Caribbean Courtesy: A Sketch

Today I waited nearly an hour for the bus. Next to me, in the canopy's shade, a group of older women chatted and complained about the wait. They were in their fifties or sixties. No more youth, no more attraction, no more fear, at that age.
A younger woman, about thirty or so, approached, her son in tow. She knew one of the older women and approached to share bisoux and pleasantries. The boy, about seven, with a round face and precocious, blooming personality, tilted his head to get bisous, too. "Bonjour bonjou," he said, making the older women laugh. They giggled, how quick, how flirtatious he was already. The mother didn't like that they laughed.
After a polite amount of conversation, she moved over to another canopy to fit into the shade no one had made for them under the first, tugging her son along. He turned back to the older woman he knew to send her a symbol with his hands, with his thumb, pointer finger and pinkie. Some experts maintain that this is a satanic sign for hexing. Others counter it has been co-opted to mean "I (L)ove U". Whatever it meant to the child, it set the older women to laughing again. Whatever it meant to the older women, it set the mother off. She yanked his arm and yelled she'd told him not to do that. The older women settled into scolding and complaining about kids these days.
"It's all gang signs with them."
"They must learn it at school."
"I never tolerated things like that with my children."
"Oh, no, never ... "
They conspicuously turned to look and gesture and the mother-son pair under the next canopy. After a few moments, the boy must have committed anther betise, because a smack and then a slow cry were heard.
"Ah, good, he's spanked him."
"Oh, thank goodness."
"Kids need it, especially these days."
"Oh, I always spanked my kids. I kept my wooden spoon in my purse at all times."
"All the time!"
"Always."
"Can you believe it, one time a woman told me, 'Oh, he's too handsome it spank', about my son! I had a mind to hit her with the spoon, too."
"Oh, unbelievable ... "
They continued on, still turning their disdainful regards towards the younger pair from time to time.
After several minutes, a driver mounted the bus they were all waiting for and began preparations to leave. He struggled for longer than usual with the controls. The older women began to complain. Words like "tébé" and even "milanez" began to be thrown around as they gathered up their shopping bags and Easter flowers and moved closer together.
Two young women, maybe in their teens or early twenties, chins held high, walked around the slowly assembling mass, toeing up to the line where the bus would pull up.
"What's this?"
"That's not how things are done, girls."
"We've been here for an hour, and you just got here ten minutes ago. You have to let us on first!"
The young women arched their brows at each other, but did not look behind them, making it clear they had no intention of allowing anyone to pass in front of them.
Once the bus pulled up and the young women jumped on, the older women resorted to calling them insults. As they each mounted they complained of the youth these days, how rude young people were, how kids had learned no respect. Surely their mothers had not kept their wooden spoons on them enough. All the while, the older women pressed each other so that, as each one stepped up into the bus, the one right behind was clipped on the chin by the first's bag. They scurried on to grab the handicapped seats, not hesitating to chide any youth that seemed hurried to get on.
Just before the bus pulled out, an old woman, a real granmoun, got onto the bus, her back bowed by her flowers, her little grocery bag, or perhaps just her age. No one spoke to her or got up. She stumbled into the back seat just as the bus pulled out of the depot.

French Bureaucracy X Caribbean Pacing: A Sketch

Early on a Monday afternoon, shortly after the 1 p.m. opening of Bibliothèque Schoelcher, the only public library in the capital of Martinique. I finish my current library book and return it to the Nice Librarian at the front desk. Then I go to a standing computer and, using the library's online catalogue, find another book off my list. The listing in the catalogue indicates that one of the three copies of the book book is in the magasin, the stacks of the library accessible only to librarians. Having played this game before, I meticulously note the books exact title, author, and code, knowing that an error will result in a refusal of the book. Then I get a magasin request form and copy all this info, in addition to my name, library card number, and profession - yeah, I have to tell them my profession as a part of a potential interrogation as to why I want the book.

I then proceed to the magasin desk, where the Mean Librarian is stationed. I say, "Bonjour*", because in French culture you can't ask for anything without saying hello first. She does not respond, only glaring at me. "I would like to borrow this book, please," I continue after a moment, handing her the form. She glances at it for a second then tosses it back at me, saying, "Fonds antillais, first floor", without smiling. Though I know that there is, in addition to the copy in the fonds antillais, a copy in the magasin, and that the fonds antillais are more likely to refuse to lend me the book than the magasin, I smile and thank her before walking up to the fonds antillais.
When I get to that desk, I smile and say, "Bonjour", because in French culture you can't ask for anything without saying hello first. The librarian behind the desk does not respond, only glaring at me. After a moment, I continue, "I would like to borrow this book, please. Should I get the copy in the magasin or in the fonds antillais?" The librarian snatches the form at me, rolls his eyes, and, without answering my question, gets up and walks to the publicly-accessible shelves of the fonds antillais. Of course, I could've found the book on the shelf if he would have answered my question, but he seemed to prefer the opportunity to render an unnecessary service to a library patron so he could sulk about it to my face and complain about it to his colleagues later.
After quickly doing a tour of the wrong shelf, he comes back and announces that the book isn't there, speaking in a voice so low and so muddled that I can hardly understand him. "The catalogue says there are three copies," I insist. He mutters something to the effect that the only copy must be in reserve, so I can consult it at the desk but I can't borrow it. I specify that the library catalogue said there was one in the fonds antillais, one in the magasin, and one in reserve, using a tone to indicate that I wasn't going away just because he was no longer looking at me but at his computer screen.
"The book isn't here," he tries again.
"None of the three copies?" I doubt.
Angrily jumping up, he mumbles as he goes through the door to the magasin that it isn't here but he'll look anyway
Using my original copy of the books details, I turn and, in less than five seconds, find the book on the shelf of the fonds antillais, exactly where it's supposed to be.
A few seconds later (in no universe enough time to have looked for the book), the librarian returns, announcing matter-of-factly that the book isn't there. I hold it out in front of him.
"The book isn't here," he repeats.
"Here it is. It was on the shelf," I answer.
He responds by muttering something about the book having not been shelved correctly.
"No," I counter, "it was right where it was supposed to be."
"It was mal-classé," he insists, "and since it wasn't in the right place, it's in the computer as checked out and so I can't give it to you."
"The computer said there were three copies available," I remind him, causing him to turn and bury his face in his computer again.
I keep standing there until he barks at his younger (woman) colleague that he can't check it out, she has to do it. She completes this task calmly, though with a surprised look on her face. As she tells me what day the book is due, he loudly rips my magasin request form into many pieces.

The Kids are Chloridconé: What the Hell is Wrong with the Place, According to Locals

Over the course of my time here in Martinique, I've had the opportunity to bavarder with a pretty wide variety of locals, from young teachers and students to quite elderly students of creole. All of them had one thing in common: they know something is fucked up here. However, they differ quite dramatically in terms of their opinons of the source du mal in Martinique. Today, I present a list of my favorite explanations for all of the problems on this island.

• People don't understand that the country isn't as rich as it used to be (?)
• Parents don't hit their kids anymore*
• Teachers don't hit their students anymore*
• Parents expect the teachers to hit their kids for them*
• Teachers expect parents to hit their students for them*
• There are too many outsiders
• Too many Martinicans have lived for a time in the mainland
• Martinicans are too closed-minded
• People don't respect boundaries and distance between each other anymore
• People don't treat each other like family and neighbors anymore
• There are too many people
• The island is too rural
• Too many people believe in local fairies and myths
• Too many people disrespect the local fairies and powers
• The mainland doesn't invest enough in Martinique
• Martinicans expect too much from the Mainland
• Martinicans didn't run of the békés with machetes when they had the chance
• People use online dictionaries
• Too many artist types are running around inadequately clothed
• Too few young people speak creole
• People don't speak French correctly
• Young people make up their own mix of French and English and use that instead of just one language
• The algae blooming because of fertilizer runoff from Brazil are giving off a gas that's going to people's heads
• Unemployment benefits are too generous
• Unemployment benefits are too sparse
• When feminism hit the Caribbean, French Caribbean men murdered their wives and / or became homeless
• Men here are generally too unemployed
• Young people here have access to higher education too easily (?)

And today's addition:

• The kids act wild because they've been chloridconés**

*Corporal punishment for children has been illegal here for some time. Everyone still proudly claims they do it, though
**The runoff of chlodicone into non-banana fields and into the food and soil is a serious problem which you can read about in English here. While the pesticide does appear to have very serious deleterious health effects, I wouldn't go so far as to pin every instance of primary schoolboys misbehaving to it.

Traditions, Neologisms, and Ways of Thinking

A list of conversations / lectures which took place in my creole class (in which everyone other than me is well over forty) yesterday and were not about creole:

• Everyone else in the class agreeing that it's ridiculous that "mademoiselle" (the French equivalent of "miss") has been deemed inappropriate and now you *have* to call young women that you *know* aren't married "madame" (the equivalent of Ms. or Mrs.).
• Everyone in the class emphatically agreeing for the MILLIONTH time that le français inclusif (a modern reform of French proposed to make it more gender inclusive by mentioning both the masculine and feminine in neutral addresses rather than masculine serving as the neutral) is a TOTAL CATASTROPHE, not because it's dysfunctional or because it doesn't resolve the fundamental problem of the gender binary imposed on the language, but because TRADITIONS CANNOT CHANGE EVER.
• Everyone else in the class emphatically lamenting that it's an atrocity that YOUTHS use SHORTCUTS and NEW IDIOMS to text each other, which means that they clearly will never be able to ~properly~ write in ~proper~ French. This last one was all the more ironic because it immediately followed the professor's lecture on how new neologisms needed to be created in creole, because it isn't "rich" enough.

As you can probably tell by the tone of my written descriptions, these conversations fairly discomfited me, not only because it would be impossible for me to defend my positions without seeming like the defensive youngster, but also because it would be useless to defend my positions with the tone of my comrades was already so dismissive. All that, without mentioning that the professor THEN proceeded to dismiss my opinion that his prescriptive position that the practice of repeating morphemes for emphasis in creole was "undeveloped" and needed to be replaced with new words was in fact a paradox à la Foucault, since his normative ideas of what makes a "developed" language is informed by colonialist perspectives.
Now, people in general and older people especially can be dismissive any time or place they please, and I have certainly observed such behavior in many places other than Martinique. However, the way I experience it, this type of close-mindedness reigns here more than anywhere else I've been, besides maybe my hometown.
And it's driving me nuts.

The Blessed Tutoie

Some work difficulties are simply
unforeseen.

As you may know, in French there are two pronouns for "you", the singular / informal "tu" and the plural / formal "vous". Whereas in Parisians tend to be fairly casual at work and tutoie (refer to using the more casual form, "tu") most everyone, here in Martinique, as one would expect in more rural settings, manners matter much more, and there's much more vouvoying going on. Furthermore, as I am a foreigner, and as white people risk coming off as entitled here, I am especially careful to vouvoie everyone until they tell me to do otherwise.
Today, a second teacher told me to tutoie her. That makes two out of eleven teachers that I work with and zero out of countless administrators who have decided that, since they see me at least twice a week, I can go ahead and talk to them like work friends instead of in the more distant way.
As I made sure to remind the teacher in question, I might still mess up and call her by the wrong one, since remembering and switching such usages hardly comes naturally to anglophones. To this day, before I email any adult in French, I usually check the last email I sent them to make sure of which pronoun I used before.
One neat memory this brings up for me, though, was being vouvoied at the Sorbonne. Apparently there scholars, as young as eighteen as they may be, are guaranteed the respect of a vouvoie, as of course the students are vouvoying the professors and assistants. I've always wanted to know the story behind that, though it may just be a general tradition. Needless to say, it eased my aching pride, struggling as I was to glean the meaning out of the rapid-fire, two hour-long lectures on subjects I only *thought* I had a decent knowledge of before, to be vouvoied by a professor.
Here not even the students vouvoie me - nor do they vouvoie their regular teachers, either. Go figure.

Today's Level of Inferno: Immigration

During our orientation, one of the organizers told us that Martinique is a Paradise, but that it also has seven Infernos. While I don't think that the metaphor completely jives with the classic literary work, I will say that the observation has been a recurring joke amongst the assistants. The Inferno I finished traversing only yesterday was entitled: Immigration, or, if you had a president who bought into the myth that immigrants are refusing to assimilate into your culture, OFII: Office of Immigration and Insertion.
In order to understand immigration here, one must first appreciate the rigamarole that is Immigration in the capital. When I lived in Paris for a year, I arrived with some important paperwork that had been stamped by the embassy in the States as well as an entry visa in my passsport. I sent off the stamped paperwork with a host of other documents - proof of residence, proof of enrollment, proof that my mother's first cousin wasn't an alien, etc - to OFII right after I arrived, in the first week of September. At the end of October I received a letter summoning me to the immigration office in Paris in late November. There, even an hour before my appointment, the waiting room was full of people and a crowd of folks without an appointment were trying to get their affairs sorted, waiting outside the door surrounded by National Guardsmen with automatic guns. The appointment functioned like an assembly line. First, I waited to have a rude lady take my paperwork and briskly ask me questions. Then, I was moved to another waiting room. Then, a couple of nurses very matter-of-factly took X-rays of my lungs (twice, because a smudge from my old T.B. infection appeared ... ) Then I was sent to another waiting room. Then, somebody quickly took my vitals and asked me about my health - and actually made small talk. Then I was moved to another waiting room, where a bunch of other immigrants were being yelled at. Finally, I was called into one last room where a lady confirmed my identity, slapped my residency sticker into my passport, then shooed me away. Having arrived before 8 a.m. by subway, I was completely immigrated and free to have a late lunch the same day.
Martinique went a little bit differently.
First, my paperwork wasn't sent off until the first week of October, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive a summons by email for the last week of October - given, I only had a week's warning, and it was during school vacation, so several assistants didn't make it to their appointments because of the late announcement. There's no subway and the bus system doesn't come close, so I walked over an hour to a regular medical center a little bit out of the suburb of the capital. It wasn't an immigration center at all, just a medical center, where immigrating persons were waiting with regular residents. I waited to get into a waiting room, which opened, of course, late. Then a very polite lady took my info and ensured that I knew what was going on. Then she called me to a different waiting room. Then a very soft-spoken nurse took my chest X-ray. Then I went back to the first waiting room. Then I was given a physical copy of my X-ray, which I've never had in my hands before, and sent very vaguely to another building. I went to a new building and waited, only to be told I had been in the wrong waiting room and have to go to a different doctor's office. There I waited in a waiting room until I was called into a random regular practitioner's office. He very politely took my vitals and asked me about my health in general, ensuring that I understood how the medical system worked in case I needed anything. Then, when he sent me out, I asked for my residency sticker for my passport. He laughed in my face. Oh, no, he explained, he had to fill out a form, which had to be snail-mailed to OFII, who would then write me a new summons to go to a different appointment. I went home no more legally a resident than I had been before.
Finally, last week I received by email a second summons to a different office, this one mercifully in the capital, and completely unguarded and accessible from the street. Yesterday, I arrived early only to find that the office wasn't open yet and the secretary was bewildered that someone would be there so soon. Only a handful of assistants were there. Finally, several minutes after the first appointment was to have started, a representative from the OFII in Guadeloupe, whom the state apparently paid to arrive by boat or plane, came in. She discussed at length with the secretary that if anybody without an appointment came in, it was in fact alright, but they'd have to wait until she was done with her appointments. She calmly walked us up the stairs and asked us to sit for a moment while she got ready. Then she called me into her office, made some small talk about Martinique, asked me how work was going, and ensured that I understood what steps I had to take if I wanted to renew my visa as she filled out her paperwork and put my residency sticker in my passport. Then she told me goodbye, and I had to remind her to give me my medical certificate, saying I'd gone to the medical appointment last month. She very kindly thanked me for reminding her and explained to me in what cases I might need it. I was out of there within five minutes, a completely immigrated resident.
As is said here, aux Caraïbes, on n'est jamais pressé. The process here took two individual visits out of my way on weekdays, as, as a New Yorker at heart who fetishizes my time, that annoys the crap out of me. Not to mention, there were a thousand loopholes for things to get lost - going to one appointment but not another, bureaucrats forgetting or misplacing paperwork, physical X-rays to get lost. Yet, officials were actually nice to me, which, after Paris, is pretty nice, too.