Feeling crabby

I’ve come to the conclusion that the traditional Easter dish here must be crabs. The supermarkets are full of the little snappers, and I saw a man on the street with a big chicken wire cage crawling with them today, all trying to sneak and pincer their way out to no avail. I’ve never eaten crab. I told Mr Lazimo this the other day and he was horrified. I suppose I should try it. I just really don’t fancy the idea of plunging one into a vat of boiling water, and it seems somehow wrong to get someone else to do my dirty work for me while I reap (or should I say eat) the benefits.

I was doing some work on my Créole project a few days ago when I was distracted by a duck outside my patio door. It was parading up and down, regarding itself in the glass and looking distinctly pleased with itself. I quite enjoyed the show until it did a poo just by the door and then walked in it, spreading it all around outside my house.

Still on the topic of uninvited guests, I had another scolopendre in the house this week. I killed it of course. I’ve heard too many horror stories to leave it wandering around my house. And since then I’ve taken the precaution of putting masking tape over any crack, gap or hole I have found in the house. I don’t want to see another one. And if my preventative measures keep the cockroaches out too that will be a bonus!

I think there’s a Good Friday thing going on in town this evening. I saw a load of scribes and Pharisees and soldiers parading around the square when I went out for a walk earlier. No sign of Jesus though...

Oh yes, I braided my hair. What do you think? It nearly made my arms fall off so I hope it lasts longer than a week this time.

Scary scolopendra

The other day as I was standing in a stuffy classroom waiting for the kids to arrive, feeling sweaty, tired and stressed, carrying a hundred folders and dropping my photocopies all over the floor, a little boy came running up to me, beaming, and whispered breathlessly in my ear, ‘vous êtes sublime’, before throwing himself into his chair, arms folded, sitting up straight, and waiting excitedly for the ‘hello song’. Well that pretty much made my day. Though I think he has a tiny teacher crush after an incident that happened last week...

There’s no nice way to say this but this little boy smells of wee. He is the class ‘wee kid’. You know the type - every school has one or two – small, usually looking somewhat malnourished, probably having horrendously neglectful parent(s), and smelling quite distinctly of wee. And understandably the other children never want to talk to him when we’re doing group and pair work. So last week when we were doing a survey asking each other ‘what’s in your pencil case?’, I saw him sitting on his own at his table, head in his hands, staring at his carefully drawn survey table with a melancholy glaze in his eyes. I went over to see what was wrong (that’s when I realised that what I had previously taken to be the generalised urine stench of the classroom was actually emanating from him alone) and he said that no one wanted to do the survey with him. So I asked him who he wanted to interview and then collared the unfortunate chosen ones and make them sit with him. And he looked so pleased to have company that I stopped feeling sorry for the ‘victims’ and simply enjoyed the fact that he was joining in with the lesson. So anyway I think that’s why he likes me.

I remember not wanting to be anywhere near the wee kids when I was in primary school – but I also remember the strange air of sadness that hung around them too. Why do people have children when they don’t have the means or will to take care of them? It’s very sad.

I’ve got limited internet access at the moment, hence the long absences.

Can’t really do much about it though.

Oh my goodness! I nearly forgot to mention the latest ‘beastie’ to wend its weary (AND VERY UNWELCOME) way into my house. Voici le scolopendre. I woke up in the middle of the night needing a glass of water, to find this terrifying thing scuttling around my living room. I've been warned about it. Apparently its sting is one of the most painful you can encounter on this island, and therefore the best thing to do is stamp on it hard and kill it. Unfortunately I don’t sleep in shoes, so I grabbed a broom and, with a feeling of silent hysterical terror, beat it close to death and swept it outside. Then I went back to bed (where I didn’t sleep thanks to creepy crawly thoughts.)

In the morning Lisette saw the mangled corpse and asked me if I’d killed the beast. Suddenly thinking she might be angry that I’d left its carcass right outside the house, I freaked out and denied all knowledge of ever having seen it. She wasn’t angry at all - she said Meat Cookie must have had it, and that it was a shame it wasn’t me that killed it, because the slayer of a scolopendre is purported to come into money quite soon after the slaughter.

Yay! Money please!

Arse Wine

Yesterday I bought a bottle of wine called, and I kid you not, Seigneurie d’Arse. I admit I bought it for its hilarious name rather than its alleged powerful aromas and ruby red body. But in fact it tastes more like arse than any other wine I’ve ever had. I won’t be buying it again.

La cucaracha ya no puede caminar...

Cockroaches... why do you come in my house? I sweep up all my crumbs, put insecticide around the edge of every room, wash my floors with bleach, put up polite signs saying ‘No cockroaches or cold callers, thank you’, I even close all the doors in the hope that your enormous tropical girth will prevent you from squeezing underneath them and wandering willy nilly around my abode. So why, every couple of days, do I see one of your ever-expanding family in my bathroom, dead or dying?

And another thing... for a creature which is supposedly so highly adapted in evolutionary terms – you’ve been on earth for millions of years, you can live a week without your head, can hold your breath for more than thirty seconds, can withstand radiation equivalent to that which is released in a nuclear explosion – you seem to have a rather large design flaw, namely, your inability to get up again once you are on your back. Of course this makes things easier for me. I can just leave you there until your hairy, spiny legs cease their manic waving, and you are no more. It’s better if I can sweep you straight into the bin, dead, than having to go through the whole squishy mess palaver every time.

But let’s be honest here. I don’t like you. You don’t like me. I don’t give you anything apart from slow death so why do you continue to come to me?

Incidentally I was thinking the other day what I would do if I had to choose between eating a worm or a cockroach (where there’s no other choice – not even death). And I think I’d rather eat a worm. That’s how much I dislike you. So there.

I can walk the walk ...not sure about the talking the talk bit though...

I’ve found paradise in my own back yard! (Well ok, I’ve found a very beautiful place not far away from where I live.) It’s called Presqu’ile de la Caravelle – a nature reserve on the peninsula which goes out into the Atlantic Ocean. I went up there last week to see the view from the lighthouse and it was stunning, awe inspiring, breathtaking, dizzying, and any other cliché from that family of clichés you can possibly think of. You can see the whole of the Atlantic coast, as well as MILES and MILES of ocean and sunshine. And, I’m sorry if this sounds a bit wanky, but I felt humbled. It was as if every negative feeling that I could possibly have suddenly became insignificant, and I felt very, very small, like a tiny speck in a vast expanse of jaw-dropping beauty.

I was so excited about my find that I decided to go back again the next day and hike all around the reserve. So, I packed myself some sandwiches, grabbed a big bottle of water and slapped on a load of sunscreen ready for my trek. And it was amazing ...if a little exhausting... It took about three hours. There was a lot of scrambling up rocks and climbing steep trails through the woods, and in the hot sun this took quite a lot of effort to achieve. But it was very much worth it. So much worth it in fact that I did it again on Wednesday, only this time I went round the other way. I think I’m hooked. I’m going to have to go back again at the weekend.

Last night was sociable night. I was invited to an evening of crêpes at Nelta and José’s house, which was very enjoyable. We played a game called Brainstorm (in French of course) and ate crêpes with all kinds of fillings, from smoked salmon and cream cheese, to roast vegetables and goat’s cheese, to strawberry jam. And I didn’t get home ‘til 2 am! I actually feel a little bit better about my French recently. I feel like I’m getting more fluent, although still making millions of mistakes. A woman last night told me I express myself well. I’m not sure if that was a polite way of saying, ‘ahhh, you’re doing your best *pat pat*’ but I decided to accept it as a compliment anyway.

School again tomorrow and I’m testing the CM2s at the moment. I did oral tests last week – some of which went amazingly well, and some of which were frankly quite painful – and this week I’m doing a little reading and writing test. Well, it’ll make a change to have them quietly working away on their own rather than me prancing around all over the place making funny faces and generally looking like a twat...

Abandonment issues

There’s a young dog tied up outside my house who Courtney and I call ‘Meat Cookie’. He has a long chain which allows him to wander into next door’s field, via a hole in the fence, where he sniffs trees and bounces about chasing chickens and peeing on logs. Unfortunately he doesn’t get very much attention from people so is very excitable whenever he sees a human.

I used to open the windows in the spare room when I was cleaning and he would always run madly towards me, waggy and woofy, paws scrabbling on the window ledge, whining and pulling a strange face of worry and desperation. I’ve started opening the window about once a day to pat him and give him a bit of love, but whenever I close it again he always looks at me as if to say, ‘pleeeeeease don’t leave me out here. I’m so lonely!’

He’s called Meat Cookie because that is what he likes to eat. I once bought some mini pastries called pâtés brisées, which are essentially spicy sausage rolls in the shape of tiny pies, and I gave one to Courtney. Having never encountered such a thing, she exclaimed, ‘Ohh a meat cookie!’ and the name stuck. And there were about 20 in the box so we shared them with the then nameless dog, and from that day forward he became ‘Meat Cookie’.

I think Meat Cookie is accustomed to eating anything actually – Lisette gives him rice and tomatoes and pasta and all manner of ‘human feed’, and I’ve given him crisps, salami, crackers and all sorts of stuff too. All food pleases him. And he’s a very skinny dog too so he must burn off all those calories with all his woofing and whining. I feel very sorry for him. He’s so bored and lonely. I once gave him an old shoe that I was going to throw out and he was so excited he raced up and down with it, straining on the length of chain at each end, flipping it up in the air and barking like a freak. And eventually he settled down with it for a good ol’ chew, tongue out, panting and happy, and then came over and gave me a lick as if to say thanks.

Courtney left on Wednesday to go home to Delaware. Now I know how Meat Cookie feels when I close that window. I’m sad and lonely now too. So if anyone wants to pat my head or give me old shoe to play with I’d be most grateful!

BALLS!

So... on Saturday I ate some testicles. YUM! What a treat, I hear you cry! I’d been invited by Nelta and Josée to a beach barbecue at Les Salines, at which some friends and family of theirs were cooking a whole lamb. And I mean the WHOLE lamb. Nothing was left out...

We were right in the middle of the introductions when a large, smiley man came my way with a plate of some kind of stew and insisted that I try it. I asked him what was in it and he said it was a secret recipe. So, not wishing to offend my hosts, and thinking it was probably just some strange kind of fish anyway, I dug my plastic fork in and pulled out the least grisly and offensive lump I could find. All eyes were on me as I took a bite. It was fairly soft and mildly spicy and, since everyone was looking at me, I declared it delicious. The man seemed VERY pleased and kept asking me, ‘Tu l’as aimé?, t’es sure?, ce n’était pas trop piquant?’. His constant search for approval (as well as the slightly mad glint in his eye) made me a bit suspicious. So when no one was looking I dropped the remains of my forkful into the sand and quickly buried it with my foot. And a few hours later when Nelta told me what it was I didn’t feel very surprised, and I acted like I was very brave and entirely unperturbed. ...But inside a small part of me was vomiting into my sun hat.

Samedi soirée was spent in Trois Islets with Courtney, Rosie, Georgie and the Irish contingent. We were planning on going to see the Carnaval parade there but execrable weather put a stop to that and we went for pizza instead and then on to drink Mojitos and have a dance at a bar. It was a fun night, but we all felt a bit worse for wear on Sunday. And so yet again I didn’t manage to go to a Carnaval parade that was going on in Fort de France. I saw the Trinité schools’ parade the other day but I feel like I ought to make the effort to see a grown up one too – even though I can’t help feeling it’s a bit hypocritical for such supposedly pious folk to do such unashamedly sexy dancing (I don’t mean a little bum wiggle – I’m talking GRRRRRinding that ass into the nearest person’s groin), and for such homophobic men to dress in drag and prance around in fishnet tights and G strings... well I suppose that’s the point of the festival – to get all the sinning out of the way before Lent. But I just don’t really get this culture however hard I try.

Anyway, new photos have been uploaded to Facebook, for those who have access to it, and Photobucket uploads will be coming soon for everyone else.


And thanks to JN for this news report:

Reuter's reports that this year's Nobel Prize has been awarded to an Englishwoman currently living on the West Indian island of Martinique. Ms Lindsey F (an expert on rare insects) has recently published groundbreaking medical research which reveals that a virulent strain of malaria, carried by tropical mosquitoes, can be completely controlled by the use of The Malteser Method. It is believed that as soon as the victim sees an offending mosquito, he (or she) opens a bedside box of Maltesers and pelts the insect to death. At a Press conference held yesterday, Ms F said modestly, "I just owe it all to Maltesers". She then shouted "Bananas" - at which the entire Press corps collapsed in hysterical laughter.