Crime and Fessing Up: A Small-Town Saga

A few short days out, my recent post about how much more rare and scandalous murder is here compared to in the U.S. has taken on a new, naive light. This Wednesday, while waiting at a bus stop on the main street in town, with plenty of people around, at around 4 pm (full sun, here), my text to a tutee saying I'd be late was cut short. A skinny kid, maybe about 14 or 16 years old, snatched my cell phone out of my two hands while I was texting, there in front of God and everybody. I ran after him, yelling, but, lagging behind in my sandals and watching him disappear up a tall staircase to an unfamiliar, sprawling housing project, I decided I should go back and pick up my grocery bags that had been between my feet before another teenager decided to pilfer through those.
Though I figured the phone was gone for good, the day was saved by a nearby (and nearly crazy) good Samaritan. A local woman witnessed the whole thing and told me she wasn't going to stand for it. She called her cousins who lived in that housing project to tell them what had happened and that she was coming to investigate. After politely dropping me off at the police station to file a report, she drove up to the complex and basically yelled at every teenager she saw until one of them, too large to have been the thief, sheepishly handed her my phone, saying he'd found it somewhere. I was thrilled, obviously, to have my phone back before I could even get through the line to file a report. However, the innocence of the whole affair - a teenager stupidly snatching a worthless, old Android phone in broad daylight only to hand it over freely once he had been yelled at - is almost annoying. Even in cases of criminal activity, this place operates on a completely small-town basis. So-and-so's cousin saw you do it and she's coming up here to chew you out so you better fess up or she'll tell your mom. It could be in a sitcom, if U.S. television didn't equate black, teenage boys with unsympathetic violence.
After thanking the almost stupidly brave, nice lady who recovered my phone for me (I think I might have even gotten a new tutoring student out of the ordeal), I had to preoccupy myself with the thousand little worries of getting my phone-tethered life back to normal. Of course the kid had the sense to dump the SIM card, so I had to get a new one. He'd also locked the screen, so I had to pay (39 € !) to get it unlocked. Then I've had the fun of wading through the app store and phone settings to return to normal usage. Worst of all, I had to tell my parents what had happened.
Of course, most parents are lovingly protective of their children and would be worried if something like this happened to their kid. My parents hold the particular distinction of being classic, middle-American conservatives who think that every place outside the U.S. - especially commie countries like France and places where black people live - is too dangerous and too unfree to be worth seeing. As I am their only daughter and youngest child, they also just generally oppose me going anywhere away from them, but we've been working through that since I headed off to boarding school at age 15. For them, this incident was just the icing on the cake, and if I had any reason at all, I'd book the next flight back to Alabama (where I have, by the way, no job prospects, no health insurance, and no mode of transportation). When I dismissed the proposition of an immediate return, they became quite cross, to say the least. But we'll work through that.
Though such conversations with my parents are both painful and annoying, this one did inspire me to do a little bit of fact-checking. Other than learning that just about every website has a different method of reporting crime rates, and that the CIA World Factbook, unlike many other sites, does not consider Martinique to be a country, I actually did not learn much. For someone who came of age in the age of the Internet, this is quite frustrating.
But that, like accidentally winding up marooned in a small-town society and Martinican teenagers acting out during Carnaval, is life.

Umbrella Breakthrough

The random homeless guy who
declared me to be queen of England
(without even knowing my real name,
mind you), insisted I take his picture,
and tried to kiss me.

This last week I suffered a tragedy that actually led me to a breakthrough of the problem of street harassment. As previously mentioned, it's of the worst parts of living here and an injustice I refuse to accept. But this story starts far from the men-filled streets, up in the forest on a hike. Somewhere between sitting down for our picnic in the river at the Absalon hot springs and the end of our long, uphill trek to the nearest bus stop, I lost my only hat here, a freebie from a senior event at Columbia. I was devastated, not because I especially liked the hat but because I was frustrated with myself for losing it and had no other form of physical sun protection for my face.

Last spotting of my dear hat.

On Thursday I had to handle this situation. However, since both straw hats and bucket hats look dumb and I was tired of carrying around my rain jacket, anyway, I decided to buy an umbrella instead of another hat. I paid too much for it in a corner shop and went about my way (as if I was busy).
The change in my quality of life was immediate.
First of all, carrying the umbrella already makes you out as an independent asshole who doesn't care how precious they look, because they're going about with an umbrella up in the sun regardless of what anybody thinks. So, people approach you less.

I have honestly heard the absolute
 weirdest comments about my appearance. 

Then, it's a physical barrier between you and other people. It both hides your face and discourages any comments anyone could logically make about it and keeps them from getting close to you.

I still need to come up with a hat,
though, since umbrellas aren't very
practical on hikes, like the one that
led me to this beautiful view.

Finally, carrying about an umbrella makes you more physically threatening. Apparently men who fail to gather from my crossing the street to avoid them, refusing to make eye contact with them, and walking quickly away from them that I don't want to talk to them can ascertain from the slightest shake of the folded umbrella in my hand that I might just fucking whack them with it. One little flick of the wrist and the guy who was veering towards me is suddenly veering away.
I feel so liberated.
Mind you, I suffer from no illusions about the complete efficacy of this tactic. I'm sure that the most aggressive street harassers will still bother me. However, whereas I endured several instances a day of street harassment sans umbrella, I've yet to suffer a single one since I've had it, and that's a change I can deal with.