It must be wonderful to walk down the same street every day, and greet people as you go, to have the same conversations year after year, slight variations on a familiar timetable, a regular path worn through the constancies and changes, the patterns and cycles of events and seasons, maybe a particular bird that calls from a particular tree each day, as you're passing, and you wonder whether it calls regularly, but at a longer interval than the time it takes you to walk past, or whether it just calls the once every day, or whether it calls for you. One day you notice that it ends its call for the year the day after the tips of a particular grass turn brown, and you try to imagine what that looks like, to that particular bird, up in that particular tree.
I'm back in Fort de France, Martinique - it feels extremely civilized, after Dominica. There are sidewalks. And pretty dresses in store windows. And interestingly old buildings. And no one's harassing me to buy something, or give them money. I'm always intrigued by how different places have such different characters, how thin accretions of place and incident, biological geological historical accumulations form into such distinct entities, into towns and cities, the sense of a place.
According to wikipedia, Martinique was sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1493, claimed as French territory by French settlers in 1635. Naturally, the indigenous Caribs, who had arrived in the 1200s, displacing and assimilating the previous residents, the Taino, had issues with that. It is now part of France - the inhabitants are citizens of France, and members of the European Union. The obvious contrasts with Dominica, which was colonized by the British, and achieved independence in 1978, is a higher quality of life - socialized health care, better infrastructure, higher cost of living, and a more European cuisine, fashion, architecture, and mood. Speaking more specifically, the contrast that I'm observing is between Roseau, Dominica, and Fort de France, Martinique, but it's consistent with patterns that I've observed around the world, between areas colonized by England vs France. One certainty as a western tourist is that it's way easier to eat well in places settled or colonized by France.