Alors, donc, voilà – here I am two months after touchdown in Réunion. Certainly getting used to the ways of this lil’ place by now, though once exams are over in November I plan to be travelling around the island. So, whilst I tuck in to some unidentified exotic fruit which I just bought from the market (‘Mais non, Sophie! Ça, c’était le Fruit de Poison!’), I shall reel off the various activities of the last couple of weeks.
Food glorious food!
In celebration of the two-month anniversary, I took my first trip to Igloo, the gelateria in Saint Denis. Curiously, as the server went to get me a scoop of vanilla, a John Lennon climbed out of the tub yelling ‘We all live in a Yellow Ice Cer-ream!’ Once he’d cleaned himself off, there was a big genealogical puff of smoke and he turned into Katie Wilding and she ate a big ice-cream with me and got a mention in my blog.
This week I arranged for a local student I met to come and teach me and a few friends a traditional Créole recipe – Rougail Saucisse. I clearly paid little attention to the subtleties of French cuisine, as when I told him I couldn’t find any saucisse in the shop, and had bought saucisson instead, I was met with a look of horror. The real reason I had bought that was actually because it was cheaper, but evidently I made a big culinary mistake. We made my little invention of Rougail Saucisson anyway; a sausage tomato-ey sauce with curcuma and good stuff, I’ll be bringing the spices home to make it on request.
‘Alors, ‘l’espérance de vie’, est-ce que quelqu’un peut expliquer ce que cela veut dire?’ – Academic joys !
A translation (of my most likely incorrect sentence) : ‘So, this ‘life expectancy’ lark, can somebody tell me what it means?’ Woah there. Cited from my Geography class. As well as this gem, I’ve heard ‘ the global average fertility rate is eight children per woman’, and ‘the reason why many large cities in southern Africa have large bidonvilles (shanty towns) is because their governments can’t afford to cope with the growing population’. The latter of which led me to immediately ask my French friend next to me ‘... how do you say ‘corrupt’ in French?’ My, my. So I suppose in order to get good grades we just have to go with the flow and play them at their own game. And if that metaphorical game happens to be marbles, they may well have already lost.
Free things!
Last week I had a meeting with the volunteers who help out at the theatre on campus; I’ve signed myself up to help with show promoting and selling tickets for a couple of shows. Yay independence! One of the people working there had some exclusive free tickets to a piano recital in town, and knowing that I “play” piano asked me to join! It was a-mazing. The four encores didn’t even suffice for me, and he played some juicy ol’ Chopin too which m’a fait plaisir!
‘Go East, they are all closed up...’
A couple of weekends ago the whole lack of independence thing did start to get to me a tad, so I thought, right, I’ll play ‘Independent Women’ by Destiny’s Child and go and explore the East coast! Coincidentally, I suppose, the West coast of the island is, well ... Westernised. The East is where you can find towns which apparently resemble Mumbai more than they do Cannes.
Turns out everything is closed on a Saturday, as well as Sunday, in the East (I shall return during the week). Dommage! At one point I thought I’d struck solo-adventure GOLD – I could hear some very loud music and a microphone projected voice which carried over about five streets in a quiet area by the sea. Brilliant, I thought, a festival! It sounded great, I followed some other people heading in that direction, turned round the corner ready to see the – oh. Turns out Leader Price had a stall outside, blasting out Kool and The Gang, mixed with ‘et aujourd’hui vous pouvez acheter trois fromages pour un euro!’ Dommage! Situated right next to a beautifully bright Hindu temple and some little Créole bungalows, it was just one of so many examples you see here of France just coming and stamping its big neocolonial foot on any space that might be left. Two things to add on that point:
- Speaking Créole was effectively banned by Francois Mitterand when in power, if I understood correctly then ear-chopping was often a punishment. And even now it’s strongly discouraged in schools and projected as a ‘dirty’ language.
- I read in Le Quotidien that 180,000 homes are to be built on the island by 2030. Which then brings the projected population quite correctly up to 1 million.
Even so I did see some attractive buildings and did some general atmosphere soaking-up; you don't have to be at some tourist attraction to appreciate what's around you.
‘Les endormis jouent cache-cache! Naturellement ...’
This weekend we took a trip to Jardin d’Eden, apparently a chameleon hotspot. Although sadly to no avail in that department, I participated in my very first hitch-hike, and did get to go beachside afterwards to see a metre-long orange sea cucumber shimmy towards us. Awesome!
Oh and a couple of weeks ago I went to an extreme sports film festival, which we watched from a cliff overlooking the beach and the white horses of the Indian Ocean. Awesome!
OH and this weekend was also Réunion’s Oktoberfest ... ja it’s true. La Dodo did indeed lé la, but I think drinking fruity island beer was cheating a bit. Ah well ... Awesome!
OH and I went to visit the Cool Family to teach; now their daughter knows how to say ‘The crocodile is dancing in the kitchen’ and other such useful phrases. I should teach them ‘Dorr’. Awesome!
OH and I wore a palm tree to a party. Awesome!
Phew! C’est tout!
Hope all is well up there!
Sophie
