Friends and Interactions

I was so afraid that I was going to be all alone here; that I wouldn’t make any friends and that no one would talk to me. I should have known better…

Everyone I have been introduced to has been extremely nice and helpful and friendly. My landlord is an absolute doll; she wears a giant straw hat and brings us mangos from her tree. She introduced me to a man at the convenience store on my block who gives me directions and free cokes. Colgate is painted really big on the side of the store so we call it the Colgate store even though they don’t sell toothpaste.

I am even making friends with the people who sit on the same street corners every day. The guys in front of the Colgate store call out “Hey Shorty” when I walk by. The guys in front of my office call me Blondie, and I’m making friends with the banana and mango vendors who are parked on my walk to work. School girls call out to me about my clothes and ask where my dress is from or what brand of shoes I am wearing.

I live on the second floor of a house which has been divided into 4 apartments. Adele is a med student from Toronto taking his exams so we don’t see him much. Michael is 20 years old from Minnesota; he is working for a nonprofit playing with kids for the summer. And then there is my angel Kolene, she is older, but told me she had just been watching TV alone for 2 months until I moved in. Michael got here a few days after me and asked “What do you eat here? The food is so expensive” I told him Kolene has been sharing her meals with me. He asked if she would cook for him too if paid her. She refuses money so I told Michael we have to start sharing. So last night we had a potluck, I made veggies and bruschetta. Kolene fried flying fish and shared fresh mangos and pineapple. And well, Michael burned us some rice. Its kind of like we are misfits, we don’t have much in common, but after dinner we played Family Feud and it was so much fun I forgot to watch True Blood.

An interesting thing has been people’s perceptions about America. I came into the office Monday even though my “boss” will be out of town for a while, and find that two of my coworkers spend their days obsessing about the World Cup (which I understand) and the Lakers (which I don’t). They get in shouting matches about Kobe Bryant like nothing I’ve ever seen before- then look at me like I must be a zombie for not caring what is going on with the playoffs. One evening Kolene and I were out and a guy from the island came up and asked me where I was from. I said the US and he said “Duh, what state.” I said Arkansas and he said “Arkansas doesn’t even have a professional football team or a professional basketball team!” and walked away. I guess that’s a good way to discourage getting hit on. My favorite story was the teenager who was talking to me in the Antigua airport. We talked about the US and he said he had never been, but when I said I was from the south he immediately said in his best southern accent, “Hey yall, how yall doin?” I also made friends with two German guys who I sat by on the plane and then ran into at the beach. One of the first things they said to me was about the tragedy at Albert Pike. I couldn’t believe how well they had been keeping up with every little detail of the tragedy even though they were on vacation, and had never even been near Arkansas. It was really kind.

Everyone here loves Obama. My coworker wears a silver chain with an Obama dogtag on it. The waiter at a restaurant one night had a holograph of Obama on his beltbuckle, which I’ll admit, was pretty cool. Even the lady with who I shared a taxi on the way from the airport said she loves Obama, but that he was the US’s second black president, after to Bill Clinton! So I told her I was a student at the Clinton School and we became best friends.