Packing Heat

It's February!

In Martinique, that means an end to dry season, and a quick transition into the wet season. Seeing as it's almost every day in the three weeks I've been here, I'm not quite sure what to expect. All I know is the sun stays out longer and hits harder these days, Martiniquan summer is well on its way.




Classes are well underway. Unfortunately, my schedule is still changing and changing back. It's incredibly difficult to pick courses here, and once you do you're lucky if your schedule stays the same. I'm now taking Karate for credit (awesome), French and French speaking negritude literature, as well as a few other different ones. Books are impossible to find and in high demand-- so that's tricky. Instead of trying to figure it out I'm just going to sit back, relax and use being foreign as an excuse. From what I've seen, being foreign doesn't buy you much mercy. From anyone. Students laugh and ridicule in class, teachers exploit any foreigners inability to communicate well. Not all experiences have been like that, but some have been pretty traumatic for us foreign kids. I've gotten over my problem with looking dumb, being ridiculed or exploited-- I'm foreign, my French is getting better, and you live on a tiny rock in the sea. The reason for the animosity is a complicated one....

our friends who threw coconut nuts at the honkies

Martinique is a bizarre, unstable place. It is the perfect example of how fundamentally fucked up colonization is/was. Basically, Martinique is still a colony. They work under French rule, go to school under French rule and suffer under French rule. This place is poor. The houses are shoddy, the places are unsafe. There buildings look run down, campus looks like an abandoned ghost town. As if, with proper care, it could be beautiful, but instead it's just forgotten. Everything is too expensive because it's imported from France. They use the Euro but the benefit is limited. Also, of the 400,000 Martiniquans who live here, 3,000 are white, direct descendants of the colonizers. They own everything, and never mix with their black countrymen. So, there is a racial segregation/prejudice, contempt for whites for being wealthy, contempt of France for owning them, love of France for keeping them and love of saying they are French. Most people are ambivalent in the we-are-we-aren't-French war. Others have radical extremes. This island is a tortured soul-- beautiful and interesting but the victim of a serious identity crisis and, inevitably, self destruction. And all the while I'm in class trying to understand exactly what they're saying, never mind why they feel so strongly.

Ugh, classes.
Monday is awful with class all day, but every day after that I finish at 1230 and am usually off to the beach. The last two days we've watched the sunset over at the beach and continued the night somewhere else with fellow foreigners and their friends. It's been a great routine so far. We have big plans-- buying a car between us, going to volcanoes, rowing, kayaking and things of the like. Weekends are big days for us.

Last weekend was a big weekend for us. Ines, Carin and I spent Saturday in Trois Ilets, a touristy beach are about a 30 minute ferry ride from Fort-de-France. On the boat, we spotted some army men who live on a base here which we are determined to befriend. The beach was incredible, the water was breathtaking, and I got pinched by a crab.







The next day was the preview of Carnaval. Ines and I spent the whole day tromping around the parade site with cameras in hand, and then met up with the Dominicans. During the day everything was perfect--good vibes, laid back people. It was what I had expected of the Caribbean. When the sun started to set, everything shifted suddenly. Drunken men started to outnumber anything else. People became more agitated and aggressive. It was like the St. Paddy's day in Chicago, except all day, with no police, no barriers and if pot was legal--mayhem. By this time we've met up with the Dominicans and they're professors, native Martiniquaise. Once the parade suddenly stops and people seem confused, the professors rush us away. A fight broke out and we had to go. Naturally, we take refuge in a near by McDonalds, which has a large, security man as a bouncer. We wait paitiently for our turn to enter, as others push and prompt the security guard. As we're allowed in, and the door shuts, people scream and cry as a near by tear gas tag lets smoke into the building. Throats burned, eyes cried. Sweet. The security guard started letting babies in to seek refuge.





That's not it. Even more drunk, apparently very hungry men came up to the security guard, looking angry and ready to throw down for some McD's. Later we discovered that they were on a man hunt for the bleeding guy in the bathroom. More police arrived, and bleeding guy, victim of a stab wound in his leg (which I couldn't get a picture of, sorry) was held hostage in the restaurant. As one could see, people outside wanted him dead.

After the tear gas cleared and bleeding guy left, we got on our way. The teachers showed us around the island, told us never to go out alone at night, always to take a taxi, and repeated several times that I was white and would never blend in.

Thanks.

So everything is going exceptionally well. Classes will come together, and taking 3 lit classes has already improved my french. Befriending more and more foreigners has been great too-- someone is always up to do something. And as german Christian put it, the people here are family oriented and so, on weekends, the campus is nearly dead. Besides that meeting the canadians at the beach or at night has helped my speaking as well. They speak english, we speak french. It's a win-win.