have time to sleep

Noumeans no longer have time to sleep

From HELEN ROUSSEAU, in Noumea As Noumeans strive to keep up with the pace of a city rapidly sprawling inland, keen debate is centring on the question of working hours, and particularly on the possibility of suppressing the midday siesta.

This is but one of the facets of modern Noumea which forces fourth generation Caledonians to reluctantly admit that the old days are gone forever. It can hardly ever be the same again, as more and more immigrants flock to what the French now call their Colorado or Kuwait of the Pacific.

For Caledonians who were accustomed to never walking more than a few paces down the street without stopping to exchange a handshake or kiss on both cheeks with a friend or relative, it’s now distressing to find that they hardly seem to know more than one person in 10.

At the same time, the leisurely hours of midday siesta and the evening gatherings for drinking a quiet “pot”, are fast dwindling. Work now continues round the clock; bulldozers using their headlights to drone on at night, as they carve out the town’s hillsides for extended housing settlements.

By the side of Noumea’s expressway, leading out of town to the fastest developing areas, the city’s first flashing neon sign (advertising electrical goods) beckons motorists along to suburbs more and more distant from the centre.

Folk who five years ago scoffed at the thought of living four miles inland from town, are now fleeing the noisy, nickel-dust shrouded city centre and discovering that land prices have more than quadrupled in the meantime.

Unable to pay SAIB,OOO for a block of land four miles from town, they press further inland to Mont Dore, Dumbea, Paita even. With their children perhaps attending three different schools, where they have to be delivered and fetched four times a day by a working mother, many Caledonians are finding they no longer have time to “live”. The midday siesta has become far from a rest, as one now hastily drives a long distance home, cooks and eats a heavy meal in the heat of the day.

Rising above the debate of how to cope, several business groups have finally taken action to suppress the midday siesta. Naturally, as more premises are air-conditioned, it becomes pleasanter to stay in doors rather than to join the midday peak-hour traffic. The Bank of Indochina has thus become one of the first Noumea establishments to omit lunch-hour closing. Its offices now remain open 7.45 a.m. to 3 p.m., continuously. The Voyageance Travel Service has also adopted the so-called “continuous day”.

As support grows for the new routine, main obstacle seems to be the organisation of the education system so that youngsters can be left at school to be fed and cared for during midday.

If any decisive change is to be made, it is felt that the Adminis tration must certainly be included. The only alternative offered un officially by that side so far has been the “African” system. Those who have actually served in former African colonies have a certain nostalgia for even longer siestas. Under those conditions, work did not resume before 3 p.m. to continue until cocktail hour at 6 p.m.

It seems unlikely, however, that modern developments will allow those old colonial times to be revived now, in New Caledonia.