Imprinted Inklings

We're just ordinary people.

Thirty, or so, of us, in New Caledonia for three weeks. As an ordinary man, I was scarred by the coral when I dived in to see it and the fish that swam around there. I had never had flippers on my foot nor really worn a mask with a tube. But the ability to see below the surface clearly was a great experience. This was at Ile aux Canards, a boat-taxi ride away from Anse Vata in Nouméa. This was the postcard image I'd seen on the internet. Who would have known that below the surface there would be such a rich world of fish, of many colors, shapes, and sizes. Beautiful. We were told before diving not to step on the coral because we could damage it, and I thought that would have been easy but it was not, because I didn't follow the marked path and I tripped several times over coral and othertimes grazed my knees on it, leaving me with scars. Who knew coral could injure. But they are scars I bear as a thank you, a reminder that I was there and that I did inflict some damage upon nature (and it saw fit to do the same unto me).

We had seven days of straight sunshine that first week. Then a spittle of rain and more sunshine, but later on I recall some of the girls dancing with their iPods in their ears outside the stairs of Bâtiment A (at the Residences) one evening when it did rain well. It was a welcome rain. Soaking, not very cold but just right to cool us off during the final, exam-packed week. One effect of the rain is that it would reduce the amount of dust that was in the air near the construction sites. The University of New Caledonia was having a new office block being built past the cafeteria in the shape of an accordion. Many times when we walked past the site, the men at work would call out to the girls I'd be walking with and say "Bonjour!" or "Je te verrai plus tard!" (paraphrase). And sometimes these men would be up working in the building itself or in one of the vehicles/excavators, one of which we affectionately named T320C after the number on its side. Sif we knew that one. Often, in the sunshine, dust would rise from the area, not enough that you couldn't see, but enough that you would avoid it or hold your breath had you had to pass through.

Nouméa hosts its slew of palm trees. Apparently New Zealand is the furthest south that palm trees actually grow, so I was not surprised to see them here. The whole country is rich in vegetation that is specific to this place, it being a unique reservoir of nickel, and a number of other superlatives. With this much natural resource though, it was strange seeing a planted forest while on the bus on our way south to the Parc de la Rivière Bleue. After getting used to the idea of trees growing in accordance with nature's way, it was a bizarre sight to notice the human touch of a grid of planted trees, for maybe 100m, where there was a space of a metre between each tree.

Back in the capital, which looks pretty run down by comparison to, say, Auckland, buses, also in comparison to Auckland, run smoothly. There is much graffiti in places, yet somehow it seems to be part of the culture here and doesn't look that bad. Apparently some graffiti is done in corrector fluid though. Make do with what you got? The people are generally very nice. They say Bonjour, we say Bonjour. Maybe it is because we are foreigners and pretty visibly so - if not from the way we look, from the way we talk, with our foreign French accents and the fact that we blow air when we pronounce our consonants.

Speaking of demographics, there seems to be a rich-poor gap here as well. There are the rich suburbs, such as Port-de-Plaisance which hosts some beautiful, panoramic villas, then there are the poorer ones, like Nouville, where the university is located. The houses there were much simpler, and I imagine had more people living in them. Near those houses, in the forests or along trails in the bush, it was common to come across rubbish dumps in which washing machines and other appliances were rusting away with other metals and ordures. This added to the character of the place, I feel. The Kanaks here, the indigenous, seem to also have been greatly influenced by Bob Marley and Che Guevara, icons whose faces appear on paraphernalia and miscellaneous knick-knacks. Oppressed peoples. Suggestions of the struggles they have been through, struggles which we, as foreigners, learned through lectures and Wikipedia, though struggles which they have had to live as heirs of. There are paradoxes visible too. For example, there are many 'more expensive' European cars, Dacias or Peugeots, that drive on the roads. Correlation? Qui sait?

It is a fortunate though rare experience to be given access to a world different from my own. Of course, my perception is influenced by that, so I don't know if what I saw and felt was the truth. But it was the truth for me.

Tell you what though, the experience has brought its slew of memories. Some that I cannot even express because they were not transmitted via language. Keepers. Ones to remember, maybe not consciously, but keep regardless, like imprinted inklings on an already-coloured canvas.


Like the pier.
And the moon.
And the air.
And just being there.

A Newer Caledonia

It is the day after I returned from my three week study/holiday in New Caledonia. This morning I got up later than usual because I'd been tired from little sleep the night before, and I went to wash my face, as usual. The water was cold, refreshingly and revitalisingly cold. I had forgotten the feeling of cold water on my face, seeing as the cold water at my residence in Nouméa wasn't that cold by comparison. I'd missed it, and it was a welcome reminder of what I now had again, and now could appreciate more.

The trip to New Caledonia was great. The people were great. The beaches and places were great. The food was great. The city was great. The experience was overall pretty darn great. Saying things like that feels like I am missing a significant part of what happened, trying to gloss over it or level it in some postcard manner. I didn't send any postcards, but I saw a good many and don't feel like the tropical beach images they show are in any way representative of my experience. Yes I did see beautiful beaches, with beautiful sand and beautiful people. But that was a very small part of those three weeks. I feel that to be more authentic would give the trip more justice and give me time to reflect upon what New Caledonia sparked in me. 

This was the first time I'd been to a foreign country since 2002 when I had come to live in New Zealand from Romania. The difference this time was that I was alone, and although I'd been very well prepared by my mum in terms of what to pack and what to do and the dangers and customs and such, it was still an experience of independence. 

There was an educational purpose for going to New Caledonia - a three-week 'intensive' French course at the University in Nouméa - which was what kept us busy for a large proportion of our time there. It was not a very difficult course for my level of French, though the volume of work was considerably larger than I had expected so the 'intensity' I suppose came from that. Others struggled more with the amount because their level of French was lower. I do recall at the end of the trip, some of the other students were wondering if they had learned anything while being there, and I recognise that it was hard to pin down because everything had gone by so fast. With the short amount of time and the large amount of work, I too found it difficult to digest what we were being taught, some of which was really interesting. I have learned expressions and vocabulary, and revised my grammar, which I could say reinforces it in my mind, but that may not be to the same extent with others. I learned some phonetics, though not well enough as it was a subject I struggled in. I acquired much cultural knowledge as well, from the lectures we were given and from the excursions we partook in. I also gained confidence to speak in French, something I had not had before, especially not in a French-speaking context which I had shied away from previously. Academically, it remains to be seen how much of a success it was, depending on how my mental metabolism will sort out what I do remember and what I don't.

While the education was the official purpose of the trip, I see it as being more inclusive than just learning French at the university. I would expand the sense of education to include harnessing street smarts and co-operation, expanding my mindset, having experiences and gaining awareness of people's tendencies. How can going to a new country with a different culture, a different driving lane and different expectations, not be educational?

What struck me first, as I got out of the plane, was the heat. From the air conditioned space of the Air New Zealand plane to the oven-like quality of the New Caledonian air, this was a state I would become accustomed to. Wearing jeans was not, suffice to say, the most apt attire for walking onto an island simmering in the sun. For the first week of being there, the heat and sun continued. Then a pocket of rain appeared to wet the concrete, dried quickly by more sun. But post-first week, the rain had appeared more, which was very welcome. Normally in New Zealand, rain puts a dampener on things (pun intended), but here it was so nice that three girls walked out one rainy evening and danced in the rain with their iPods in their ears. 

What struck me second as we were driven on the bus to Nouméa from the airport at La Tontouta, which is about 45 mins away (don't quote me), was the 'unfinished' quality of the place. The roads seemed old and used, even the 110km/h motorway. In Nouméa, I thought we were going to be greeted with the things of postcards, but tourism clearly was selling the city in a very different way from how it was as a whole. To me, it looked like half the city was a construction site, whether there were things being built, buildings, pathways, fixtures, or things were going to be built but then the workers went on strike and so the project was left abandoned. I say that with a grain of salt, not knowing really what was going on. But that was my impression. The city centre, which we had the opportunity to visit a few days later, was generally pretty run down and unappealing. The modernité aspect was clear in some of the shops, but hardly on the outside cityscape.

Speaking of modernité, having lived on the peninsula of Nouville just west of the centre of Nouméa, I found the central conflict that faced the country (as we learned in lectures), quite visible. Being a colonised country, New Caledonia has to balance maintaining tradition, in the form of the Kanak culture which exists much more strongly towards the north of the country, and modernity, the French influence which is fast becoming a Euro influence. Nouméa, as the capital and sort of gateway to the country, is much more strongly affected by the French influence, possibly because money is very important to the city's wellbeing and growth. Tourism is big. There is even a tourist train that takes tourists in their Hawaiian shirts with their cameras hanging from their necks around Nouméa. Tacky thing. But I suppose that is one way to see much of the city quickly. Whether you get to experience anything I don't know. I wanted to stay away from doing touristy things because I wanted more of an immersion into the culture, but that was difficult to achieve in the city because it seemed to live for making money off tourists and improving the way it looked so different postcards could be printed so they could attract more tourists. Remember though, this is just an impression. We did not get to experience much out-of-cityness, though we did, on two occasions, go out into the bush. Once was for mountainbiking on a trail of red earth in the south of the country, and then once in the La Foa region nearly halfway up the western coast of the country. Beautiful, the landscapes. And it felt like the further away from Nouméa we got, the further away we were getting from tourism aimed at foreigners (i.e. easy tourism). The towns we passed were small and rundown in their own way, but it felt to me like they were more alive living as strange concrete and wood organisms among forests or hilly vegetation-dense terrain.

I feel like describing my whole experience in terms of what I did is like telling too much plot. Rather, I feel more inclined towards speaking about what in particular interested me or what I found peculiar in this place. So I will continue with that in my next post.

Sunsets

The day wakes up before the dawn,

not having enough sleep

to carry on waiting.

Not even palm trees are enough.

Not even sand dunes and

collections of feral rocks are enough.

The day still feels bracketed,

and though there are worlds of

lyrics and wind-wiping

and birdsongs laying petals

on the almost-sidewalks here,

the pockets of rain have not been enough

to douse the inertia of being

out of sync, out of place.

At its weaning, the day signs

for another dive into the ocean.

Trying to hold on to that moment

of

hankerchief waving

that the horizon still ends.