Bosco’s on Speed - Jeudi 02.11.06

Jeudi 02.11.06 Bosco’s on Speed

I wake to the sound of clapping. David’s coming to blows with lots of mini-Goliaths in the room next door. Thankfully the mossies have left me alone but Nicola seems to have taken the brunt during our bed-sharing stretch. I rustle up a breakfast of banane-jaune, lime blanched papaya and passion fruit. I then leave the others to tend to their mosquito mutilations and blood loss while I go out for a walk up to Fort Cachacrou only to lose my camera card along the way.

A rocky peninsula connects the ruined headland to the soiled mainland. You have the Atlantic on your left and the Caribbean and the sheltered Soufrière Bay on your right. It’s a fine day but I can’t help thinking how lonely my FujiFilm FinePix will be, and how pissed I am to have literally thrown away my holiday snaps.

A guy at the foot of the hill approaches me and tells me that I must purchase a pass to go to the fort. I’m not about to fork out EC$5 just to ramble over a few rocks so I tell him that I won’t do anything silly or dangerous and I continue on over the ankle-wrenching rockiness. I try to put my loss to the back of my mind as I mount the hill but my attention is halfway stuck in the craggy crevasses of my mind as I try to pinpoint where I could have dropped my camera card. I’m about halfway up the hill when I come face to face with thick undergrowth. The view is remarkable but I’m more stuck on retracing my steps so I resist scrambling through shrubs and turn back. I’m hoping, praying that Luke has left the garden untouched but my heart drops when I see new, neat piles of leaves and dirt along the path. At this stage I’ve come to terms with my loss though the others go on a card quest around the pathways.

We’ve decided to move closer to Roseau as Scotts Head has truly been done, dusted and drowned by us. We call the Sea World Guesthouse at Castle Comfort, just south of Roseau, and reserve rooms for the next two nights. The quote of two rooms for two nights at US$50 seems suspect but if we’ve learned anything from our short stay in Dominica it’s not to take anything at face value so we bite the bullet and arrange to stay at Sea World.

It’s strange that the owners of Ocean View have never called in on us. For all we know they may never have known we were coming and Luke will keep stumm and buy that new longed-for Sunday suit, cravat and mock-croc shoes with our money. We almost hope so because the tuber-ware and soup bowls in the cupboards will soon be turned into mosquito breeding grounds.

We make up two crude contracts of payment and get Luke to sign them. The poor chap takes about 5 minutes to sign one of them. I don’t think he had ever signed anything in his life up till now. David admits that he feels guilty for making the unfortunate fellow sign his life away. Is that mock-croc remorse Mr.Stevens? And are those mock-croc tears? We leave the EC$145 on the kitchen table and make a snappy exit.

The bay is full of early morning activity. Fishermen are selling their dawn discoveries on the pebbly beach. The multicoloured pile of slimy, shiny fish and dappled eels quickly disappears as residents and restaurateurs snap up the daily catch. Justin’s Mum, Dad and Uncle are trading there too. Justin and Kelvin will have a busy day today. In the distance you can see a gigantic cruise-liner docked at Roseau, and there’s another one at Pringle Bay just north of Roseau. There’s a small group at the bus stop so we let the first bus fill up and wait for the next. I wander off to a store to buy Oh Henry bars and get change. The shop is packed with punters watching cricket on TV. The South Indies beat South Africa for a change. It’s still odd to speak English again and it’s even stranger to walk into a bar full of lads and not get stared, hissed or perved out off it.

Back at the bus stop David is harassing hens by nailing them with pebbles. He has also made friends with one of the mangy mongrels which roam about the roadside. Nicola is sunning herself – only a week left until she goes home to Ireland so she needs to top-up now to wow the poor divils back home who are enduring sub-zero conditions. I stroll along the bay and find two American backpackers asleep under the awning of a tin shack.

A few whiteys seem to drift into Scotts Head now and again. It’s the end of the line. It could be a dead end. Not just route-wise but youth-wise. The small bit of information we got out of Justin last night amounted to the fact that he’s a bright spark who studies business and accountancy and works hard during the holidays to earn his crust. It may keep him in labels and in bread but what prospects lie ahead for him in this insular community with limited stock and limited worldwide scope. Perhaps Dominica keeps too much of a hold on its natural wealth.

A bus pulls up. It already looks full but we manage to squash ourselves in. It’s called Uprising but there are more uncomfortable feelings than those of unrest brewing within. The recommended capacity is 15 but there are 19 people jammed in… oh, there’s one more, a kid who doesn’t really count I guess because he’s packed in beside his mother, hardly breathing but still managing to munch away on biscuits. David and I are squeezed together with two other ladies and all our bags. Nicola has a bit more freedom up front. We get chatting to a lady who lives in England but was born here. I can hardly hear her though for the bouncy, bongo music and the odd whirring noise that seems to be punching its way out of the engine. It’s a bizarre combination; it sounds like we’re in a space ship listening to a hyped-up episode of Bosco. And we’re going at some speed. I’m surprised the weedy tyres haven’t exploded yet with the extra mass, the manic music and the erratic meandering. Pass the pills. I’m becoming spaced-out in this time capsule.

We do eventually get out of the petrol pod at Sea World Guesthouse though the reception here is just as absent as the last place. Murielle, the lady I rang, appears. She’s popping out of her dress and I swear she’s popping something else too. She’s annoyingly skittish and completely clueless about what to do with us. For starters she says she only has one room left yet she gives us three options. Also it turns out to be US$50 per room per night. We choose a room with a double and single bed and an ensuite but because there are three of us it’s now US$60 per night. Whatever! It has two fans, a balcony and overlooks the sea so it’s not all bad though I think you’d need to take Murielle’s weird ways with something less innocuous than a pinch of salt. The owner, Decima (like Demical without the the L!), returns and we settle on the room. Besides Decima can actually communicate normally with us, in English not gibberish, and the place is actually pretty cool; we’re close to town, right beside the sea and there’s nobody lurking at our door asking for more.

We need sustenance after our flighty morning so it’s off to Roseau we go. The town is only a half hour walk away but there’s so much to distract us en route that it takes that bit longer…

English and Kréyòl (Créole) are the two languages of Dominica. Créole is French for ‘indigenous’. In Dominica some believe that Créole represents someone with mixed blood. However, as a linguistic term is describes languages which show certain features and which originated from a particular contact situation. Variants of Caribbean Créole are noticed with respect to pronunciation, nasalization and particular words or expressions. This has to do with varying degrees of influence of the language sources of Créole: African, French, Carib or English. Around Roseau for example, the accent tends to be more flat, particularly among youth because of the strong influence or dominance of English.

As we’re walking along the road to Roseau I notice many strange yet amusing uses of the English language; some are more quotidian than others, others show a unique, funny, even out-of-place use of English, and Englishness. Nonetheless its use, or misuse rather, keeps me entertained along the way. I think that the people of Dominica can get away with this sort of drollness, and a certain amount of smut, because they have Créole to fall back on and so they can justifiably blame their abuse or exploitation of English on their Créole heritage.

For starters, as I previously noted in Scotts Head, all the cars, pick-ups, buses and boats have unique names and strange bumper stickers. There are the usual religious slogans such as: Jesus Saves. Walk in the Light of the Lord. God is Good., but other catchphrases also fall into view: Go on, talk about me. What you lookin’ at? Babe on board. Businesses also often take a bizarre approach. We pass a ramshackle hardware store with a painted sign outside: All umbrella repairs. Dominican’s drinkers are obviously unabashed by their mixed heritage with public houses taking on names such as All Nation’s Bar and Black Boy Bar.

The Irish made an impact here too. Not only is there a parish of St. Patrick but Guinness posters, murals and advertisements are to be seen everywhere even side-by-side with Kubuli promotions.

We stop to take pictures at the Window on the Sea bar. Beverage advertisements take wordplay to a new level. First off we have the pretty mild-named Sting; a drink advertised as being full of vitamins, minerals and bois bandé (or bwa bandé in Kréyòl). I’m sure it’d put a sting in your tail and hair on your chest as one ingredient, bois bandé, is a stimulating drink in itself. More explicit advertising would have to come via Ginger Spot. It’s not a beauty blemish. It’s a drink made from red wine and ginger. The over-sized ‘G’ in ginger is placed in such a way on the logo that it reads like Ginger G-Spot. A few of those and it’ll not only your taste buds that are excited. Of course we can’t forget the Bois Bandé elixir. It’s an aphrodisiac and it’s also recommended for those who are feeling down or worn-out. The drink is made from the sap and bark pulp of the same-named tree native to Dominica. The tag Bois Bandé is a clever (and clear) card to play. Bois is French for wood whereas Bandé has many meanings: from blindfolded to bandaged and from taut to tensed, though I reckon “hard on” is the desired denotation, and required effect.

Of course, if you can’t get the money together for those magical mixtures you can always smoke your brains out on the cheap. “Do you smoke reefers? Do you want to buy weed? Are you here to get high?” are muttered at us as we pass the market vendors – it beats the Moore Street mantra of “Five for a pound” any day!

David reckons that this would be a dangerous place to stay in for much longer than our four day trip allows. I like Roseau’s vibe. The animated atmosphere, cheery chaps and joyful tunes detract from the town’s obvious poverty. It’s an assortment of narrow streets with direction signs and publicities painted unto otherwise concrete walls. Down these streets you find colourful tumbledown taverns, meandering markets and ramshackle colonial houses with patterned wooden shutters and sagging French-style balconies on stilts.

We have a late lunch. Once again it’s a either chicken or tuna on the menu. However, we’ve no choice about what we watch on TV – reruns of The Bold and the Beautiful. We refuel on CocaCola, wander around the many markets and pop into the Dominica Museum. We also pass by the colourful Methodist Church, the pink, shuttered New Parliament Building and the Free Library, built from funds donated by an American philanthropist. We skipped dessert earlier so when I spy an ice-cream stand I know it’s the way to go. I get a few scoops of Heavenly Harsh. The tasty treat of marshmallow, cherries and nuts doesn’t last long.

There’s a cruise-liner docked near the promenade so we hop unto the wall, stretch out and watch the sun set. A guy calling himself Leonard approaches us. He’s not off the ship – he’s just off his head. Leonard and Nicola talk about Bush, war and fair trade. He offers her a gif’. It’s a vial of snake sperm which supposedly has healing qualities. She laps it up when he tells her it’s good for rheumatism – good for giving rheumatism perhaps… There’s some deep-digging crotch action as Leonard gets Nicola her change. After buying snake sperm I’m not surprised she doesn’t recoil from his parting handshake after his recent monetary mishandling. Another random soul appears. He gazes intently at David for some time with bulging bloodshot brown eyes and finally asks for a fag. Even after David has refused to give a cancer stick to this space-cadet the guy still stares at him.

Passengers are filing unto the ship. I decide to ask the sailor at the gate about work on a cruise ship. I get my information but I also find out just how small the world is; his mother is from a neighbouring town just down the road from my home in Ireland. We’re a long way from Carrickmacross, County Monaghan and Kingscourt, County Cavan but its funny how the world works. Nicola and David secretly filmed my conversation with the white sea-man. They were also taking bets on how long it would take before I got into the cock-pit. We watch the ship sail into the sun set. Barbados is its next port of call. The other cruise-liner on the northern side of Roseau also appears on the horizon.

We leave Roseau and head to the Window on the Sea bar for drinks over the ocean. More drinks are purchased but we decide to take them home for some beer by the pier. We also stock up on provisions for tomorrow as we’ve arranged for ‘your man, our man’ in Scotts Head to bring us on a tour to some of Dominica’s hot-spots. A customer at the till is also stocking up for the night as he buys condoms. He asks the cashier to decide on what variety he should get. A lady in the queue remarks that she can “help him with that” if needs be… I gather my eggs and we scuttle back to Sea World in a taxi shuttle.

We’ve Kubuli, Tenants, Heineken and moonshine madness on the pier. Two guys from the hostel join us for some bevies. Jason is Dominican. He’s also a deportee and an ex-drug-trafficker. He’s well sound and talks openly about his time in federal prison and jail in America and Dominica. Jason later leaves our gathering but our other guest, David, from Venezuela stays on. Vennie doesn’t speak much English and we don’t have much Spanish but with the beer and cheer we manage to communicate effectively.

The moonlight is so bright. We’re stretched out along the jetty as if its the sun’s we’re soaking up. We decide to go for a swim. Spanish David is first off the mark. It’s so relaxing to float about in the calm of the night and the stillness of the moonlight. The moonlight is so flattering too. You really couldn’t find more suitable light for midnight frolicking.

I lie back in the water and listen to the faint fizzing and the languid lapping of the waves. Of course the quietness doesn’t stick. There’s a little plastic boat at the end of the jetty and the lads are in it. We all clamber in, unhitch the tether and Vennie rows us about. We’re all giggling like school girls and the jokes and jibes are flying. We do go overboard on the comments and it’s not long before Nicola sends David flying too. She didn’t have a muffler to gag him with so she just shoved him into the sea to silence him. I wonder if that’s still considered as ‘girl power’. We fail to keep her steady and we all inadvertently follow David as we’re sent flailing into the water. The boat is full of water so the lads get in again to bail it out. Good job Jason was gone at this stage as I don’t think he could have helped us much with that (hee-hee!). Back on the beer… umm, pier, we’re all in high spirits again, especially when Vennie returns with more bevvies. The taunting and quick-fire speak is well fuelled but as sleepiness sets in it becomes a challenge to stay awake. We’ve no more lovely liquids to consume and no more motherly turns of phrase to supply, and since we’ve a jam-packed day ahead we gather our bottles and head to bed with the many mixed mantras of the afternoon’s antics swirling in our skulls ;-)