![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry 5 - November 5 2024
Nov. 5th, 2024 06:23 amGood day yesterday.
The mundane: Mom was home sick. I sorted me and K's laundry and made a very basic lunch. Wrote about 1,000 words which was half of what I was supposed to and not good enough.
Mom is convinced once she builds the foundation downstairs she can build an apartment and rent it out for $2000 a month. This is what the new scamming contractor has told her. My mom will believe almost anything a contractor tells her. Where she finds the money I don't know.
She's getting better. The "Viral upper respiratory infection" AKA a bad cold, has laid her out but mom is tougher than she thinks.
She loves watching this Bibi The Monkey channel on youtube. I find it so creepy. I don't think these baby monkeys are being taken care of. They're trafficked animals made to perform for a camera. I gently tried to point out nobody knows what happens to the monkey after the camera shuts off. But she wants to believe and what's the point getting woke about a monkey on the internet. Mom has probably watched every one of the billion videos on that channel. Bibi learns to cook! Bibi waters the plants! Bibi takes a dump!
Right now Bibi is getting too big and not-cute for the cameras so they are training his "little sister" AKA his replacement. "Look isn't she so cute!?"
"Yeah. Yep. Adorable..."
The benefit of being "up north" is the beach. The other benefit is friends. Sometimes the beach is better than friends. Yesterday K and I went "Up North" to the most modern part of the island, which is full of resorts and shops and businesses. Only foreigners or locals who bought smart in the 90's and 00's can afford to live there now. Or the local oligarchs, obviously.
First we stopped to get some packages from the international shipping depot. My sewing machine foot pedal and power cord arrived and K got something to get the wiring in the truck windows fixed.
We got Doubles from our usual place by the roadside. The kid selling it is a handsome darkskinned boy with a very soft voice. I don't speak to 99% of men I encounter here but I like talking to this kid even if it's just about Doubles. He always says "god bless you" when we say goodbye.
Doubles are basically chickpeas in a mild curry over a fried roti-esque dough, with culantro, golden apple, cucumber and hot sauce. My FAVORITE.
Doubles secured, we then went to our usual beach, which just hosted a huge party and was all stirred-up and gross. But on the other side of the causeway, SURFERS!
You don't see them very often on island. K and I stopped to watch. It's something I've always wanted to try but dealing with the big deep ocean is beyond my courage. Very satisfying to observe from a safe distance, eating Doubles.
We drove (again) to a different beach, the same we went to yesterday. Sat on top the truck looking through my dad's old Peace Corps era binoculars. I rolled a J. Smoked it.
A dad was there with his young daughter, also smoking while she played in the sand. Then he joined her in the water and they had fun. It was good to see that.
The water was HEAVEN...that beach gets very deep but K and I have become better swimmers and we just swam around forever. I could feel the strength in my body, all the little changes since I started. I love being in the water.
Mom never learned to swim. None of her sisters did either. Her brothers all learned. It's not a common thing for girls on the island. Cultural programming tells girls not to dirty the dress, mess up the hair, strip in front of boys...be a good girl! A safe girl! Don't anger your parents. So the girls splash safely in shallow water while the boys do whatever they want. My grandfather was an accomplished swimmer who competed in races here back in the day. He took my mother and the other kids to the beach every single day. He was one of the divers that helped construct (or refurbish) the main harbor when we were a colony. And yet my mom never learned to swim.
Mom put my sister and I in swimming lessons at great expense to the family budget. This was a privilege granted to people of a certain class background and my parents were not wealthy. If a girl from the island can swim, and swim well, she most likely went to the aquatic center for an extended time.
Once, I was fucking around with a friend (another girl, better swimmer than me) and ended up far from shore on a floatie. The swim back was tough. When I got out of the water a local woman asked me in astonishment where I was from. "I'm from here," I said. She looked even more amazed. "Girls here can't swim like that," she said. That was honestly the moment I realized it wasn't just a thing that had happened to my mom. The cultural barrier prevents women in general from participating in one of the most basic ways to enjoy this part of their culture. I was so grateful to mom then for changing that for me.
One of the greatest gifts she ever gave me was the water. I'll never forget that.
After the swim we went home, and I was supposed to get back to work but K and I ended up talking about politics forever.
Today is election day. I asked K if he wanted to make a bet but we never agreed to anything.
I guess we'll see tomorrow.
-J
The mundane: Mom was home sick. I sorted me and K's laundry and made a very basic lunch. Wrote about 1,000 words which was half of what I was supposed to and not good enough.
Mom is convinced once she builds the foundation downstairs she can build an apartment and rent it out for $2000 a month. This is what the new scamming contractor has told her. My mom will believe almost anything a contractor tells her. Where she finds the money I don't know.
She's getting better. The "Viral upper respiratory infection" AKA a bad cold, has laid her out but mom is tougher than she thinks.
She loves watching this Bibi The Monkey channel on youtube. I find it so creepy. I don't think these baby monkeys are being taken care of. They're trafficked animals made to perform for a camera. I gently tried to point out nobody knows what happens to the monkey after the camera shuts off. But she wants to believe and what's the point getting woke about a monkey on the internet. Mom has probably watched every one of the billion videos on that channel. Bibi learns to cook! Bibi waters the plants! Bibi takes a dump!
Right now Bibi is getting too big and not-cute for the cameras so they are training his "little sister" AKA his replacement. "Look isn't she so cute!?"
"Yeah. Yep. Adorable..."
The benefit of being "up north" is the beach. The other benefit is friends. Sometimes the beach is better than friends. Yesterday K and I went "Up North" to the most modern part of the island, which is full of resorts and shops and businesses. Only foreigners or locals who bought smart in the 90's and 00's can afford to live there now. Or the local oligarchs, obviously.
First we stopped to get some packages from the international shipping depot. My sewing machine foot pedal and power cord arrived and K got something to get the wiring in the truck windows fixed.
We got Doubles from our usual place by the roadside. The kid selling it is a handsome darkskinned boy with a very soft voice. I don't speak to 99% of men I encounter here but I like talking to this kid even if it's just about Doubles. He always says "god bless you" when we say goodbye.
Doubles are basically chickpeas in a mild curry over a fried roti-esque dough, with culantro, golden apple, cucumber and hot sauce. My FAVORITE.
Doubles secured, we then went to our usual beach, which just hosted a huge party and was all stirred-up and gross. But on the other side of the causeway, SURFERS!
You don't see them very often on island. K and I stopped to watch. It's something I've always wanted to try but dealing with the big deep ocean is beyond my courage. Very satisfying to observe from a safe distance, eating Doubles.
We drove (again) to a different beach, the same we went to yesterday. Sat on top the truck looking through my dad's old Peace Corps era binoculars. I rolled a J. Smoked it.
A dad was there with his young daughter, also smoking while she played in the sand. Then he joined her in the water and they had fun. It was good to see that.
The water was HEAVEN...that beach gets very deep but K and I have become better swimmers and we just swam around forever. I could feel the strength in my body, all the little changes since I started. I love being in the water.
Mom never learned to swim. None of her sisters did either. Her brothers all learned. It's not a common thing for girls on the island. Cultural programming tells girls not to dirty the dress, mess up the hair, strip in front of boys...be a good girl! A safe girl! Don't anger your parents. So the girls splash safely in shallow water while the boys do whatever they want. My grandfather was an accomplished swimmer who competed in races here back in the day. He took my mother and the other kids to the beach every single day. He was one of the divers that helped construct (or refurbish) the main harbor when we were a colony. And yet my mom never learned to swim.
Mom put my sister and I in swimming lessons at great expense to the family budget. This was a privilege granted to people of a certain class background and my parents were not wealthy. If a girl from the island can swim, and swim well, she most likely went to the aquatic center for an extended time.
Once, I was fucking around with a friend (another girl, better swimmer than me) and ended up far from shore on a floatie. The swim back was tough. When I got out of the water a local woman asked me in astonishment where I was from. "I'm from here," I said. She looked even more amazed. "Girls here can't swim like that," she said. That was honestly the moment I realized it wasn't just a thing that had happened to my mom. The cultural barrier prevents women in general from participating in one of the most basic ways to enjoy this part of their culture. I was so grateful to mom then for changing that for me.
One of the greatest gifts she ever gave me was the water. I'll never forget that.
After the swim we went home, and I was supposed to get back to work but K and I ended up talking about politics forever.
Today is election day. I asked K if he wanted to make a bet but we never agreed to anything.
I guess we'll see tomorrow.
-J
