Dominica

Excerpts from my travel journals for my travel writing class and my globalization and development class.  I will try to blog some more interesting things once I get to Brazil.  We have only been on the ship for 2 days since Dominica, with 4 more days to go until we reach Brazil.  Everyone on the ship is going a little stir-crazy to say the least.

While visiting Dominica, I found some things very similar to the rest of the Caribbean in terms of trade and culture.  They watch American television, pay attention to all of the American sports, and listen to American music. They eat most of the same foods as the rest of the Caribbean and even some of the same foods as in America.  But, there are some key differences. 

They do not play most of the sports we play in America, especially football.  They have the stadium for it downtown, but they use it for cricket and fútbol.  English is the national language but when they speak to each other in a business or social context they use a unique dialect. Most of the citizens of Dominica are natural born citizens, and many of them have never visited 'the mainland'.  Even though they are essentially living in an isolated location, they are by no means isolated from the rest of the world. 

Some fruit and vegetables are grown on the island.  They have a greenmarket downtown that sells not only local goods but also international goods.  Their local products include but are not limited to guava, bananas, Kabuli beer, and soap (Kabuli is the original name of the island).  Because of the rocky volcanic terrain, the island is not suitable for the common crops in the Caribbean.  Therefore, this island is much different from the others in terms of trade and tourism.

One of the interesting stories on the island is the story of Sukie.  When he started working as a bread deliverer he had nothing but the clothes on his back.  Sukie saved up his money from his deliveries and eventually purchased the baker he was working at.  The bakery was so successful that he purchased the bakery next door.  He continued to purchase a lot of the stores and businesses in the downtown area and on the island.  Now, almost on every street corner there is a store owned by Sukie.

I did not notice very many unemployed.  If they were students, they were wearing the mandatory uniforms.  If they were older women, they were mostly working selling the 'local' souvenirs and trinkets.  Shockingly, Chinese people downtown operated a lot of the stores.  The men were working just as much as the women and many of them were working on the various construction sites on the island.

The aroma on the island of Dominica was different from my town in Florida.  Everywhere I turned, there was a different smell from an unidentifiable origin.  One minute it would smell of fried food, the next it would reek of sewer waste.  The senses were constantly being stimulated.  In the middle of the rain forest at the Trafalgar Falls, it was if you were taken back in time before pollution and overpopulation.  The beaches were a different story.  For miles, there was not one location on the black sand where human pollution was not evident.  Between the soda bottles, Styrofoam containers, and glass, there was not one place to sit on the beach without flies and other insects interrupting your relaxation.  Even if there wasn't garbage in your vicinity, the stench was constantly wafting out of the sewage run-off into the ocean.  It was disturbing to see such a beautiful place turned into ruins by modern human population.