My host family is kicking me out. I found out today at school when our contact at the vice-rectorate came up to me and said she needed to discuss something.
“But don’t worry,” she says, “you’ll see a new place next week. Oh, and don’t take it personally.”
I speak to my host that afternoon. It’s true. She and her partner have decided I’m not speaking enough English to their kids (even though I’m paying them rent), so without warning, I’m being booted out on my ass my third week here. Assholes.
Still, Nouméa, New Caledonia, has to be the most interesting place I’ve ever lived.
We’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but everyone speaks French and walks with baguettes tucked naturally under their arms. The French flag flies from every administrative building, many of them cliché crumbling colonial-style, and military men walk under palm trees while reggae blares from rolled down windows.
Banks still accept cheques and sometimes, a lot of the time, washing machines and the internet and doors don’t work. Les robes popinée mix with western clothing, but the preferred choice of footwear for everyone is thongs. The people are warm and the landscape so stupidly beautiful that I often can’t believe I get to see it every day for the cost of a 180 XPF bus fare. The possibility of independence lies under everything, but very few will address it. My life here couldn’t be more different from the one I left behind in Australia, in ways I never expected it to be different, but I think I like it.
In response to the news of my imminent eviction, I swallow my tears and decide to do something I never do – drink my feelings. I try to scull a beer and rush off to meet my friend before it grows too dark for me to stop feeling safe on the bus.
I get off at the stop to wait for my change, wondering am-I-on-the-right-side-of-the-road and oh-gosh-my-outfit-is-too-short and oh-God-are-those-men-coming-over-here-why-did-I-do-this-why-why?
Thankfully there are some older ladies waiting too, so I cling to them and ask if I’m in the right place. Clumsily explaining myself in French gives me a momentary surge of confidence, and I feel okay. I see my friend on the bus, which is another miracle, because it turns out we chose the wrong stop.
It took 20 minutes to get a taxi last week. Tonight, my friend calls about seven times, always getting something along the lines of, Oui, madame. Le taxi est en route, but nothing comes. A group of men is staring. Another man stops to ask something I can’t understand and we start getting nervous. I also really need to pee from that one beer and the only light is coming from the quickly closing grocery store and the petrol station across the road. After about an hour, we decide it’ll be easier to get back on the bus. Thankfully, we haven’t missed the last one, and I run into the petrol station where the kindly man lets me use the bathroom.
We ignore drunk men who expect our attention and walk to the club from Place Moselle. It would take about 20 minutes, but my friend has a blister. So we walk down Nouméa’s crumbling, speckled and sparse footpaths with a slipping bandaid and a flashing phone light to accompany its application, blaring the Jungle Giants softly through streets sleepy from a lack of lighting.
By the time we arrive at the club, our friends have been there for about two hours. This suits me perfectly well, because although French is the common language in a group of Australians, Japanese and Spaniards, my French is still shit, so there is only so long I can amuse myself by politely looking around and pretending I’m immersed in conversation.
The super hot bartender asks us what we want to drink, and my frazzled friend and I ask for something strong.
Vraiment, vraiment fort? Oui.
We get our tiny punches and drink to a less chaotic evening.
Now, I am a supreme lightweight with basically no tolerance. So this one drink has got me scared to stand up. I can feel ultraviolet translucent liquid vibrating and rushing around my bloodstream. I can feel it humming in my face. I can feel my heartbeat in my shoes (!!!).
Plus de boissons ? De l’eau, s’il vous plait.
My friend laughs. I grip both glasses in my hands tightly, worried if I try to put them back on the table I’ll fall over. Thankfully the feeling soon passes and we dance to French techno and remixed reggae.
A group of us decide to leave around 1:30am, so we call another taxi.
Oui. Vingt minutes.
Over the next hour and a half, we call back at least 10 times. We move locations. We put another friend on the phone in case they didn’t like the sound of my first friend’s voice. Finally, at about 2:30am on a patch of grass, we ponder waiting for the buses to restart at 7.
It wouldn’t be the worst outcome. The air has the first bite of coolness I’ve felt since coming here, and I’m laying with some new friends on a not-completely-uncomfortable patch of grass. One of them is a dude, so I guess we’re okay safety-wise. And the French government is going to find me a new place to live, so that’s nice. The grass is a bit scratchy though, so I’d rather not sleep here.
We wander back in the direction of the club.
We try our luck asking the security guard, seeing as we can’t be the first group of people forgotten by the Nouméan taxi service. We’re told apparently the taxi only picks up from one specific spot, so we begin walking.
Along the way, we meet one of our friends’ former lycée students, who drunkenly gets us to guess his name, un nomme très très Française!!! and then swaggers into a giant silver van and speeds up the hill.
I had wondered what all the young, hip Caledonians were doing standing around, smoking and bisous-ing each other in the carpark, but realise now maybe they’re trying to sober up a little before they all get in their cars and drive home.
At the new taxi stop, we decide to use another friend’s phone to call the cab company, in case they’ve blacklisted my first friend’s number. They might – she’s called 17 times and they’ve stopped picking up. We look at each other with tense eyes; I anxiously rub my lips together. Our remaining options (besides returning to the grass) include asking drunk teenagers to give us a ride or walking an hour to my host’s house and letting my friends sleep in the pool area, which I’m tempted to do solely out of the hope it might piss them off.
Then, who picks up the phone but our lord and saviour, Patrick. He’s happy to make our three different stops right before the taxis stop running, and then, in what is probably the most magical moment of the evening, he gives us his phone number and tells us to call him whenever we need a ride.
Now, I don’t want to spoil future adventures completely for you by giving all of Patrick’s incredibleness away in one piece of writing, but it is a phone number that made 90 minutes of stranded, drunken, tired wandering infinitely worth it.
I get home and crawl into a bed that won’t be mine soon at around 4, my feet humming and sighing in my black boots. It’s a strange situation in a very strange place, but for some strange reason I’m not scared by it.
No. I’m intrigued.
Cover by Jeremy Bezanger, first inset by Anette Miate, remainder by author