Parisian misdemeanors II

So you would think that our little run-in with the municipal law would have downed our gaiety. Ha, we walked off the bus cracking up in laughter, falling over ourselves as we replayed the scene over and over again, laughing louder and louder each time. The magic of Paris had got to our heads.

We got home safely and kept on chatting forever, so long into the night that we did not sleep till the next day. Such was our agenda for most of my stay actually, we would leisurely wake up mid-afternoon, make something to eat, and then hit the streets, shopping, sightseeing, eating, people-watching and enjoying the lights. We did all the main sites of course: l’Arc de triomphe, Champs Elysees, le Tour Eiffel etc. And then we did the streets markets and those were fun.

One time we hit up Barbès – Rochechouart, Chateau Rouge and I think it was Porte de Clignancourt (quartiers in Paris with a lot of immigrants). These places are what the French man in his thick accent will call ‘Ptitafrik on Fronce’ i.e Petite Afrique en France. No jokes, take away the cold and I could have sworn to be in a colonial part (cos of the Architecture) of some African city. There were all these shops selling plantain, dark and lovely, African cloth, wigs, strange vegetables and even that black thread that is used for the traditional hair styles (tentacles, lol). There were Africans everywhere and… are you ready for this: there was HAWKING on the streets like real African-style hawking, standing by the streets and calling out to sell: BOILED and ROASTED CORN! Ai my African peeps, “you can take the African out of Africa, but never Africa out of the African.” So this one street had a long line of African women standing on the streets bundled up in many layers of clothing, offering their wares: boiled corn from a large plastic bag in their shopping trolley and corn roasted on a can of live coals that sat in a shopping cart by their sides. And there were some others who were out selling clothing and what not, calling out to you as you passed. But sha seeing that boiled corn was funnnyy, took me straight home! Hawking boiled corn from a shopping cart on the streets? Not even in the Bronx I haven’t seen that and we know a lot of ish happens there!

And we also saw a little bit of the Parisian nightlife courtesy of a young Mauritanian from Dayva’s school who wanted to practice his English. He asked to take Dayva out to converse and since I was there it became a threesome. We, D. and I, thought the meet up was gonna be like a casual conversation lesson you know, so we took our sweet time getting there: dragged ourselves out of bed, made something to eat, listened to some music, tried on some new clothes and then strolled over about an hour late (ouch). We got to the designated spot and whooooaaa BROTHER was all spangled up, blinging, ready for a date, dang! And not just any date too, judging from the hints he kept dropping about dancing all night, dude had some serious plans. This was NOT what we had been expecting and us double left feeties, Dayva and I, were not about to oblige a perfect stranger to a night of sweaty dancing and awkward groping in the dark, no. He asked us several times what we wanted to do and we just la-la-ed on ‘ah anything is fine.’ So he stuck to his initial plan and took us to Bastille, prime Parisian clubbing spot.

We being 'Janey-juste-arrive' a Paris, brother took it upon himself to show us around, donning a maestro of Paris persona as we walked about. He would saunter to the door of some clubs, pretend like he was talking to the bouncers and then come back and say : ‘ ahh zuttt too many people in that club,’ or ‘ah bon, my boys aren’t around.’ That was funny, he went to like several places to do the same thing and after a while we couldn’t keep the laughter in, but we also couldn’t laugh in his face so we would point to like a building and in twi pretend to be talking about it and then CRACK UP! Lol, so funny, and guess what. … the dude would laugh with us, and heartily too, haha it was so hilarious, I hadn’t laughed that well in a while. After the clubs, he started peeping into restaurants too, looking to find his peeps, lolll, of course they weren’t there. Finally, we found a café and got some drinks and had a nice time talking. Having disabused him of his ‘all night out’ idea we walked around some more after the drinks and then we went home. Nice evening, certainly amusing.

Another night, another young gentleman, a Guinean med student called up his engineer friend and they took us to the movies. It was a very nice night out, we watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, crazy movie. And the brothers were very decent, made okay conversation, paid for the night and then saw us safely home. Very nice! This guy, the doc, he lived on Dayva’s floor in her residence universitaire.

Now speaking of Dayva’s hall, there’s a good story.

Dayva had only just moved into her ‘residons,’ when I arrived, and she didn’t know anyone so we resolved to profit from my being there to meet people. To do this, we really put ourselves out: spoke loud English on our cells in the hallway (young French people love English speakers), opened our door when cooking to let the scents waft, spoke loudly in our room etc etc. Our ploy worked! In no time people definitely knew we were around and this is how we met the med student dude from the date and then some creepy dude across our room who looked way too old to be a student and who would wink whenever he saw Dayva and say, ”SALUT le Princesss!” Pretty disturbing.

Anyway, one day we were in the room looking at pictures. Seeing an especially funny one of me, Dayva burst out laughing, and she can laugh, a rollicking laughter that carries itself many miles. She cracked up and cracked up that some guys hanging out in our hallway, smoking more than cigarettes, started laughing too. They would laugh, run around, knock on our door and laugh some more. After a while Dayva went to see them at the door and putting on a clean British accent, blew them away by telling them she was from London, they were like whoaaaaa and got pretty excited jumping around, talking all at once and making a whole lot of noise. They chatted for a bit and Dayva came back to the room.

Not ten minutes after, there was another knock on the door. Sigh, ‘we asked for it and we’re really getting it’ we thought and this time I went and got the door. And lo, before me stood a quaking young man! He was like shaking, I’m not even joking. I was so surprised. And then even more surprising, he stretched out his quivering hands and handed me a big box, “cadeau, pour vous/ present for you” and then he walked off and I could hear his friends laughing in the back ground, they peeked out of one of their rooms and said, “ ahh don’t worry he’s shy!” Very strange! We open the box and it’s a huge flower vase, what the heck?!! Anyway we were gracious and Dayva went and thanked them. Now 3 minutes later, another knock, another guy, this time he had a glass in hand. “Cadeau pour vous,” he said. I asked him why a present, we didn’t need a glass? He replied before running of, ‘ah but you can use it to brush you teeth!
Whoaaaa!!! Was that a cryptic message, brother trying to tell us something??? Regardless, we brushed up extra hard that night!