Christmas Day in Cayenne

Merry Christmas everyone! Jack and I had a very quiet day trying to stay out of the heat and humidity. However, the sun and good weather finally drew us outside in the afternoon and off we went to the beach. Would you like to come with us on our little walk? Once we leave our apartment complex, we go down the street to the roundabout and then turn right. (Click on photos to enlarge)

Next, we'll go straight along this road for about five minutes...

...and we'll turn left down the first dirt road.

After another right then another left, we arrive at this street. If you look carefully, you can see the ocean at the end of the street.

In just another two minutes, here we are at the beach! Along the way, one of the houses seems to emerge from the luxurious vegetation.

This will be the first time we ever go swimming in the ocean on Christmas Day. The water was actually quite nice and warm, and we had fun splashing around.

We wrote you a little message in the sand just before a wave came to wipe it away. Can you make out what it says?

As we left to return home, we admired the sunset through the palm trees.

In just three days, we'll be leaving for the Salvation Islands about one hour by ferry off the coast of French Guiana. I promise lots of photos. Until then, merry Christmas once again!

Merry Christmas...

Finally! School vacation began yesterday and I've got until January 5th to rest, do housework, prepare lessons and correct papers AT MY OWN PACE!

The rainy season has also started and our backyard is flooding more and more often these days... (Click on pictures to enlarge)

 The rainy season, however, is not mansoon season like in Bangladesh with continuous rains for months. Here, it's just storms every day ranging between 10 minutes to a couple of hours. Temperatures are cooler so it's easier to stay outside during the afternoon.

The rainy season is also bringing more critters into the backyard... mostly giant sized such as this grasshopper...

or this moth.

 Frogs and toads are everywhere. This frog decided to stick to our sliding glass door for a couple of hours...

...and we found another small frog hiding amongst the dishes in our kitchen sink.

One positive side to the frequent rains, humid atmosphere, and steady heat is the general effect on my garden. My plants are thriving and I can enjoy many flowers in full bloom such as my orchids...

or hibiscus...

and a few others.

Next week, Jack and I will be leaving for the Salvation Islands to spend four days together on this little tropical paradise (but with a dark history). I promise lots of pictures and some explanations about what you can see and do there. Until then... merry Chistmas!

Grocery shopping in French Guiana

As an overseas department (or state) of France, French Guiana has most stores that exist in metropolitain France. It's just getting there that's a little different.

Since there's very little public transportation here, it's necessary to have one's own car. To go grocery shopping, Jack and I first drive through the rain forest for about 7 minutes. (Click on photos to enlarge).

 Some houses have been built along the road...

 Géant is the closest large grocery store from our house. As you can see, it's pretty big.

 We can find pretty much everything we need at Géant. The prices are about 30% higher than in France because everything is imported from Europe. Also, French Guiana is part of the European community which means that it can't trade freely with its neighboring countries in South America... there are European trade quotas, high customs fees and European law requirements and restrictions. This situation has thus created a paradox : people in Guiana are forced to buy their products from Europe at high prices whereas the same products exist in South America at low prices...

Our local slum...

Although French Guiana is part of France, the world's fifth largest economy, it is located in South America and is surrounded by utter destitution. Our two neighboring countries, Surinam and Brazil, are facing great challenges to create decent living conditions for their average citizens. To increase the disparities, French Guiana offers free health care, unemployment money and a higher-learning educational system which costs barely nothing. In this manner, French Guiana has become a magnet to attract large waves of poor immigrants from throughout South America and the Caribbean. The problem is that the population is exploding : France also gives every family money depending on the number of children they have... the more children, the more money. Making babies has thus become a business here : pregnancies often start while in junior high school or high school and many families have between 8 and 13 children. (Incidentally, having 8 children pays about 1,500 euros per month... That's the salary I earned when I started my career as a teacher.)

It's all happening too fast. There's just not enough housing being built to accomodate for the rapid rise in population. As a result, people build slums to settle in-- anywhere and everywhere.

In order to go to the grocery store from our apartment,  we have to drive through a slum which is just a few minutes away from where we live. At first, it appears almost normal... (click on images to enlarge)

 Most of the inhabitants here are from Haiti or Brazil which is often proudly displayed.

Some houses almost look normal...

But it keeps getting worse as you go down the street.

As none of these houses have an official address, the inhabitants just buy a mail box and install it alongside the main road. No wonder mail is so slow in French Guiana!

Worst of all are the environmental and sanitary problems of our slums. There's no evacuation of sewege, little running water, and electricity is hacked from city power lines.... as a result, there are often power malfunctions or outages and other residents down the line have to pay for the stolen electricity on their bill.

Garbage collection is also a problem. The city organizes rounds for the garbage trucks to collect what they can. However, many of the slum inhabitants also litter and throw their garbage in mounds along the roadside.

Is the French government capable of handling this situation in French Guiana? What can we do? Help!

The homeowner's blues...

Buying an appartment in French Guiana has been a very disappointing experience. We quickly realized that there was no trusting the lady real estate agent who sold us the house. Her promises of an apartment in nearly perfect shape were either lies or incompetency. Within days of moving in, the apartment began to fall apart.

The toilet leaked; two ceiling lights stopped working; my bedroom window handle came off in my hands; two plugs don't function; Jack's air conditioning in his bedroom stopped working; the garden gate fell down when we opened it...

And now this! One day, Jack and I were appalled to discover our back yard flooded. (Click on photos to enlarge)

Worse still, the strong stench made us think it was sewege water. We immediately called the residence's management and our insurance but unfortunately, as this is French Guiana, there's nothing much to be done.

When the waters had finally dried up, we took another look in our back yard and found the culprit.

A broken pipe!

After some help from our building's maintenance man, we discovered that the pipe brings dirty rain water into our garden. Actually, the pipe should continue into the sewer but apparently it was never attached to anything.

The bad news is that our insurance doesn't cover this incident AND they've told us we're not allowed to touch the pipes that go through our garden because they belong to our residence complex. We're currently waiting for the constructor's insurance company to expertise the problem. Normally, they should recognize their error and correct it. That is to say, normally... as we're in French Guiana we've got little chance and little protection, thus little real hope.

Cocao and French Guiana

In mid-september, Jack and I visited the unique cocao farm in French Guiana near Rémire-Montjoly. We had a guided visit of the farm and the owner explained everything about the process of harvesting cocao. We even got to taste the chocolate that is made from this exclusive Guianese production site.

 Although cocao is indigenous to South America, today it is mostly grown in Africa. Europeans introduced it there in their colonies after Christopher Columbus had brought some cocao beans back with him. Currently, the world's largest exporter of the cocao bean is the Ivory Coast.

Our guide explained that we are headed straight for chocolate disaster over the next half-century. A cocao tree only produces cocoa beans for about 80 years, and Africa's cocao plantations are rapidly aging. Moreover, it takes at least ten years for a cocao tree to produce its first beans; most African planters don't plant new trees because of the high investment costs and the lack of profitabilty during the trees' maturation. Worse still, no new people are going into cocao farming in Africa because no one wants to earn nothing for a decade.

Consequently, our guide is convinced that the world is headed towards a rarefication of cocao beans and much higher costs of chocolate. This is accelerated by new markets in Asia (such as China) which are hastily opening to the joys of chocolate. Hopefully, Guiana will become a reliable production site over the next years which will also greatly boost the local economy.

Guiana has actually been producing cocao beans for centuries, since the Jesuites. Our tour started with the ruins of the old 19th century drying and processing site. (click on photos to enlarge)

Cocao beans grow on the bark of cocao trees. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of fruit produced by a single tree and it takes a large quantity of cocao beans to produce one bar of chocolate.

Our guide opened up a cocao fruit and we got to taste the raw beans inside. The coating over the beans is like a white jelly and is very sweet and pleasant. Biting into the beans, however, was a rather bitter experience.

Don't confuse cocao beans with papaya trees which also grow fruit on the bark. We saw some large papaya trees during our tour of the farm.

Our visit ended near some rocks with petroglyph inscriptions. These were done in pre-Columbian times by the Arawak Indians. Most of the petroglyphs were difficult to see as they are exposed to the elements and aren't preserved. However, we got a nice shot of this poisonous snake (the triangle-shaped head indicates it's poisonous).

Our new apartment in Cayenne

I'm sorry for how long it's taken me to update since my last message. My new high school really keeps me busy and, to be frank, exhausted. Class starts at 7:00 am which means I have to get up at 5:30. Temperatures stay around 90° in the classrooms and everyone perspires profusely. By the time I get home, I have just enough energy to hop into the shower and cool off before preparing my lessons for the following day.

Well, here are some pictures of our new apartment. Let's go for a little tour, starting with the kitchen! (Click on photos to enlarge.)

 Then there's the living-room:

and my bedroom:

and Jack's bedroom:

We have a terrace where we eat out on weekends, and we've also got a little backyard:

One activity I enjoy is gardening. When we first arrived, the backyard was empty except for three palm trees and a little lemongrass. (I've learned that lemongrass herb tea is used to lower fever and treat malaria. Also, mosquitos don't like the smell; people usually plant it around their homes here.) With a little work on the weekends, our back yard is starting to look much nicer...

I've added some gardenias and ixora (the yellow flower below):

I've also added this tropical red flower (of which I've forgotten the name...sorry)

One of my favorite additions, however, is my tea bush. Whenever I want some fresh green tea, I just pluck a few leaves and infuse them for several minutes.

Gardening is actually quite fun in Guiana and it's hard not to go overboard with all the tropical plants and flowers you can buy at the local garden store.