School started again and I still did not have my degree certificate translated, or my carte de séjour. This was becoming a joke, and not a very funny one at that.

I telephoned Mme Erivan at the Chamber of Commerce. I had left a photocopy of said certificate with [...]]]> Previous chapter: Exploring the local flora and fauna.

School started again and I still did not have my degree certificate translated, or my carte de séjour. This was becoming a joke, and not a very funny one at that.

I telephoned Mme Erivan at the Chamber of Commerce. I had left a photocopy of said certificate with her the previous week. I strongly suspected that if I gave her the original I would never see it again. Mme Erivan said it should be ready by Monday, but I should call before coming “in case there was a problem”. What kind of problem could there possibly be? There were only about twenty words on the certificate, I was effectively paying for a rubber stamp.

David Dabydeen, author of “The Counting House” was doing a book tour of the French Caribbean to promote its translation into French. He  just happened to be giving a talk at Leila’s school, so Abigail and I thought it would be fun to gatecrash. Since we had been invited to the reading and meal that evening, I didn’t see there would be any harm. Leila, incidentally, was nowhere to be seen. Somehow I managed to get on the local news that evening, as RFO were there filming the talk.

After that fun-packed day there was still more to come. The dinner and talk was a posh restaurant in Gosier. The food was fantastic. Leila was there and I couldn’t be bothered to pretend to be nice. She completely ignored me anyway, but I noticed that everyone else ignored her and I had plenty of people to speak to. She was wearing a strange zebra print outfit which sagged and strained in all the wrong places.

Crazy Jean was on our table, but behaved himself. In France, they don’t expect you to stand up, manoeuvre a plate, knife, fork, and wine glass and hold a conversation at the same time. Party planners take note: you are provided with a chair and a place at a table, much more civilised. During the conversation, I recounted the translation story to Murielle, who promptly introduced me to Mme Erivan. The certificate will be ready on Monday morning. Typical of the way things work here. But something else happened which was funny, in a cringing kind of way.

David Dabydeen was saying about when the book had been translated into French, and how it was difficult to render puns and word plays into another language. In one part of the book, one of the characters corrupts some Latin dictum by changing “sunt” into “cunt”

“What was this word,” asked Mme Erivan, earnestly, “That means a man’s thing?”

“It doesn’t mean a man’s thing. It’s a woman’s thing,” I said, embarrassed.

“What was the word? I need to know this slang term,” she insisted.

So I told her. Murielle (the one with the hair) was howling with laughter.

“How’s it spelt?”

How I kept a straight face is beyond me. Murielle pointed out to Mme Erivan (the translator) that it is probably the rudest word in the English language. She was duly apologetic.

“But I needed to know.”

Yes well, we left it there. What was she going to be translating with that word in, I wondered?

The certificate story ends happily, as on Monday morning, I wandered down to the Chamber of Commerce. The certificate was indeed ready and Mme Erivan only charged me a hundred francs instead of two hundred “because of the inconvenience”.

Having regained my composure sufficiently from my failed attempt to get my paperwork done, I tried again to get my carte de séjour done during the Toussaint holidays. I found the office straight away thanks to Mrs Straw Hat. Trouble was, I ended up waiting for three hours and then it closed for lunch. [...]]]> Previous chapter.

Having regained my composure sufficiently from my failed attempt to get my paperwork done, I tried again to get my carte de séjour done during the Toussaint holidays. I found the office straight away thanks to Mrs Straw Hat. Trouble was, I ended up waiting for three hours and then it closed for lunch. Not to be deterred this time, I was the first on the doorstep when they opened for the afternoon. The woman told me that I would need the carte that I’d had done when I was in Annecy, which was back home in England. Great. I didn’t get upset this time, though, as I was starting to accept that this was just par for the course and not a personal affront.

As I left the office, the heavens opened in a true pathetic fallacy. I ducked into the pharmacy to buy some sweet almond oil to put on my bites.  I had planned to go to the chamber of commerce to get my degree certificated translated for the CAPES, but I gave up on that idea. None of this sums up exactly how crap I was feeling, but I managed to contain myself until I called my mum to ask her to post my old carte de séjour. Thankfully, being an organised kind of person, I knew exactly where it was.

As it was the holidays and not much was going on, I passed by Amy’s place to see how she was getting along. Somehow I ended getting sucked down another vortex of weirdness. I ended up accompanying Amy and this teacher called Tim to look for a mobile phone.

“He’s a bit odd,” Amy warned. Possibly the understatement of the decade.

An ageing Skoda pulled up outside the school and executed a near-perfect handbrake turn. Impresses me every time, that’s for sure.

“Get in then,” he said without saying hello or anything. Rest in peace chivalry, I thought.

He started up with a barrage of questions, which I started to deflect rather skilfully. I was starting to regret saying I’d come. Then I thought, why not play along and have a bit of fun?

Tim seemed to take a macabre pleasure in the seedier side of life. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he was into necrophilia, and I don’t say that about many people. During the course of the afternoon, he managed to introduce the subjects of sexual harassment, physical attacks (sexual and non-sexual), marital infidelity, murder, rape and various other crimes against the person.

Tim was in his early forties and from England. He was divorced, he told us. This was because his wife had walked out and left him for another man. I could completely understand why. He spent all afternoon referring to her as his “lady spouse”. He accused me of being a tree-hugging hippy and he didn’t even know me. I cannot really do justice to how obnoxious this guy was. The only surprising thing was that anyone would want to marry him in the first place. He would have been well on his way to becoming another statistic if the knife I’d just stuck between his shoulder blades wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. And that’s coming from a tree-hugging hippy freak.

Against my better judgement, Amy and I ended up at his flat. I thought I’d better go along as I didn’t want to leave Amy alone with him. He lived in Grand-Camp, so we made up some story about being invited somewhere at seven in a bid to escape from this weirdo.

Amy came back to mine and ended up staying over. It was good to talk to someone who was going through the same things I was. If anything, Amy was finding things even more difficult than I was.

I mentioned this Tim to Marie over breakfast the next day. Marie listened carefully and told me never to go to his flat again, advice I gladly heeded. She seemed to know exactly who I was talking about and was convinced that he was a maniac sexuel. She said he sometimes hangs around Match supermarket staring at passers-by. This would not have surprised me. He was a class A freak, at any rate and I’ve known a few.

“If it’s the same guy,” I ventured.

“Hope so,” she said, “Else there’s two of them running around the neighbourhood.”

Next Chapter

The next day, I went to the sous-préfecture, which, conveniently, was closed due to refurbishment. The police station was located next door, and that seemed a logical place to go and ask for directions. The officer on desk duty was a Métro. He looked about eighteen, and severely hung-over. A few minutes later, I [...]]]> Previous chapter

The next day, I went to the sous-préfecture, which, conveniently, was closed due to refurbishment. The police station was located next door, and that seemed a logical place to go and ask for directions. The officer on desk duty was a Métro. He looked about eighteen, and severely hung-over. A few minutes later, I found myself walking up the stairs of a rather sombre building. I saw a doorbell with an intercom. I buzzed and a woman answered.

“Excuse me, is this where I can apply for a residence permit?”

“No, you need the fourth floor.”

On I climbed. I was fully expecting to encounter snow at the next turn as the stairs wound on and on. At least I was in the right building, I thought. Eventually, there were no more stairs, but a landing with seats. It looked reassuringly like a waiting room. Someone came out of the door, and when he left, I rang the bell.

“Come in,” called a female voice, barely audible above the sound of a dog barking. Gingerly, I opened the door half way. There was a middle-aged Métro woman talking on the phone with only a towel wrapped round her. Something told me that this was not the place where one applied for a residence permit. I hastily excused myself and left.

Outside on the street the sun was beating down mercilessly. My head was spinning with frustration and helplessness at not being able to complete the simplest of tasks. I sat on the kerb and cried my eyes out. I felt well and truly wretched. I knew that one day I would laugh at this story, but at that point in time the comedy of the situation evaded me. I was ready to pack my bags and leave. So this is what I came here for? To sit on a pavement crying thousands of miles from home? If I never came back to Guadeloupe ever again it would be too soon. Everything was starting to piss me off big time. Like when complete strangers came up to me in the street to offer suggestions for my many mosquito bites. Maybe they were just trying to help, but I would sooner they just minded their own business. What I didn’t realise it that everything is everyone’s business there.

“Hey, it can’t be that bad,” an ample woman wearing a straw hat and a flowery dress spoke to me in English. It turned out that she was from Dominica, and had just been to apply for her carte de séjour. She directed me to the office, which was on the other side of the street. After queuing for over an hour, I came out with a list of documents I needed to apply for my card.

I decided that was enough for one day. I retreated back to Grand-Camp. Maybe Marie would be able to offer me some advice. Or if not, kick me out of my depression. I was sick of the responsibility of being an ambassador for my country, sick of the heat, the humidity, the men, not having my friends from home. I did not want to paint a gloomy picture to the folks back home, nor offend the local people who had been so kind to me. My only solace during those dark moments was to confide in the blank paper of my travel journal, my constant companion. Most of all I felt angry at myself for letting things get to me.

Anyone who has travelled will have experienced this culture shock and basically you have two choices, either to give up and go home, or work through it. I was discovering that it is in precisely those moments when you think you cannot cope that you learn to cope. When all your crutches from your home life are taken away, you find out what really supports you. On that day I wasn’t feeling that much inner strength, but somehow, I knew things would, had to, get better.

Stay tuned for tales of a weird ex-pat British teacher, hitch-hiking and a side serving of politics.

My role at the Lycée was somewhat fluid at best and took me most of the first month to figure out what I was actually doing there. For a start, at no point was I ever given a timetable. I eventually figured that as long as I put in a cameo appearance in the [...]]]> Previous chapter

My role at the Lycée was somewhat fluid at best and took me most of the first month to figure out what I was actually doing there. For a start, at no point was I ever given a timetable. I eventually figured that as long as I put in a cameo appearance in the staff room now and again, and turned up regularly to the lessons of teachers who wanted me, that would be fine. At one point I probably could have taken a two-week holiday in the middle of term and no one would have noticed.

I would have questioned my own sanity if it were not for the fact that there was another assistant in the school, a Zimbabwean lady called Abigail. She was married to a chap from Martinique who worked at the University. She had two children and had lived in Guadeloupe for ten years. If I ever thought that my problems settling in were due to being white, Abigail soon set me straight on this. At one point she had got so fed up with Guadeloupe that she took the children back to Zimbabwe for the best part of a year and Jean, her husband, had to move heaven and earth to get her to come back. No big deal, he’d already done that to get her in the first place, but that is a story for another day.

The following Monday saw us attend a meeting for all the English language assistants. I did meet Amy, and it turned out that she worked at the other Baimbridge school and was staying in the boarding house there. She did have her tongue pierced, but not the face full of metal that Leila seemed to imply. Spookily enough she was on her year abroad from Cardiff university. It was a small world indeed. Amy had also experienced the big freeze from Leila. We swapped numbers, since it would be good to explore with someone who had an open mind.

The meeting was at the Lycée de Providence, which compared to Lycée Caraïbes was very posh. Apparently Caraïbes was awaiting a rebuild and in the meantime the old buildings were just being left to rack and ruin. It also had a reputation for being a “bad” school in the local area, something which would prepare me nicely for my future career. I could tell this by the way people winced when I told them where I was based. Providence had language labs, computer aided learning and all mod cons, whereas at Caraïbes we would gouge each other’s eyes out over a tape recorder only to find that the room in question did not even have an electrical socket.

Mme. Fleurival talked for a while about how we were all ambassadors for our countries and that our behaviour here was very important. Guadeloupe is a small island, and in any small place, people gossip about anything and everything. Being from a small town, this was not news to me.

We moved into another room, for drinks and nibbles. Pete came over and sat next to me, and we chatted for a while. He seemed quite surprised that none of the others had called on me. Leila had not given any of them my number, typical of her. Pete asked for my number, so I gave it to him. Much good may it do him, I thought.

I tore myself away from sexy Pete. I was not there to pull, I had networking to do. I had become quite good at networking, although by no means a natural, I had come to understand that my survival in Gwada depended on knowing the right people. Mme. Fleurival even gave me her personal contact details, which she told me not to give anyone else.

I managed to negotiate three hours a week at Collège Saint John-Perse. Abigail and I were also pumping Mme. Fleurival for information about the CAPES, the French teaching certificate, and there just happened to be a bloke from the training college there. I noticed Leila sticking her beak in.

“What’s the CAPES?”

“It’s the French teaching certificate. You have to have your degree, though, so I guess it wouldn’t interest you.”

Leila seemed dumbfounded by this snub, as if no-one had ever played her at her own game. Sometimes you have to speak to a bully in their own language. She faded into the background after that, although later on I heard her complaining about not getting to practise her French as much as she would like since she was living with English speakers. Go figure.

The next day, after morning lessons, Abigail and I went up to the teacher training college to find out more information about the CAPES. Somehow, thanks to our conversation with Mme. Fleurival, they were expecting us and we managed to enroll straight away. There were also exam preparation classes on a Wednesday afternoon, since that is when French schools are closed.

I had got the Education Nationale stitched up, but one thing which had been bugging me was the ongoing issue of the carte de séjour. Having done this paper chase once during my stay in Annecy, I thought it would be relatively straightforward. Famous last words. In reality, the fact that I had already been registered in France actually complicated matters.

More about that adventure next time.