Cookies from Brittany or daydreaming in Casamance
Gregoire, our guide on Carabane island, said it was the "Special School" (Ecole Speciale) and forever boyfriend husband (FBH) and I looked at the building with curiosity. What was special about the school? We assumed it was maybe for special kids with special needs. We were wrong. It was there where in the old times, as Gregoire told us, subversive slaves with no manners were punished. By now we have visited a few slavery landmarks in Benin, Togo or Ghana but my heart shrinks and freezes every time with the same intensity of shame.
In our way to Carabane we were told that there was a church that monks from Brittany had built in the old times. My daydreaming device was on. I imagined a community of smiley, chubby, palm-tree wine drinking monks still inhabiting the island. I pictured their garden of onions, their Brittany sweet-salty just-baked cookies and heard the sound of their bells calling Catholic Carabanians to mass. The islanders were behaving and misbehaving and that was fine, it was their island and they could do whatever they wanted without special schools.
But the church was empty and the cookies were not made of sea salt and French butter but a mix of coconut and sugar. I entered the church and turned my daydreaming device off. Carabanians were not misbehaving, just lacking water pipes and power but resiliently coping with new times, surely better than old ones.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
In our way to Carabane we were told that there was a church that monks from Brittany had built in the old times. My daydreaming device was on. I imagined a community of smiley, chubby, palm-tree wine drinking monks still inhabiting the island. I pictured their garden of onions, their Brittany sweet-salty just-baked cookies and heard the sound of their bells calling Catholic Carabanians to mass. The islanders were behaving and misbehaving and that was fine, it was their island and they could do whatever they wanted without special schools.
But the church was empty and the cookies were not made of sea salt and French butter but a mix of coconut and sugar. I entered the church and turned my daydreaming device off. Carabanians were not misbehaving, just lacking water pipes and power but resiliently coping with new times, surely better than old ones.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Carabane island
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