It’s our last day at Le Stage d’Accueil in Sainte-Luce. Luckily my Spanish comrades and I packed-up the night before so there’s no mad mess to sort out as we float about zombie style. I’m only too glad to skip the shower and leave the bungalow as my wine and Carib beer fuelled escapades the night before did not have the desired effect of making me nod-off immediately, so I still had to suffer the heat and hungry, human-sucking hummers before I drifted.
Le petit déjeuner is the usual feeble fare of bread and hot chocolate. We get green oranges today which just make an almighty mess; but we are in the Mess Hall as some American pointed out.
Rachel, from Australia and Saba, from Spain, have returned from their first night in their lodgings near Diamant and are now content to have settled in. David, from Scotland, is also working in Schoelcher but he can’t move into his campus accommodation until Monday. Fortunately, Nicola and I being being cailiní flathulaicha, offer to put him up. Unfortunately for Bex and Francesca they are now homeless as their landlord gave their place in Schoelcher to someone else, and they still have to decide what to do with Angela, from England, who is only staying for 3 months. Quelle joie! Bienvenue à la Martinique les filles. Perhaps Gilbert, our resident Dell Boy, can help them out – if they help him out too! ;-) Clin d’œil…
Our agenda for the day is as follows:
8h00-16h00: Découvert de l’île
Déjeuner à l’extérieur (reservation restaurant sud)
17h : Rencontre avec les tuteurs pour rejoindre les logements attribués
Some of the tourisme et animation students from Bellevue are back again to test our knowledge of Martinique with an obscure chasse de trésor (treasure hunt) which sees most of us furtively flicking through our Welcome Packs for the answers. My team consists of Maria (Spain), Marco (Italy-England) and Alex (Northern Ireland). I thought the name CocoLocoTiers would be a neat team name but other names of flowers and fruit are divvied out so we end up becoming Palétuvier which means Mangrove; it’s a common tree with grows in swampy areas.
We’re soon off in our cool, air-conditioned coaches but as soon as we’re just seated and settled, admiring the view, our assigned étudiante produces us with our first set of questions. Maria and I are ready with our maps and booklets so we start on the Martinique specific questions, while Alex and Marco crack on with the bonus round which consists of questions about our own countries of origin. A question on the capital of Ireland and the national Scottish instrument are among the easiest while we would have been stumped later on if it wasn’t for Maria with her quick-fire knowledge of South America.
Our first destination was the rum distillery at Trois-Rivières where we got the low-down on the rum making process (www.rhumdemartinique.com). The gift shop was full of quirky coconut souvenirs at obscene prices. Free coconut pieces were passed around to whet our appetites as we browsed. Then, after the informative informality of the tour we were no longer still as we dropped to the floor for another bonus round - or jeu as Catherine calls it. This time, in the sweltering heat (36ºC), each team had to pick a member to do push-ups. It was absolute madness with the teacher team supposedly urging-on us Caucasian critters from their shady sidelines. Quelle folie! Of course Gethin, being a lifeguard, wanted to flex his muscles. Though, in fairness the four participating/precipitating ladies gave the lads a good run in the sun. Despite having a video camera 2 inches from my face I managed to clock-up 36 (girly) push-ups in a minute with Gethin getting in 48 manly manoeuvres. It must have been just as stressful for the rest of the bunch to watch us in that heat; so stressful in fact that Nicola reached for her fags, only to find Missy Elliot telling her smoking was interdit. Nicola didn’t snap but she did take a snap of a tractor for our Irish farmer friend. Enjoy that John!
Thankfully the mention of a dégustation (tasting session) meant that drinking rum was not forbidden. Some time later we reluctantly shot back our ti-punch and shuffled from our shaded haven under the giant stone-based moulins (windmills; used to crush the sugarcane for rhum blanc, brun and ambré).
I don’t think our tour guides gave much prior thought to what the bumpy, twisty journey from Trois-Rivères to L’Anse Cafard could bring-up after our previous rum antics but all-in-all we arrived at our destination to view La Maison du Bagnard and to play another silly game which involved throwing a rubber ball into a bucket. La Maison du Bagnard is a tiny wooden house which was built by a convict during the 1960’s. Apart from it’s multi-coloured panels, the only awe-inspiring aspect is that it overlooks the famous Rocher du Diamant (Diamond Rock). This 175 metre high rock, out in the Caribbean Sea, looks like a diamond; hence it’s name. From 1804 to 1805 it was the place of “passionate flight” between the French and the English but nowadays it is a refuge for seabirds and is known as the most beautiful diving site in Martinique. At the Mémorial de l’Anse Cafard we saw gigantic white men shaped statues which pay tribute to the shackled slaves who died on a sinking slave ship in 1830, April 8th.
Finally we got to «Cap 110» where we dined on Diamant’s beach, sheltered and surrounded by almond trees and conifers. Traditional Creole food was on the menu and it was beyond doubt the best meal of the week; well, at €20 a head it would want to be. Punch Planteur for l’apéritif, l’assiette créole for starter, which consisted of accras de morue and crabe farci (spicy deep-fried seafood), a suspicious looking boudin créole which David insisted tasted worse than Haggis, and the usual mixture of concombre râpé, rondelles de tomate, carotte râpée and salade vert. Columbo de poulet (chicken with mixed spices and grilled rice) was my choice of main course. The other option was grilled fish which came with two sauce choices – one being Sauce au Chien…eh, Dog Sauce! Karla opted for that after the waitress assured her it was just another spicy sauce – with bite no doubt. Between the heat and the huge portions most of us lamented at the fact that we couldn’t get doggy bags but bien sûr we all had room for dessert; either fruit salad or flan de coco. The coconut flan was more like a very moist pâté with treacle drizzled over it.
After we’d had our fill we had our mandatory post-meal stroll along the beach but it wasn’t long before we were back on the bus back to Sainte-Luce. Since we (in true Caribbean style) had been taking our time at each stop during the day we didn’t actually get to our final destination; Le Village de la Poterie at Trois-Ilets. I’m sure we probably missed out on the messiest group challenge of the day but just so you know here’s what one of our tourist brochures says about it:
« Identifier les terres argileuses, definer leur couleur, varier les formes formes de la matière qui a pris place sur ‘le tour’ ; le travail du potier, à l’image des poteries précolombiennes, a dépassé le caractère simplement utilitaire pour atteindre une dimension culturelle. »
If that description didn’t whet your appetite you only had to wait for 5 minutes back at Sainte-Luce before the skies opened and wet all in its path. Thankfully most of us were busy filling out the obligatory ‘questionnaire’ given to us by Catherine in the hope of getting some feedback on the Induction Week. This ‘questionnaire’ was so enforced in fact that I saw her counting the completed forms and when she noticed some missing she sent her posse on the search for the reluctant scribblers. Later on I even spotted poor Marco penned in at the responsable’s ‘round-up ranch’ with Missy-Elliot scrutinising his scrawls.
Madame Jaune and her accomplish inspected every bungalow, counting every piece of cutlery and crockery as they went along. I bid farewell to Ajacou and prayed I’d never need to stay in a sweaty stew-pot like that again. Supposedly in France (Martinique included), all big companies and organisations put money aside to create a Centre de Vacances like this one for their employees to holiday on the cheap. Hopefully as a French civil servant in Martinique I will not serve much more time at the CGSSM in Sainte-Luce…
With everybody packed into the Mess Hall Madame Ciserane started to divvy out the prizes for the chasse de trésor. To my astonishment the prizes were quite desirable with rum, tee-shirts, caps, bags, DVDs and pots of jam among the goods. The bizarre paper placemats with the long-legged ladies were the oddities. Palétuvier were awarded third place and so I went home with yet another bag to add to my already laden limbs.
For some getting from Sainte-Luce to Fort-de-France was just as difficult to organise as getting there in the first place. Josselyne, my responsable, arranged for Madame Jaune to give me a lift to Fort-de-France but when I added my ‘questionnaire’ to the pile one of the tourisme et animation teachers spotted IRLANDE written on my form and she proceeded to tell me how she had been to Dublin on a teachers course for two weeks and had thoroughly enjoyed her time there. Madame Odile’s jubilant junket tale propelled me to hop on the ‘I LOVE IRELAND’ bandwagon and I ended up zipping down the motorway in her sports car later that evening. I shared the lift with Cynthia, the tourism student who aided Palétuvier in our quest for pots of treasure (which turned out to be pots of jam). A Canadian singer, Garou, popped up in conversation and it turns out he’s in concert in Martinique during the week so that’s an option for some upcoming evening…
Nicola and David had got a lift with Marie-Ange to Lamentin and Nicola’s responsable, Chantal (the original mean email messenger) took them the rest of the way to Maison MontJean. I also switched from the sporty sports car to a spacious jeep as Madame Suzie dropped me home; though not before creaming the side of her 4x4 at the vicious bend on the main route. I was later told that Marie-Ange had a similar close-call with a bollard on the auto-route as she juggled her mobile and adjusted her stylish shades – it being near night-time at this stage.
I was only in the door two minutes when the others appeared. I had previously popped up to Madame Arlette and Charles to announce our arrival and I was told by Arlette that she had spotted both Nicola and me on ATV’s Wednesday and Saturday news. It’s amazing how quick we’ve infiltrated the Martinique media…
After a few beers and an in-depth analysis of the week in Sainte-Luce we soon headed for bed. We were all completely content, not just with the cool night-time air and a full fridge at our disposal but we were also at our ease knowing that there was a possibility of perhaps only one or two mosquito’s ravaging us in our sleep.
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