Karaoke Craziness, Tennis Camp, & Youth Stuff

Recently karaoke was brought to Fond St. Jacques, spicing up the usually quiet night-life. Although it always proves to be an interesting time, to date nothing has quite topped my first experience there roughly a month ago. It was not only an amusing evening of singing, but also of obligatory dancing and awkward moments brought about by peculiar song choices. Although the thought did cross my mind to break the mold and introduce karaoke whistling, I decided that people were most likely already thinking “Gade nomn blan fou chante la!” (Look at the crazy white man singing there!), and that whistling might just be a bit more than they could handle. ☺

The night started getting really interesting when Milena, a hilarious petite 50 some year old woman, otherwise self-named as “Sugar Top Celebrity on the Road to Jerusalem” showed up. Without having met her personally, there’s no way that you can fully understand or appreciate the true essence of Sugar Top, but you should be able to at least grasp from the name that she’s quite a character. Anyway, during one of the songs she literally grabbed me and started dancing. Since I know her reasonably well from teaching her neighbors the violin, I played along and danced with her despite the fact that nobody else in the entire place was dancing. Now most of you guys probably know that I’m not the biggest dancer in the world, and am usually more up for dancing in large camouflaging groups rather than one on one with large groups of people blatantly staring as if it were a spectacle, so after one dance I had personally more than satisfied my dancing quota for the evening. Unfortunately Sugar Top was just getting warmed up. No matter what escape tactic I used, she aggressively insisted on dancing song after song, and not wanting to be insulting or rude I reluctantly continued, half-heartedly yet obediently following her ever constant twirling commands like a dog having just been commanded to go to his kennel. After awhile, however, I managed to get away citing dance fatigue.

While the dancing did fortunately come to a stop, the evening festivities were long from over. Late in the night someone chose to sing a Caribbean song with a very unusual premise. In brief, the song was about two white girls who travel to the bush of Africa, stumble upon a cannibalistic tribe, and are eaten. The chorus composed of barbaric chanting of the words “you never taste a white meat yet!” As the lone white person present, I felt just a tad bit awkward, but decided that the only thing to do was resort to laughing at the absurdity of the song. I started really laughing, however, when the guy singing the song changed the words to “Ben never taste a black meat yet!” I should have taken the microphone from him and retorted, “Eh eh? Es ou asiwe? Mwen te manje i deja, ek i ni bon gou” (are you sure? I ate it already and it has good taste), but I didn’t think of that until later. Next time…

I brought my tennis racquet to St. Lucia on a whim, hoping that at some point over my two years here I would have the chance to hit a tennis ball. Well, God granted my wish as I’ve not only had the chance to hit a ball or two, but have had the opportunity to coach a tennis camp for kids with another Peace Corps Volunteer these past three weeks on the southern part of the island. At times it was a bit hectic, given that we had roughly thirty kids and only 1 court and a back mini-court to coach on, but all in all I enjoyed it. The kids were very enthusiastic about playing tennis, so that made up for their occasionally troublesome behaviors. I was glad when it finished though, as I felt slightly bad about not being quite as present in my own community and grew tired of all the traveling.

Not only have I had the chance to play tennis lately, but I’ve also been playing a lot of the next best thing – table tennis. After talking with the parish council and the Church Youth Group, I helped initiate a games afternoon every Sunday at the parish center. Table tennis used to be a very popular activity in Fond St. Jacques, but it died out when the school temporarily moved into the area it had been taking place during its renovations. Now that the school has long been renovated, and the parish center hasn’t been used for hardly anything, why not do something with it? We painted the table tennis board and built a semi-sturdy leg structure for it. It has been fun playing it along with dominoes and cards, and quite a few youth turn out for it. I hope that after we prove to the church that the kids won’t wreck the place, we can move to having it on a more regular basis and expand to have some other types of games and activities.

The recently formed Fond St. Jacques Youth and Sports Club had its grand launching yesterday. In the morning we had a relay marathon. Teams of 8 designated individual runners for different legs of the race around the Soufriere district. Although teams from other communities didn’t have a good showing, quite a few people from Fond St. Jacques came and we had a pretty competitive race. In the afternoon we had a small goals football competition, and later on in the evening a dance. All in all it was a good way to kick things off and I hope that we can build off of the momentum.

So as of about a week ago I have been on St. Lucia for 1 year. It’s crazy to think how quickly my time here has gone by so far. Every time I check myself another month has flown by. I find myself ambivalent with respect to what I think about this quick passing of time. In a week we have a 3 day mid-service training here on St. Lucia with all the volunteers from the different Eastern Caribbean islands. It’ll be nice to catch up with everyone that I met a year ago, swap stories, eat a well-balanced meal, etc. ☺

After mid-service training I’m going on a week long vacation with a group of teachers from Soufriere to Dominica, a nearby island to the north. From what I’ve heard Dominica is gorgeous with rugged mountains for hiking and as many rivers as there are days of the year. I’m really looking forward to a bit of time off island before school starts back up in early September.