you purposely ran out of milk the night before.
Pysched for the appointment, you'll revel in the joys of nausea for the whole two hours of bus ride to Point a Pitre.
"Sit down and don't talk" the government official will instruct you kindly when you arrive at the office. "Ok" you'll respond angelically. "But I should explain to you that I recieved the letter too late and I haven't yet had my medical..."
"If you could be quiet that would help," he'll snap back. "Do you have your passport?" he'll grill. "Yes" "What about your proof of lodging?" "That too", you'll say. "And your medical examination documents?"
"Well, no, unfortunately, because as I began to explain earlier, I received the convocation for the medical appointment too late and..."
"Whoa whoa WHOA, you mean to tell me you expect me to do something for you here if you don't have the necessary documents?" he'll stand up and look around the room spastically, like a fly trying to find its way out of a locked room.
"I called yesterday and you said that..." "Yeah. You just didn't know, did you? Go talk to the secretary. Goodbye."
You'll go talk to the nice lady at the front desk who assures you you will recieve a phone call "within the next month" informing you that you will have to PICK UP another letter revealing A NEW MEDICAL EXAMINATION and BUREAUCRATIC DATE in Point a Pitre. You'll ask her to kindly direct you to the closest internet cafe so you can rant to your people back home in Canada who will understand your frustration.
Just wanted to thank all of you that read the blog and make such lovely comments. I will respond individually when i have internet at home (one glorious day....)
-expressing myself without looking like dingbat -Coffee Shops -Anonymity -Having an ant-free abode -Going for brunch -Being able to afford things like going for brunch -Going to the movies -live music in unsexualized environments -climbing -riding my bike -having to walk long distances to get places -the people i love
Above: the most photogenic picture in the world. From left to right: me with my classic double chin, (yes, i walked a bit too deep into the ocean) raquel: a spanish language assistant, benjamin: a friend from surf class, and estela: my roommate
Above: View of Les Saints (islands close by... where i will go this weekend!)
I never thought tuberculosis would be a recurring theme in my life, but the sneaky little cough has had a particular way of seasoning each turning point I’ve endured thus far.
The year I turned fourteen, my obsession for musical theatre underwent a significant phase transition. Having spent eighty percent of my childhood memorizing the words to “The King and I” and wishing I were Maria from “West Side Story,” I suddenly discovered there were other equally intriguing worlds where music and drama uniteas cathartically as a they do in a Rogers and Hammerstein’s movie.
These worlds are, of course, those of opera and rock opera. In grade nine,I had the opportunity to join Vancouver Technical Secondary’s very own “Opera Club,” where, for ten dollars a production, students were entitled to watch a dress rehearsal of such fine performances as Aida and La Boheme. While I certainly cried tears of empathy for the couple that got trapped in a dungeon for eternityin Aida, it was La Boheme that truly swept me away. True love raging like fire against the bitterness of winter, poverty, and tuberculosis, tuberculosis, tuberculosis—what’s not to love? It didn’t take too long before I discovered a modern, rock-opera spin-off of La Boheme (RENT), and became obsessed with it, as well. (Although, I must admit, that instead of tuberculosis, RENT’s malady of choice is AIDS—which has fortunately not played as significant a role in my life…)
Tuberculosis made its next significant appearance the moment I went from being exclusively a theatre nerd, to being an “outdoorsy” one as well—the year of TREK. On one fine morning that year, my friend Georgia and I had decided we would walk to school together—from Commercial Drive to King Edward and Macdonald—just because we could. Equipped with Nalgene bottles and power bars, we left the East Side at 5:30 in the morning, arriving just in time for our math class at 8:40 am. Like any good Trekkie, I had consumed copious amounts of h20 throughout our escapade; our teachers had warned us that dehydration was not our friend, and I believed them. Consequently, I needed desperately to go to the bathroom the moment we arrived at Mr. Beard’s class, and was excused to do so. Twenty minutes later, however, my bladder informed me that it was in fact not yet satiated, and so I asked the teacher for permission to go again.
Mr. Beard looked up from his desk, took of his glasses, squinted his hazel eyes, and cupped his hands around his mouth, as if pretending to speak through a megaphone. Clearing his throat several times so as to attract the attention of other students, he shouted spastically, “TB! TB!”
I looked around, terribly confused, searching for an answer in the faces of my classmates; they shrugged, equally puzzled by Mr. Beard’s announcement.
I looked back at Mr. Beard, and quietly inquired “Do you mean Tuberculosis, Mr. Beard?”
Without a word, Mr.Beard got up from his desk, walked towards me, hunched down and, two centimeters from my face shouted “TINY BLADDER!”
Apart from empathizing with my dear friend Michaela while she endured apoorly diagnosed case of the eternal cough, my time as a university student proved to be surprisingly tuberculosis-free, and just when I thought that ithad exhausted its presence in my life, it decided to pay a surprise visit to me here in Guadeloupe. Well, ok, not quite tuberculosis itself, but its spirit nonetheless. Last week I received a letter from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs commanding me to present myself at a hospital in Point a Pitrefor an X-Ray so as to be assured that I am not a “vector” of the illness.
After a very sweaty two-hour bus ride, I arrived at the wrong hospital. Exhausted and moody, I bought a frozen chocolate bar from thelobby vending machine, and sat down on the curb next to the parking lot, staring off into space. All of a sudden, something strange came into focus. On the bumper of a Lexus, there was a caricature of a nude woman, sitting provocatively and smiling coyly. Beside her, were written the words “Only Jesus Has to Judge It.”
I laughed out loud for quite some time, and was reminded of the time my friend Sarah and I came across a similarly absurd motif on the back of a box of Smarties; the box offered a series riddles, all of which had somewhat coherent responses except for the last one. The question went something along the lines of “do zebras like ice cream?” while the answer was a pompous “Only Smarties Have the Answer.” After many a failed attempt to integrate the phrase into our high school lexicon, Sarah and I eventually settled on keeping the phrase as our own personal mantra. Bizarre as it was, it made us laugh; laughing puts things into perspective, and in the end, that’s what mantras are meant to do.
Following the same logic, I decided to take on this strange bumper sticker’s blasphemous wisdom as my Guadeloupian mantra…at least for the day.
Thirteen Euros and a talkative taxi drive later, I found myself in the correct radiology waiting room with three other English Language Assistants. Pathetically excited to see one another (it’s a little hard to get around the island and hang out with people without a car) we began swapping stories of our first three weeks in Guadeloupe. “I live in the middle of the city, yet seeing a cow on a leash has become a normality for me,” explained Paul, who had just spent his past year in London working for a fashion magazine. “Have you ever noticed that people extend their fists, instead of their hands here, when you go to introduce yourself?” asked Melissa, who was sun burnt despite having applied sunscreen twice that morning. Just as I began explain how being in Point a Pitre felt as big as New York after having lived in a small town for three weeks, I heard a very loud “MARRRRRIACARRRRROLINA.”
I turned around to find the X-Ray technician looking impatiently in my direction, and the rest of the waiting room patients tapping their feet in frustration. Apparently they had been calling me for a few minutes now. “Oops,” I said, and apologized profusely to everyone in the room. As I made my way towards the technician, I saw a man looking in my direction. When we met eyes, he pouted his lips, made very loud clucking noises and tapped his lips with his index finger. My friend Silvia had warned meof this facial gesture upon my arrival; apparently Guadeloupians do it to demonstrate their disapproval of something.
For a moment I felt special to receive such an “authentic”, “cultural” reaction to my wrongdoing; soon after I felt remorse and embarrassment, but finally, I invoked my mantra, and smiling, I reminded myself “Only Jesus Has to Judge It.”
Well, no doubt Jesus judged it, because my bus ride back to Capesterre was, for the most part, hell on wheels. Not only did I have to stand for the first hour and a half, but the weather went from awful to worse. At first it was blisteringly sunny outside and humid inside, but we at least had a nice Caribbean breeze that slightly relieved the ubiquitous smell of B.O. Soon after, though, the tropical rain began to POUUUR, and everyone closedtheir windows. It just so happened, of course,that I was sitting next to the only person that wanted the window open, and so as the bus swerved, I got repeatedly squashed towards the window and was soon completely drenched. Concomitantly, the smell of B.O. that we had managed to disperse earlier with the breeze only worsened, as the rest of the bus windows were now closed.
My salvation came at last about 5 minutes before my bus stop, when Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” began blasting on the high-tech surround system.*Ridiculously excited to hear it, I began to hum quietly, so as not to disturb my fellow buspanions. But soon I heard another little voice singing along, and realized that it was the woman sitting next to me. I watched her from my peripheral vision for a few seconds and looked around to see if anyone else on the bus was reacting. Nothing. People didn’t care. So, I thought, “feck it, I want to sing to.” And so I did.
And this time it made sense that only Jesus had to Judge it, because no one on the bus paid any mind to our off-key yodeling; it was us and Whitney and that was all that mattered.
Why so, do you ask?
Only Smarties Have the Answer.
* Nevermind the fact that the bus looks like it should have tetanus as a result of its ridiculously rusty nature; as long as the music plays, the bus goes.
My mailbox! With a slight touch up from iphoto, heh heh.
Above: Saturday soup at my neighbours house. Apologies for blurriness of photo, my camera batteries were too low to use the flash, and I suppose I bouged when I took it. Nevertheless, the picture still shows their lovely, generous smiles. :)
Above: the cutest child on earth. My neighbour's grandchild, Lucas. He remembers my name every time he sees me! And he has the most infectious laugh. Don't worry about the photo being blurry, you'll see a lot more of him; I'll be kidnapping him and bringing him to Canada. Above: I found this in one of the textbooks I'll be using to teach. Hehehehhe. (I start Oct 1st, by the way!) Above: A fructose-filled representation of my landlord's awesomeness. I found the note and the fruit on my doorstop the other day. The note reads: "Hello Carolina, on behalf of Mme Quidal, here are some guavas and an avocado". Believe it or not, the avocados get bigger here. It's insane!
Above: A street in Basse-Terre above: breakfast in my dining room.
Above: My landlord and her family-- The Quidals (my landlord is sitting down on the far right)
Above: bathing in the hot springs with Silvia (friend who received me at the airport the first evening) and her neighbours at La Soufriere- Guadeloupe's volcano.
