Rodney Bay, Jan 23

 

We walked to Gros Îlet yesterday. It’s a small community just north of Rodney Bay. Like so many other places we’ve been, it’s a mix of fairly nice houses tucked between ramshackle houses. Many of the latter are no larger than a storage shed from Lowe’s. Sheep and goats were tethered along the streets (forget sidewalks!) anywhere something green was growing. Chickens--definitely “free range”--pecked at gravel bugs and scraps, chicks peeping along behind. Again, like so many other places we’ve been, there were tiny shops everywhere; some simply operating from an open window in a small room in someone’s home. Nearly everyone selling some kind of food stuff, fruit drink and beer. It is not unusual to see people buy just one bottle of beer that they proceed to drink as they walk down the street. That’s something we first noticed in the Bahamas last year. One thing that struck us about Gros Îlet was the number of people just sitting around. Unemployment must be a major social problem here--20% in 2003. Tourism and agriculture are significant parts of the economy and the manufacturing sector is one of the most developed in the East Caribbean. Agriculturally, the banana is the main cash crop while many other things are grown for local consumption--yams, manioc, taro and pumpkins.
 
You may have noticed that place names here, as on Dominica, are French. This island like all the others in the Caribbean were hotly contested by France and England for most of the 18th century with France seeming to dominate early on. Even though place names here are French, proper names are mostly English and English, of course is the language used in school, commerce and government. However, Créole is widely spoken by many--especially older and uneducated people. Créole is loosely related to French, but contains elements of English, Spanish and West African languages. The Créole that is spoken here is understood by the people on Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Martinique. It is similar to the Créole of Haiti and Louisiana, but not completely understandable there.