Tete de chien, pas de cochon

The official language in St. Lucia is English but most people speak a form of creole, or patois, especially when they’re talking amongst themselves. We can pick out the odd word here and there but we still can’t follow a conversation.
Here are some of the similarities to French, some of them written phonetically.

Bonjour or hello is bonjou
S’il vous plait or please is sou plait
Pardon or pardon me is padon
Bonsoir or goodnight is bonsway
Hier or yesterday is yeh

The r’s turn into w’s so that
Work or travail is twa-vail
Write or ecrire is eh-kwee

Along with the language come the different accents which can sometimes make it difficult to understand what people are saying. All of this is a preamble to an interesting event that happened recently. We were visiting the Fond D’or Nature Reserve. Fond D’or means valley of gold. It used to be a sugar plantation. Now it’s a nice little park with a beautiful beach. As we entered the park the woman at the front desk told us to watch out for a couple of wild boars. She told us not to worry that they were harmless. We went on our merry way, happily looking out for wild pigs in the woods, as we did the 10 minute trek to the beach. When we returned she was disappointed to learn that we hadn’t seen them so she volunteered to take us to where they usually hang out. We walked for a couple of minutes, turned right at a big tree, and she pointed to what should have been, we thought, wild boars. Well they weren’t. They were wild boas. Boa as in boa constrictor to be exact. Which tourist destination do you know of that has wild boas roaming the property. Needless to say Norm would never have convinced me to go walking had I known there were boa constrictors on the loose. Dewey says I seemed to shrink as soon as I saw the two snakes and tried to make myself as small as possible. Meanwhile, the tour guide was quite amused that we confused boa with boar. Incidentally, the patois expression for boa is tete de chien, dog's head.

This all happened on the trip to the airport on Lou and Dewy’s last day.
We took them to get their boarding passes and then went to lunch at a restaurant in Vieux Fort. It was the same place we took Deny and Catherine to on their last day. It’s called the Old Plantation Yard and it serves traditional meals. The owner handed Norm a promotional pamphlet for the restaurant that they just received that morning. I looked at it quickly and noticed, with surprise, that my picture was in the pamphlet. Norm didn’t believe me at first but sure enough, there’s a picture of me, Deny, Catherine and Jan. A photographer was taking pictures the day we ate there. It was quite the coincidence that the next time we ate there was the same day they got the pamphlet with our picture in it. (The scan is not that clear but we're in the last photo at the bottom. I'm on the left wearing a white top.) The owner came over a few minutes later and said to me, I know you, you look familiar. When I explained that of course, I’m in the pamphlet and that should be good for a free beer, he just smiled and walked away. Oh well, the beer is pretty cheap anyway.

This week was the week of birds at the house. A few months ago, a bird used to come in the house for daily (or even hourly) visits. He would peck away at bananas or other food that was left out, he would land next to me on the couch or perch on the dresser while I watched TV. We were never sure whether it was one bird or several but he or they were well behaved so we didn’t mind so much. Unfortunately, the bird went for cheese in a mouse trap and that’s when we learned he was our only bird, because we didn’t get any bird visits for at least two months. But new birds have since discovered us and we’re having a heck of a time keeping them out of the house. We’ve had doves come in a couple of times and make a huge mess. And we have smaller birds who will around the outside of the house until they find a window with a big enough opening to get in. After closing everything up yesterday and still having to chase them out, we realized they were coming in through a bathroom window upstairs. At one point, both birds were perched on the patio table outside staring at me with twigs in their beaks as if to ask why they couldn’t come in to build their nests. We even had a pair of doves build a nest on a chair on the back patio. I removed the nest yesterday. But I guess I was too late because this morning, there was an egg on the patio floor. I guess once they start, they can’t stop.