Gangsta Robba Week

Gangsta Robba on the bus with his Hennesey and champagne glass. Sorry its so blurry.

Saturday night at minutes to midnight I was riding in a coaster (a big bus) with Gangster Robber (my long time enemy turned acquaintance) and his friend/my ex- suitor Kwai Kwai as they drank Hennessey out of stolen champagne glasses and yelled out the windows at American Medical students asking if they were lesbians or if they understood the jibberish Chinese these men were screaming at them.

This was real life.

In April, just after moving into my own apartment, I was walking home one evening when a man yelled at me from in front of a snackette across from my home to come over and talk to him. I approached hesitantly as he seemed drunk. When I got there he started berating me about not treating him with enough respect and how I need to come when he calls me. I felt as though this was overstepping some boundaries so I bid him adieu. As I walked away he screamed after me “you need to respect me! I’m Gangsta Robba, watch out I’m Gansta Robba!”

I ran home, locked all of my doors and turned all of the lights on as I hid peering out the window to make sure he didn’t come to my house to attack me.

I went to help in the Reunion Bar that night and tried to find out if he was someone I should worry about. My description of a drunk man with big sunglasses and locks (dreads) did not serve well in identifying him as it could be a plethora of drunk men with locks and big sunglasses. One of my friends walked me home around 9 pm and again I double locked all my doors and prepared for bed. When I looked up at the snackette he was still sitting outside drinking. Alarmed, and afraid of dying, I called our Dominican director who was unfortunately out of town. After a long internal debate I decided to call the security officer in St. Lucia who I get along well with in hopes that she could shed some light on the situation. When I rang her phone our Country Director (who is in charge of the entire Eastern Caribbean) answered the phone as she too was out of state. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I just wanted someone to tell me that no one would kill me so I muttered something and hung up. (A month later I found out that earlier that same night the Country Director had told the older class at their mid-service training that people should not call him late at night to ask about non-essential questions, hopefully he thought it was a well timed joke.)

The next three nights I slept with all my lights on and tried to tactfully inquire about this man, fearing that he was someone’s son or brother.

Eventually I learned that he was my neighbor and while a little crazy quite harmless.

On Saturday night I couldn’t get over that 7 months later Gangsta Robba and I had sat together at a wedding and he was now offering me Hennesey out of stolen champagne glasses. Until Kwai Kwai decided that it was a fun game to throw everything glass out the window of the moving bus and then Gangsta Robba went to sleep. Integration.

Ma Clem dressed up for the wedding.

Dominican phrase book: “Don’t call my name” I broke the cardinal rule in this post by calling Gangsta Robba’s name in this blog. Hopefully he doesn’t spend a lot of time on the interwebs. Calling someone’s name means saying his/her name, regardless of whether it’s good or bad, whether the person is present or not. Calling someone’s name is always a bad thing.

Ex.

Vexed woman: “She called my name in the meeting saying that I organizing snacks. I’m not in it anymore. She’s always calling my name and we don’t even deal.”

Erin: “But vexed woman, I thought you were making snacks? I’m sure other lady whose name I won’t call didn’t mean anything by it. Everyone is happy you fixing snacks.”

Vexed woman: “But I’m not in it. She needs to know not to call my name. She always calling names. I’m not in it anymore.”