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.

The incandescent light of the early morning, realm of the night’s end and morning’s beginning running seamlessly into one. So began what felt like an endless day. The sun was rising as the plane took off, a red disk in the misty sky. A rush of emotions knotted up in [...]]]> Adapted from The Guadeloupe Diaries, 2000-2001

The incandescent light of the early morning, realm of the night’s end and morning’s beginning running seamlessly into one. So began what felt like an endless day. The sun was rising as the plane took off, a red disk in the misty sky. A rush of emotions knotted up in my throat. So this was it. I’d made my choice. Goodbye J.

I don’t enjoy travelling. I enjoy being there. Airports are a blur. I block out the mind numbing boredom of the trans atlantic flight.

My suitcase rumbled by on the luggage carousel three times before I was able to push through the madding crowd to retrieve it.

Hot sticky afternoon heat overwhelmed me as the automatic doors at Les Abymes airport glided open to reveal a scene of steam evaporating off wet tarmac before my eyes. I felt the humidity of the rainy season directly on my skin. L’hivernage, the hurricane season. Confused and disorientated from the eight hour flight, I stumbled into the air-conditioned freshness of Madame Leblanc’s Volkswagen Golf.

I watched the scenery go past. Signs pointed to place names I had only seen on maps. Somehow it didn’t quite seem real, that I had actually arrived. In the languid heat,  India cattle grazed by the side of the road. It was Saturday afternoon, and Guadeloupe had already shut down for the weekend. Some of the houses were little more than shacks with verandas where old men drank rum and played cards. Stand pipes in the streets supplied drinking water to the neighbourhood.

“Hugo destroyed a lot of these slums,” Madame Leblanc informed me. “It was horrific, but in a way it did the island a lot of favours.”

Hugo was the hurricane which hit the island in 1989 and was a defining part of local recent history, almost having its own personality. It was a clear divide in recent history of the island, Before Hugo and After Hugo. During the year I spent there, Guadeloupe was still undergoing slum clearances eleven years later.

Grand-Camp, as it was called, was a fairly unremarkable working class district. We rounded the corner into Résidence Belvédère, the estate where my accomodation had been arranged.

“That’s the swimming pool where Marie-José Pereq used to train,” said Madame Leblanc, proudly. “Of course she lives in Paris now.” Pereq hadn’t had a great time in the 2000 Olympics.

Eliane Leblanc, I would find out, was what local people called Noix de Coco – black on the outside, white on the inside. She was married to a white Frenchman and lived in a very nice house in a very nice part of town. At least I believe she lived in a very nice house, as I was never invited there! Her make-up stayed perfect in the tropical heat and she wore a designer linen suit.

In a reversal of the slave trade in which had brought these people to the island, it was seen as a badge of status by the people of Guadeloupe to go to the Métropole to live or to study. The University of Bordeaux is particularly popular with students from the island. I used to wonder if they realised the irony that this was one of the main ports where their ancestors had been auctioned off like cattle and stuck onto slave ships bound for the plantations.

The landlady was called Marie Beaujolais. Since she had a name which sounded like a bottle of wine and wore her hair in a funky afro, unlike Eliane’s chemically straightened locks, I knew we were going to get along fine.

Waves of fatigue engulfed my body as I lay my head onto the pillow that first night, twisted images becoming my night vision. Sunrise, blood red half open eye in the moist morning air. I thought of him as I felt the plane leave the ground and I felt like crying. J under the cherry blossom, an image that will last in my head until the end of time, irascible.

I woke up with a jolt. The shutters were tightly fastened, I had no idea if the 11:10 on my travel clock referred to morning or night. I could hear cars passing on the rocade, they seemed to be getting faster and faster, more furious, blending into the wall of white noise along with the tree frogs and the crickets. I felt sick and disoriented. I tried to go back to sleep, tried not to think about J. But as I’m sure you know, the more you try not to think about something, you can think of nothing else. Scenes of the utmost banality filled my mind, but they all had the same common denominator: J was there. I was already regretting leaving, I should have stayed in Wales, done that teacher training course. When that letter came, that letter that spoilt everything, I should have just replied saying I was no longer interested and not even mentioned it to J. What the hell did I hope to achieve by coming here, an ocean away from home?

I loved J. But what choice did I have? Stick around on a wing and a promise that he’d finally get his act together? What if we’d finished a couple of months down the line and I’d missed the chance of a lifetime and regretted it forever? Or had I abandoned my chance at true love for my own selfish desires? It sounds cruel, but even as I lay in my bed that night, deep down I knew I had made the right choice. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t suffer or that my heart didn’t hurt. I just found a way to cauterise the wound.

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