So maybe I'm just a big complainer

Or maybe not.

I've spent more time than I'd like to admit wondering how Mme Sureau could live in Martinique and then knowing how it's hotter than hades how she could propose someone take her place. I've spent a lot of time asking how the people in the Fulbright organization could send me to a place where it's too hot to think much less do anything else. And then I remember Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721) and the letter where someone asks Usbek who has newly arrived in Paris,"Comment peut-on etre persan?" The point of the letter is that the Parisians are so ignorant about other cultures they cannot even conceive of being a Persian. I mentally chide myself and figure I'm obviously displaying the same ignorance and lack of sensitivity towards this new culture that I've yet to figure out.

Alex said that the people who made the sidewalks (that are only about 6 inches wide in some parts) are mean and cruel and stupid. In our world stupid is an 's' word that isn't supposed to be used but I couldn't think of admonishing him when he was so clearly speaking the truth. Why make a sidewalk if a 3 year old's feet don't even fit on one part of a high traffic road. But along with all these questions my mind readily supplies the answer. If I had to build a sidewalk in 105 degree heat than I too would have made it as narrow as possible. And this is, of course, just one of hundreds of indications that the infrastructure in Martinique seems to be completely lacking or falling apart.

And today it all became clear. I'm not a complainer. Ok well I am but it's justified. Mme Sureau is not a torturer. It's just the hottest September Martinique has ever experienced. Theo's principal said it was the hottest Sept she's known in her 60 years and indeed 60 is the number. Today I was reading Meteo France and it has never been this hot since 1946. What's most noticeable for the meteorologists is that even at night it doesn't get any cooler. On Sept 28 it never got cooler than 28 degrees which has only happened once before. http://www.meteo.fr/temps/domtom/antilles/pack-public/alaune/cmp_ma_oct09.pdf
Eureka! I am a complainer but it's not just complaining for the sake of complaining.  We're not just suffering because we're used to NY where it's cooler. We're suffering because it is hotter than ever before.

One last rumination. I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. I would never claim to be as influential as the people who made Hush Puppies popular in the late 1990's but let me share these ideas and have you wonder what if it were always, everywhere getting hotter and hotter? At what point do we realize that we are ruining our planet and it's time to stop?