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.