Lundi 23.10.06 Annie Verser
It’s hard to believe we’ve been here a month already; Fergal texts to remind me about this momentous occasion. However, I’ve other things on my mind… Like how are we going to get to school when we’ve been waiting for an hour at the bus-stop with no buses going by. We ask some neighbours if there’s a strike today but they say there’s just a problem with the bus. We start to thumb a lift but anyone who stops is only going down the hill to the local primary school. Not one female driver stops but it’s understandable. Times are changing and people have been warned about hitch-hikers; even two young blanches who teach in town are not desirable car companions for single black females. By the time 7,00 comes around it’s unlikely that we’ll make it even if we get a lift because the traffic is so bad. However, we ring Madame Arlette and five minutes later Charles pulls up alongside us. God must be looking over us because we get in just after 7,30 and I arrive in school with two minutes to spare. I’ve been carrying the heavy brack and an even heavier dish all morning so it’s a relief to lay it down and crack on with my classes.
Since the midterm, Toussaint, starts this week and we don’t have primary school on Wednesday’s, I only have two days of school this week; Monday and Tuesday. That means that I only have each class once. For my lesson plan I have decided to firstly introduce a written exercise which corresponds with the four introductory phrases we previously learnt and then proceed with Halloween celebrations. Of course I meet all sorts of hurdles along the way. I expect my first two classes – the seniors in CM2 D and CM2 C, to be reasonably quick at writing. Au contraire… They must be descendants of the scribes who wrote the Bible because it takes them an eternity to arrange themselves and transcribe four sentences. I have forgotten just how much children will copy their teachers. I write each phrase in a different colour to distinguish it and to simplify the following part of the lesson. However, when it’s the children’s turn to write down my words of wisdom most of them spend half the time using multi-coloured pens to transcribe the sentences. There are a few shrieks of joy when I tell them they can use different colours but I’ll know better for next time to make them stick to black and blue.
Also last week I had asked them all to bring in four cut-out images of people to stick in their copies for a dialogue exercise. Only two students from each class have managed to do this and even at that some of the images are way to big with one cut-out of Beyoncé doubling as a sizeable Halloween mask. Their teachers are more irritated with them than I am but it’s up to me to teach them English so when we’re done with the sentence writing we continue with an adaptation of the cut-out exercise. I quickly draw two scenarios with a stick man and a stick woman in each and both with blank speech bubbles which I later fill with simple dialogue. I ask the children to copy these two layouts but yet again this proves too difficult for most. The reason I asked them to bring in cut-outs was simply to save time drawing images but without the cut-outs my class turns into an Art class with children going to great pains to design their icons. I draw a few stick men for the less artistic students to hurry them up and eventually we get through the lesson.
Perhaps I expected too much from them within too short a time but one of the teachers is really embarrassed by his class and asks them why they act like bébés (babies). In hindsight it my lesson contained material that was too different and too much too quick, and with the holidays coming up they are definitely not in work mode. However, forgetfulness and slowness/artistic care cost them a slice of cake though I do hand out monkey nuts to my little monkeys at the end of the session.
I have break time to reconsider my lesson plan for the younger classes – CE2 C and CE2 B. I’m adamant to get some solid English done but this time I’m more conscious of their capabilities – and the time constraints. Each class succeeds in telling me the phrases we previously learnt and surprisingly they’re quicker at transcribing them than the older classes. I don’t totally let them off with forgetting their cut-outs as I get them to note it for our next class. The second half goes well with the kids enraptured by tales of Halloween. I hang up a Halloween poster which includes most of the usual creepy creatures and spooky characters. A few of the younger children recoil at the sight of the spiders and bats on my flashcards. Of course I have to explain most of it in French as witch cackles and ghost howls can only go so far… I get a few kids up to do Trick or Treat. They choose a flashcard to correspond to their costume and they knock on my door/desk and say “Trick or Treat”. I sing the Trick or Treat tune for them and they then repeat it with me:
Trick or Treat. Trick or Treat.
Give me something nice to eat.
If you don’t I don’t care,
I’ll put spiders in your hair.
When I’ve handed out monkey nuts I explain how after doing Trick or Treat the children will return home to play games and eat their treats. I explain how to bob for apples and coins, and choose a few from each class to try to get a bite from the suspended Granny Smith. Eventually a winner is found and they get the slobbery apple. I unveil my brack which is received by gasps and shrieks of joy. I explain the symbolic presence of different items in traditional bracks: a ring for marriage, a coin for wealth, a piece of fabric for fine fashion and a twig for hardship. The kids are clearly more interested in tasting my wares so that becomes the perfect way to end the class with them singing Trick or Treat while I offer around segments of sweet barm brack.
It’s soon time to head into town to meet Nicola, David and Karla. I decide to bring my bowl and brack back home as the cleaners would probably not appreciate finding cake crumbs and rats outside my locker and I wouldn’t appreciate having my locker cleaned out by repulsive rodents or hungry humans. I meet the trio in town and we wander about looking for travel agencies to book our ferry tickets for Guadeloupe and Dominica. We pass on the agency fee of €15 each and decide to plod on to the port later for a cheaper ferry fare. Karla leaves us and goes off to the library, Bibliothèque Schoelcher, in the hope of finding some English books.
Nicola and I are famished so we go for a lunch of pork chops, onion sauce and sautéed potatoes in the Mayflower. David later rejoins us for a drink after buying an electric fan for his flat. He says his place will never, however, be as cool as Rachel and Sara’s place in Diamant. The girls have a huge house with four bedrooms, a super sound system, stacks of CDs, a 50” TV, a table tennis table and of course, a private pool. He tells all about the party we passed on over the weekend. There’s no real gossip; just the usual full fools and drunken displays in the pool. On a more sobering note someone actually drowned at Diamant beach while they were there on Saturday.
We continue on our sea-farers voyage and go to port to buy our ferry tickets. As we book them together we qualify for a family ticket; Nicola is the Mammy and David and I are her squabbling offspring. Nicola’s own mother rings as we wander through La Savanne on our way back into town. We then wander through the market at the edge of the park and I try on a dress which Nicola gets for me as my birthday present. J There’s plenty of chat left in us so we go for drinks in cool cyber café. All too soon it’s time to head home on the bus.
We have a meeting with the CAF (Caisse d’Allocation Familiales) on Wednesday which will hopefully allow us to get some money back off our rent. We need Madame Arlette to furnish us with a contract de location and the première quittance de loyer so we bring her up a barm brack and our month’s rent to sweeten her up. There’s no need to try win her over as she’s naturally a generous and caring lady, and if anything it’s herself and Charles who pull out all the stops as they give us cake and cider (oh, yeah!) and fresh fruit. We don’t go straight to business but once again the Chinese and their oddities crop up. This time it’s talk about Chinese food and how a Chinese shop in Fort-de-France was closed by the health authorities after dog food was found to be a main ingredient in one of their pâtés. The conversation hops from ambiguous oriental dishes to real Créole cooking. Arlette explains how the accras du morue which are served in Martinique are more a tourist dish. The real accras are filled with cabbage, carrot, giraumon and malanga and other grated goodies, and then deep-fried to become delicious spicy beignets (fritters).
With our tummies full of fruitcake and our hands full of fresh fruit we ramble downstairs to our humble abode for another sweet slumber.
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