Our Martinique Taxi Driver Tried to Turn Us Over to Robbers

Years ago, with our children grown and gone and a few extra dollars burning a hole in his pocket, my husband proposed that we take a much-anticipated and long-delayed trip to the island of Martinique.

He bought tapes and books and started working on learning enough French to perhaps get by. I had no desire to learn the language. Years ago we had taken a conversational German course, and with the influx of Hispanics into our town, I had picked up a good bit of Spanish. I already had trouble keeping the two languages separated, and I didn't feel I needed to add another to further confuse me. The fact is, I'm still working on English and sometimes can't even pull up an English word when I need it. So I left the task of learning French up to him.

When we arrived on Martinique, he soon became proficient at what he calls the "point and grunt system." If he asked if anyone spoke English, the answer was usually, "NO!" but most of the time, if he attempted to speak French, they would take pity on him and help him out, in English.

One day of our trip stands out in my mind as one of the most interesting-and unnerving--of the trip. Our entire lives, even.

That day we took a ferry across the bay from Trois Islets where our hotel was located to the city of Fort deFrance. It was an interesting town. There was a large statue of Josephine (as in Napoleon) on the square, as Martinique was her birthplace. The streets were too narrow to accommodate parking, but the drivers parked anyway. To walk down the street, we were forced to either detour around the back of, or climb over the front of cars literally parked on the sidewalk, or walk down the middle of the street as everyone else seemed to be doing.

Merchants had booths set up in the middle of the street. One booth was a shoe repair shop, where a woman was standing with one shoe on while the cobbler repaired her other one. One can buy homemade ice cream there and in many other places, dipped from hand-cranked freezers like the one we used to use at home. We were afraid to partake of that, being unsure of Martinique laws about sanitation and pasteurization.

We saw few other Caucasians in town that day, and for once I really understood how it feels to be in the minority. We made one small purchase, and while my husband had his coins out trying to decide which ones he needed to use, the clerk just took what she wanted from his hand. Later he figured it up and decided she had been honest. That happened often on the island when he went to make a purchase, and as far as he could tell, nobody ever took more than they were entitled to.

Eventually we came to a large, open shed which served as a farmer's market. Rows and rows of tables laden with produce lined the building, and at one end there was a rough kitchen built of stone where one could buy vegetables fresh from the cooking pot. It was very interesting and picturesque.

Although we had read that some Martinique inhabitants were violently opposed to having their pictures taken-something about having their spirit stolen-my husband just couldn't resist standing at one end of the marketplace and making an overall picture, thinking that if he didn't focus on one person, no one would mind. He was wrong. Suddenly a little black man with several hundred greasy dreadlocks on his head and his breath reeking of alcohol jumped up in his face and started waving his arms and screaming something unintelligible.

My husband was rapidly repeating, "I'm sorry. Forgive me," in French (at least that's what he told me he was saying) as we backed out of the place and made a hasty retreat down the street.

When we first arrived on the island and were being driven the several miles from the airport to our hotel at Trois Islets, we realized that the cars on Martinique have only two speeds--stopped and wide open. Remembering that, as well as the pugilistic manner all the drivers seemed to exhibit, and having seen numerous vehicles rusting away where they had been left wrapped around trees, we had been hesitant to rent a car as we usually do. So we picked a cab at random from among the dozens waiting on the street in Fort deFrance vying for business.

The driver was a flashy-looking, 30-ish man in a crisp white shirt that complimented his ebony skin and sparkling white teeth. Quite the charmer, he spoke English about as well as my husband spoke French. We inquired about the cost of a tour of the island and came to an agreement.

The man filled up his gas tank and we started out.

Within about 30 minutes of leaving town, the driver asked if we liked pineapple and/or pineapple juice. When he asked if we'd like to stop and get a drink, we thought he said of pineapple juice. It was a hot day and we were thirsty, so we answered in the affirmative. Soon he parked in front of what I first took to be a tiny, run-down chicken house. The front of the building was completely open and three or four tables covered with red checkered oil cloth were set up inside. Across the back of the room a curtain concealed whatever else was in the building. Presently a large older woman came through those curtains and the driver introduced her as his mother.

He told the woman we wanted some pineapple juice or pineapple. Anyway, that's what we thought he said. She went back through the curtains and returned with a square bottle from which she poured an inch or so of clear liquid into two glasses. She motioned to a bowl of bananas on the table. "Mash up and put in drink," she instructed.

"That's odd," I thought. I picked up a glass and took a tiny sip, which burned a streak down my throat and left me breathless and dizzy. "I don't think that's pineapple juice, "I gasped. "What shall we do with it?"

"Just leave it sitting there and don't do anything," my husband said. Soon the woman returned with two paper plates, each of which contained three slices of fresh pineapple.

"That's more like it," we said, and dug in. But we didn't have time to enjoy it for long. The whole time we had been there, a muscular young man, perhaps the driver's brother, had been sitting in a chair not four feet away from us, peeling oranges with a knife with a six-inch blade, popping them into his mouth, and studying us like a road map as he chewed.

Although I found that a bit unnerving, it wouldn't have been so bad except for what happened next. The cab driver returned from visiting with his mother in the back of the place and announced that he was going to go back down the road and buy some gas, and would be back shortly to pick us up.

In spite of the fact that my brain was blurred from its unaccustomed, however brief, contact with alcohol, I didn't like the sound of that. The man had bought gas 30 minutes before. Was he in the habit of buying it by the pint? And if so, why? It's not like he had another check coming in while on this tour. Suddenly I knew! They had tried to get us drunk and now he was going to desert us there for his relatives to rob. They would dispose of our bodies and nobody would ever know what had become of us.

"We're ready to go," I said as we jumped up from the table.

"But you haven't finished your pineapple," the driver said. We assured him that while it was delicious, we had had all we could hold. We hastily paid (too much, but who cared?) for our pineapple and "drinks" and rushed to the taxi.

As the driver's mother was loading him down with fruit to take home, we hurriedly made plans. We had to convince him we had friends who knew where we were, in case he had other devious plans for us.

When the driver returned to the car, my husband, as casually as possible, considering that his voice came out in a quavering squeak, asked him how much longer the tour would last. He told us and my husband continued, "We're supposed to meet some friends at the dock and we don't want them to worry." That was no lie. At that moment, if we survived to reach the dock, anyone there would be a friend we would cherish for life.

The tour continued. The driver actually did backtrack a mile or two and topped off the gas. I guessed he felt obligated to, having mentioned it earlier.

Once he stopped the cab and pointed out a deserted rock structure which was mostly buried under lava rock. He explained that years ago a volcano had erupted, burying the whole town under lava. The only survivor was a prisoner in the jail we were looking at, who was so far underground that the lava or even the heat from it didn't reach him. I wondered how they had reached him afterwards, but didn't ask. I just wanted this trip to be over.

Another time he stopped his cab in front of an apartment building and honked the horn. A woman in the apartment building leaned from a second-story window and waved. "My girl friend," he said proudly. Later as we approached Fort deFrance and the end of the tour, he motioned to a house and said, "My house. I have three kids and my wife is expecting another one soon." When I thought of the poor young woman sweltering in that little shack with three children and another on the way, while he carried on with his girlfriend, I almost wished I could speak French.

The "tour" finally over, we rushed to the dock to catch the next ferry. There were many "friends" there, and what a welcome sight they were!

The next day we rented a car and drove around on the parts of the island we hadn't seen on the tour. Somehow the reckless drivers didn't seem as dangerous as before.

Maybe the whole incident was totally innocent and nobody ever intended to harm us. In retrospect, I wonder if perhaps the driver just needed to go back to a station to use its restroom. But when you're in a strange place and don't know a living soul there, it's easy to jump to conclusions. We did learn from the incident, though, when in a strange place, always to leave a note in our room to let somebody know where we intended to go when we left the room. Just in case we never come back, they'll know where to start looking for us. It never hurts to take precautions wherever you are.