Scenes from Open House at the Center--12/17 and 12/18

In the news lately

A couple of weeks ago I had an evening of carnage. It was rather upsetting.  I was leaving my house at about 8:30 at night to meet some friends in town. At that hour I can still catch the bus. It’s about a two-minute walk out to the road where I catch my regular bus. There are always a number of people and animals out and about at all hours. Just before the road is a little bridge. As I was approaching, I heard this screech and thunk. A car ran over a dog. I swear I saw skull meeting tire, but the dog ran away. I was horrified, but almost the worst part is that everyone standing around just laughed!

So I went along on my way. It was still early enough and there was a fair amount of traffic. But just coming into town where the road hugs the harbor there was a massive traffic jam. The bus inched along for a while, the finally everyone just got out. We could see there was some sort of commotion ahead. As I passed where the crowd was, part of me wanted to be dignified and not rubberneck at whatever the situation was. But curiosity got the better of me so I went over. There was a boat pulled right up to the sidewalk, and the entire crowd was kind of peering into the harbor. I went over and there was a dead guy stretched out on the sidewalk. Apparently he had drowned, but I was puzzled because it can’t be more than a couple feet deep right by the sidewalk. It’s way too disgusting to swim there anyway. But probably 90 percent of people here can’t swim. Go figure.

That week in the paper they had more of the story. The debate was whether the guy had actually drowned or been dumped there. They said he was bloody and his face was cut-- something that doesn’t normally just happen in drowning.

Another rather tragic situation was in the south of the island. A 13 year-old girl was discovered murdered and raped. The saddest thing is that she had been raped several times before. There was speculation that she was murdered because she was going to report one of her attackers. This has motivated me to research getting involved with a girls’group in the new year—a lot of young girls here have real problems with self-esteem. That’s something I would love to help with.

Murders are actually rather uncommon here. It’s still shocking to people, not just a footnote in the news.

So in a little bit lighter news…. This week there has been a big fuss about shoplifting at a store in town. There are a couple stores, S&S, The China Store and the $3 Store, which are the island’s equivalent of Wal-Mart, only like 100 times more low-life. Nonetheless, they are good places to go for household things or odds and ends. As you might suspect, The China Store is owned by a Chinese family. This week on the news they’ve been reporting that a famous Calypsonian (Calypso singer) was suspected of shoplifting and thrown out of the store. It seems to me like it was mostly a misunderstanding. But there was practically a riot outside the store. For one, people were upset about this particular woman being accused. But the worse part is that one of the Chinese clerks at the store allegedly made some sort of remark about "you people wouldn’t even be allowed inside of my country". This has been in the news for three days now, and the Chinese embassy has gotten involved. I just have to laugh every time the show the footage. All of these people are getting in a fuss and yelling and shoving each other around.

Work was chaos all week. Tuesday and Wednesday were an open house. It was a big fair to show what the trainees from this cycle have learned. There were displays from all of the courses and free samples and demonstrations from bartending, pastry, gourmet cooking and cosmetology (massages, nails, hair, and facials). It was fun but really a ZOO! It was also nice to see how far all of the trainees have come. Kenvin and I were jointly in charge of photography, and we took over 200 pictures.

The turnout wasn’t as good as everyone had hoped but there were some notable appearances. Deb stopped by for a while with Brian, another PC friend from our training group who lives on St. Vincent. Deb stayed longer and got a massage and some ghetto fabulous nails. TV crews from all three stations were there. Brian and I were in the background of several shots. The most notable presence at the open house, though, was the Governor General. The GG is an elected/appointed local who acts as the representative for the Queen of England. She lives in a really fancy Victorian house that overlooks the city and the harbor and she has a fancy chauffeured car with a guard. I had seen the car one other time. It’s a long black thing, and instead of a regular license plate it has a crown, and also little flags on the hood with a crown, like you would have for a funeral. This was the big deal of the day. We all had lessons on how to properly address the Governor General ("Your Excellency") and how to shake hands. Before she came, I was expecting someone kind of hoity-toity and pretentious. It was nice to see she was very friendly and in touch with the people. She took time to talk with all of the trainees and hear their spiels on their areas of specialty. The whole time I trotted along with the camera. Mr. Azeez showed her and her attaché around. At first I got a little annoyed. Mr. Azeez introduced the GG to many of the trainees, all of the staff, and the facilitators. Meanwhile I was standing there the whole time with the camera. I was about to ask for an introduction, when there was a little bit of a lull in the whole parade and Mr. Azeez was on the other side of the room. I was standing right there, so I stepped up and introduced myself and showed her around the rest of the room. All in all she stayed for almost an hour and a half and saw the presentations from each class.

I was proud of myself for stepping up to speak to her. In all of my jobs so far I’ve been an underling. One thing I work on while I’m here is commanding respect. It sounds a little out there, but I don’t think it is. For one, we are here as outside and expert consultants on whatever topic. The center would be equally happy, in the day-to-day at least, to have me be the backup phone-answerer. I need to put my foot down on the matter. It’s not that I’m unwilling to answer the phone from time to time, but here people are given an inch and take about 4 miles. One time last week, someone came and interrupted my lunch to ask me to watch the phone. There’s no reason this person could not have done the phone himself. So I just try to keep on top of that. Being a mouse would be detrimental to my project, which down the line will involve asking for money. Also it will be good for me in the long run.

In keeping with all that, I asserted myself again yesterday, also at the open house. It was really crowded and I was taking pictures in one of the rooms. As I went to leave the room, a guy was standing right in the door. I stood there for a couple seconds, hoping he’d get the clue and step aside. He didn’t, so I said excuse me. He moved aside some, and I kind of snuck by. But just as I did the guy bumped me, not hard, but solidly. I chupsed at him (a tooth-suck noise people do here for disapproval) and walked away. Then I hear shouting down the hall, "Whitey! You think you can just push me like that," etc. Mr. Azeez, the General Manager, was standing right there, and I just told him, "I said excuse me, I try to pass and you bumped me." He kept on yelling, but I just walked away. I was put off by the whole thing but not as annoyed as I have been on occasion by other things (probably a good sign). I just went about my business. About 10 minutes later Mr. Azeez came and found me to talk. He had the guy in his office and the guy apologized in a very genuine way. I was glad to have the thing resolved and wasn’t really mad about it. The place is too small to have enemies, and I would worry that he’d get his friends against me or something.

After that, I went into town to pick up lunch with Milan and Yaga, the maintenance and security guy. It was a "Lucian Moment". My Ecuadorean people will recall "Ecua-moments" and it’s the same thing. We had called the day before to order the lunches, but even so they weren’t ready when we went to pick them up. We waited around for nearly half an hour. Yaga had a chip on his shoulder about something else, so he got annoyed at the restaurant and lit up a giant cigar in the middle of the place. It probably took the lady 5 minutes to care enough to tell him to put it out. Everyone in the restaurant was annoyed because the service was really slow. One couple was trying to pay and leave, but there was no one at the register to take their money. I might have considered walking out, but they patiently waited for the cashier.

We were sitting at sort of a bar. They had one of those juice dispensers that kind of bubbles and has a fountain inside. One was leaking into the drip tray underneath the machine. Eventually the drip tray overflowed and started running across the bar and onto Yaga. It was coconut water, and Yaga got upset that it was wasting by dripping on the floor. So he took a straw from just behind the bar and proceeded to drink the coconut water right off the bar and out of the drip tray. Finally the waitress noticed and came to mop some of it up. But in the meantime, another lady had come up and said, "Give me that straw when you’re done, I’ll drink some too!"

One last anecdote…

Laura is one of the volunteers who works in the schools. She lives in Babonneau, which is a little bit of a backwater. Normally she doesn’t teach in a classroom, but she filled in one day at the infant school when a teacher was absent. She said the kids made a big fuss about the white lady. They were curious, so they all had to come and touch her white skin. Then, as she put it, they all had to come and touch her coolie hair (which, I’m informed, is in-between, wavy hair). So she said they got all of that taken care of, when one kid raised his hand. In all the curiosity about the white lady, the kid asked where white people come from. Laura said she wasn’t quite sure whether the kid was getting at birds-and-bees, or where was she from, or what exactly. She also said she didn’t know how to answer anyway because the kids were a little young to understand geography. Luckily, another kid raised his hand and said, "I know where white people come from!" Laura felt off the hook since she wouldn’t have to answer the question herself. The kid said "I know where they come from, the beach!!"

We all had a good laugh over that one.