emotions

Perhaps the hardest part of arriving to a new place is realising you don’t like it. I don’t want to say this is the case with me and SXM. But as anyone who has moved around knows, when you move, you go through all phases of love and hate with your new ‘home’, you compare it with all other places you know, you love and praise it for everything it has that others didn’t, and you degrade it horribly for lacking whatever you took for granted in the former places.
I guess 3 weeks (exactly today) into living on the island is an expected moment to fall into my negative sinusoidal part of relationship. It’s hard for me to complain already because I still haven’t written anything good here…and don’t want to start of on a negative. So as therapy to myself I’ll write about both, what drives me mad and what is quite OK about the island.
I just remembered what Olivia and Nick once said about Barcelona, which could actually help me deal my current feelings; they said Barcelona doesn’t suck:) maybe that’s how I should approach SXM…

So what I find fantastic is:

1. being dressed 60 seconds after I shower, don’t need to towel-dry
2. my feet are the happiest for wearing flip-flops 24/7
3. I never have to make time for washing my hair…blow driers totally unnecessary
4. it’s daylight at 6 in the morning…so I never have to wake/get up when it’s dark
5. the island is duty-free, often with $1= €1
6. the supermarkets are full of American, Dutch and French products so pindakaas, hoemoes, president milk, koolaid all are found under 1 rooftop
7. lush green hills that make me think this is what Ireland must be like on a sunny day
8. horses, goats, sheep roaming happily on these hills
9. swimming in the sea all year round
10. butterflies everywhere, in all colour

If I were to do SXM from scratch I’d

1. make music other than Caribbean compulsory on the radio
2. disallow religious invasion and occupation of all radio programmes, sticking preaching stickers on cars, etc.
3. fine the authorities for allowing spontaneous garbage dumps, ca. every 25 metres
4. remove onion soup and caesar salad from 50% of restaurant menus (trust me I love both dishes…but why does EVERYONE serve it…? and how can you enjoy greasy and spicy onion soups in this heat?)
5. have them install extractors in all kitchens…I really don’t like knowing what everyone is frying…and they fry as early as 6 am…
6. introduce smiling courses in schools…no one of the locals smiles
7. do something about the stray dogs everywhere, as well as the very unclean pigs, and noisy roosters…
8. build more roads+side walks, introduce a proper public transport infrastructure and get rid of the current you-have-to-drive-wherever-you-need-to-go

In addition to all of this, I am under the constant feeling that the XIX and XXI centuries cross paths at all time. On one hand side everyone drives brand new SUVs (surprisingly for my understanding of the island’s GDP and average income), but then the roads and houses often look like they were built 90 years ago and never repaired.
Plus the, otherwise contradicting, French and American cultures both exercise here an extremely strong influence. I don’t know where else on the planet you can find so many French license plates on Chryslers. Here the two cultures seem to be fighting for dominance, yet in away they almost manage to merge…as heretical as that sounds;) ….their influence is just as strong on the island’s gastronomy.
There are contrasts everywhere you look and they’re hard to get accustomed to. The most obvious ones are of course the rags and riches. We have never seen so many Hummers, as here, but when you see a rooster and/or a goat strolling in front of them, there’s a sense of dissonance difficult to shake. The diamond shops right next to falling apart huts (yes, huts, they may be more sophisticated that the ones on Lost, but they are still far away from houses/buildings),…These jewellery shops are just meters away from shops were locals buy, which are just difficult to describe with words, in general, they look like badly lit warehouses; even tiendas de Chinos looked classier in Spain. Lastly, all the locals eating at the plentiful KFCs, McDonalds, Burger Kings…you can see these places at their tops even at 22h! families with small kids…really hurts to observe. While the foreigners of the cruise boats, (on average 3 daily) dine and spend like locos…

So for a few days I was unable to write, because of all these emotions. I was waiting for them to cool, and to come back fresh and happy to write about something optimistic.
Today is Thanksgiving, and although neither to the Polish nor to the Italian culture, this holiday means anything; our hotel is under siege of American tourists who are celebrating tonight at our hotel’s restaurant. They lifted my spirits in a way, arriving cheery and dressed up, ready for a big festivity, often as big families:) We’re also about to go down and have our dinner, right next to all these happy people…see how they celebrate it, in the tropics:)