T.P. Folk

Yesterday, my music group and I were invited to play in a local brochetti. Brochettis are small restaurants, often in car-parks or in the middle of nowhere, all corrugated iron and plastic chairs, but they cook locally-grown/fished/caught food on a barbecue, usually in kebab form (brochette), it tastes good, there's lots of it and it costs rougly 6€ a plate. They used to be simple shacks by the side of the road, run by women (who generally stay at home and look after the children), but those were closed up for sanitary reasons, so now there are fewer of them, but they're cleaner and better organized.

Things didn't really go to plan. As soon as we had all arrived and sorted ourselves out, had something to drink and got the instruments ready, Colas arrived. Colas is a big French construction company, the only one here. They had obviously decided that the stretch of road just behind the brochetti  (at a distance of roughly 20 metres) needed re-doing, even though the road perpendicular to it had gaping holes in it, so they drew lines over the condemned section, re-directed traffic around them, set up a big light and started two generators up. We started having problems hearing our polkas and waltzes, never mind actually playing together or getting people to dance. Had a good laugh at the Colas people though, as one was working, one was driving round on a little orange truck and five or six more were standing around, watching. One didn't have a hard hat on, so we decided he must have been the director of operations, nothing could possibly happen to him.

They brought over a big digger then, and started breaking the road into pieces. Colas lads and musicians frowned at each other with hands on hips and burst out laughing. We gave up at that point, and went off to eat fish kebabs and breadfruit, which there wasn't enough of because the brochetti had served other people first and there wasn't enough to go round. This happens all the time here, it's normal if slightly annoying.