Having been in St. Laurent for
around 10 days now, it’s safe to say it’s been an interesting, if not very
eventful time. I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly hormonal person,
but this week has been really testing.
Coming to a foreign country to live and work is SO different to
travelling and adjusting has sometimes been difficult. Don’t get me wrong I’ve
still fitted in some loving life- for instance, when we finally bought a bed to
save having to live on the foam mattress on the floor, the time I discovered
diet Orangina at the shop, or, the moment when the bank machine DIDN’T eat my
card. However, compared to normal Polly there have definitely been more
instances of moody/sad times, such as, when ALL I wanted to do was swim, but
when we got there the pool had changed the schedule and was closed, or when the
bank machine DID eat my card, or when I woke up in the middle of the forest in
a hammock at 3 o’clock Sunday morning and thought, Where am I and WTF am I
doing here?? However, after the first week, things are starting to even out a
bit, the room is now looking more like a room than a homeless shelter, I’m
buying a bike today, and we have even found some friends to go to dinner with
tonight!
Most of
the first week was spent mostly running errands, learning to work around the
RIDICULOUS opening hours here, oh and three hours of work on Friday (it's
sometimes hard to remember I’m here doing a job as I haven’t actually started
yet), So, it was nice to get away for the weekend... On one Katy’s (my roomy) schools
was organising a sort of getaway for the weekend into the forest, and they were
lacking in numbers so she signed up, and I tagged along J We didn’t go too far,
but it was just nice to get out of the dirty city. We spent the weekend
chilling in an open cabin thing by a creek that you could swim in, with kayaks
for mini-adventures. We technically didn’t see any monkeys butttt we definitely
heard something big moving in the trees. The night involved beer, rum, and a
giant vat of spaghetti as altogether there were about 12 of us- including one
of the teachers 2-year-old son which added to the fun. I think we made some new
friends—the whole French thing seems like it’s going to be an issue though as
everyone wants to practice their English :S I’m hoping to absorb it all and
wake up fluent one day. For the night, I
slept in a hammock which I luckily found on the shelf outside our room with
leftover stuff from past housemates. It didn’t even fall down in the middle of
the night, despite my less-than-amazing hanging skills. Sunday was much the
same. It’s a hard life when your biggest decision is deciding the exact point
when you can’t nap any longer because you are too hot, and you need to jump
into the river. We have been invited to
a similar weekend this weekend in Cayenne, the capital, to visit an island and
do some walks with some of the same people. So, up till now, it looks like our
plan to get out St. Laurent every weekend is going well.
On Sunday evening one of the
teachers drove us to the ONLY happening (and Open) bar on a Sunday, which was
actually really cool. It’s a definite hang-out for those from the métropol as
opposed to locals. It was a boat on the river which had been extended into a
bar and holds open mic sort of stuff every Sunday. My goal is to sing there by
the end of the year. My only concern with the night, well, with Guyane in
general, is that, although everyone at the bar seemed to be drinking and loving
life, as there is no public transport AT ALL, this means all of these people
are driving home, which is not really too banterous.
Last Friday I got my first taste
of what my job is actually going to be like. I visited three of my schools (god
knows how many I’m going to have in total, I reckon it’s probably going to be
like 2 hours in 6 different schools, not cool!) The first school was in the
town centre, whereas the other two are in Amerindian villages, a rather long
trek outside of the city. Having said that, ALL the kids seemed really nice,
and generally enthusiastic about learning English, or maybe it was just the
thought of having someone different teach them for an hour a week. Most of the
teachers also seemed nice, although one of them seemed to have the technique
of, keep shouting at them until they start crying, which was rather awkward.
There was also another teacher who had his students separated according to how ‘weak’
or ‘strong’ they were, I believe he described the ‘worst’ table as useless.
Apparently they need attention every 2 minutes, never do any work and are
really disruptive. And all this he described right in front of them.
I think one of the most
interesting things about the schools is going to be the amount of languages going
on. In the centre of town, the vast majority of students speak taki taki at
home which is a Creole, largely based on English, which I’m hoping will help.
Whereas, in the other schools in the villages, at home the kids speak local
tribal languages and the younger ones just starting school don’t speak any French
at all. As well as this, there are also a fair amount of kids who have moved
from Brazil, Suriname, and Guyana, which adds even more languages to the list.
I’m not quite sure how the same curriculum that applies in actual France, can
work just as well here, but that seems to be what happens. The facilities are
generally quite bad. In one of my schools for example, there was one computer,
no internet, and some of the classrooms had no electricity. The teachers are
also limited to two photocopies per child per week! Looks like I’m going to be
writing on the board a lot.
To be honest I don’t think I’m
any closer to discovering how Guyane works or how it came to be as it is. We
met a hippy doctor at a bar who had spent months WALKING across the middle-east
(random), and he said he has been here for 5 years and still doesn’t really GET
how all the different cultures function together. He also told us that it’s the
simple things in life that make him happy, like, a nice leaf on a tree, or a
breeze just as you are getting too hot. When he’s not too busy admiring the
moments in life, he is apparently at the hospital trying to cure Leprosy. (I
thought that was just a thing in the bible but appaza not- oops!) One thing I
have worked out after just a week is that there is little integration between
the locals and the ‘Europeans’. Every ethnic group has their own areas of the
town to live, certain bars that they can go to and even parks where the
children can hang out. One of the first questions everyone asks us when they
find out the road we live is, so, you live with.... (Hushed tones)... locals?
Er, yeh. It just seems incredible that there are many people suffering with
things like leprosy and HIV here, living in tiny shacks with MANY children,
when, just down the street, attending the same schools, a ‘FRENCH’ family will
be doing their shopping at the air-conditioned supermarket, kite-surfing and kayaking
at the weekend and biking on their nice bikes to the weekly yoga class (which
was almost completely white). They might go to the ‘black’ village to a bar on
a Friday, just to add a bit of excitement to the week, but that’s about it.
Obviously this is a bit of a generalisation, and I’m sure there are exceptions,
but this seems to be the case for the majority.
Anyway, that is enough of my
musings for one blog, I’m sure you can look forward to many more. The big
question is, what on earth are we going to take to this dinner party tonight so
that the people will want to be friends with us :S As for work this week, well,
I went to a meeting this morning, but the women I was supposed to see had
kindly forgotten and was in another town- so, we are no further forward on when
I will be starting. At this rate they’ll be paying me around 100 Euros an hour
for the work I’ve done this month! Oh well, shit happens!
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