Back to Login. Posted by: Grace Stephen. Tags: , Development , industry , Opportunities , Tourists. A Relaxing Sulphur Spa. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Blog Categories. Amirou comes back saying that it is not the particularities of a landscape that make it exotic but the fact that it represents an otherness and that it is a support for the imagination. According to him, two dimensions of imagination are to be considered : geography and temporality.
We discussed before that Europeans in the 15 th and 16 th centuries believed they had found the lost paradise in Central America. Today, the island is still a subject of musing. Just as in the tale of Robinson Crusoe , the island is often represented as an enchanted country. A place where the sweetness of the climate allows you to let go, far from the stress and the violence of western civilization. People today are thus not so remote from their ancestors in the Middle Ages, who came together in search of paradise, a place far from the European decline.
Both adjectives are associated because they participate in this construction of the insular exotic imagination of sunny tropical islands. They remain in the process of knowing the otherness as Amirou would say. Indeed, travelers were asked if they had looked for information about Dominican gastronomy before their trip, on the cruise ship or once in Roseau.
Figure 2. Datas collected on February 1 st , 2 nd and 4 th The « exotic » qualifier comes in only as the seventh most common response. On the other hand, the « spicy »adjective stays ahead. This seems to portray the transitional aspect of exoticism as described by Amirou. In this one, tourists who had more information reintroduce the exotic dimension through the gustative adjective. The tourists who gave these answers said they had consulted various tourist guides and internet sources for information about Dominican food.
Routard « The Island produces a lot of fresh fruits, including bananas, coconuts, papayas, guavas, pineapples and mangoes, the latter so plentiful they commonly drop along the roadside.
This picture of a friendly and generous nature can explain the results presented in the previous graph. Indeed, we see here the dimension of the locality of the production system through qualifiers such as « traditional » and « locally made ».
This underlines the fact that tourists have integrated discourses about the local production of food. Characteristics drawn from a valuation of nature Fresh, Healthy, Natural also reflect this emphasis on the nourishing earth in these travel guides.
Indeed, they did spend time getting interested in local cooking. However this effort is not always made in a perspective of opening to the other. The subject of hygiene is a recurrent one in travel guides.
They caution readers about raw dishes or tap water, as potential carriers of parasites and diseases. Here the guidebook warns about sanitary risks.
The data is based on semi-direct interviews conducted with the staff-members of several restaurants cooks, waiters and managers.
Fourteen restaurants of the bay front were selected. Two main themes came out of the survey. Indeed, there are several different meanings and levels of understanding when one speaks of Dominican food as « creole ». First of all, the creole definition of food makes sense through cooking techniques. A cook said:. We soak beans in it and the ground provisions or you might make one pot with your rice and chicken, its called pelau. The salt fish is very popular here too. Smoked haring is very popular.
Elwin 7 summarizes the different influences of Dominican food as coming from four main cultures: « What is most significant is that the Dominican cuisine has been influenced by four main cultures: Carib, French, British and African. In this perspective, creolisation is a general process of interbreeding, about food in this case, which is not contingent to the Caribbean area. The general dynamic of approaches to otherness evolves with the history of the various social groups involved.
The different levels of food creolisation ingredients, techniques, dishes show its evolving nature. It also shows that the process will never be finished. Future interbreeding will take place according to the currents of new influences and new visitors.
Among them, there are the tourists, who have already produced an effect on the local food offer in Dominica. Soon these new references might be likened to the former and will be part of the Dominican culinary corpus. The creole character of Dominican food, finding its roots and developing within a relationship to otherness, allows for certain flexibility in the continuing mutation of meals and recipes.
Dominica is a small country of 75 people, which limits its production capacity as well as its economic influence on the global economic arena. Several countries of the former West Indies are facing the same problems. They unite within international organizations in order to have a place in the worldwide political and economic debates. The regional level is therefore meaning full on political and economic levels for these countries but also at a level of identity.
This is more than six times its national population. It shows that this country is strongly confronted with cultural alterity. In this context, its alliance with the other small English-speaking islands of the Caribbean islands allows Dominica to strengthen the valuation of its cultural references by inserting them into a larger group.
Creolisation in this case draws back to the origins of the term and to the common fate of the former West Indies countries. Moreover the concept is not reduced to its culinary content although that is the direction in which it is developing there today. A lot of the people I talked to spoke about the freshness of the products:. We have like malen, and tuna, it's all fresh from Dominica water.
And along with our salt fish, codfish and provision is our ground food grown in Dominica, lots of vegetables grown here, and, because it's so fresh and natural, most of the people like to try it. Along with our fresh local juice also all squeezed here, not imported. And don't forget our local, our water. Pure, fresh, spring water ». The recurrence of this kind of discourse in the interviews shows that the restaurant workers value the use of products grown in Dominica.
Food works here as a meeting point between primary and tertiary sectors of economy. Food is a support of Dominican farming and a display of the quality of the production. This aspect is of course very much symbolic as well. Indeed the discourses bring to light the identical importance of this valuation of nature and of the agrarian tradition of the country. The valuation of nature also contributes to defining what Dominica is in opposition to others. The Bello factory says:. Our products are like natural products in terms of the natural products we use there, without artificial.
Real peppers, real tamarinds, real passion fruits, real guavas, real everything ». They value the technological gap by praising the advantages of their situation as a developing country.
They express on the one hand the fact that their local economic system allows them to have a direct link between production and consumption. On the other hand they emphasize that the manufacturing processes are limited to a traditional level and so do not go through the denaturalization process of industrialized techniques. The geographical closeness of the production allows for greater information and awareness about the production process.
In other words, people know what they are eating. These discourses give Dominicans the opportunity to position themselves in the global arena by emphasizing the particularities of their local traditions.
It has rich volcanic soil, an abundance of rainfall, with its famous rivers flowing into the sea and an abundance of small fecund farms. The water quality is also way up there with the likes of other volcanic international H20 brands, albeit just not branded and bandied about as well as the Volvics of the world. In fact, as recently as 20 years ago, Dominica was known as the bread basket of the Caribbean, exporting fruit and vegetables to other Caribbean islands which are not able to produce to the same extent.
Subsistence farming was the norm, and still is, with smallholdings producing a wide variety of fruit, vegetables and poultry to cater perfectly for the family.
With fishing resources adding to this, of course. Then the bottom fell out of the basket when banana crops were wiped out by Hurricane Dean in This coincided with a growth in technology, and local people saw a way to move from farming into earning flashier bucks, in IT or indeed tourism.
Tourism accounts for 18 percent of the GDP, and much of it is community led. The Ministry of Tourism supports the development of sustainable tourism, in order to protect and promote Dominica as a country that prides itself on its natural resources, as well as its community involvement. So, when you stay at one of the proliferation of homestays or small guesthouses around the country international hotel chains are almost non-existent here, except for the floating ones doing the Caribbean around the country, where your breakfast, lunch and dinner is often sourced from no further than the back garden, you will be hard pushed to label this country as poor.
In such places the bread basket overfloweth, as does the spirit of welcome. However, as the young generation migrate to seek work in the cities, or emigrate completely, farm-led tourism is at risk in terms of plots being handed on to children. And so by supporting this unique aspect of Dominican tourism, we are celebrating their agricultural heritage and reminding the next generation that it is something to be valued.
Every country wants to progress and so we are not suggesting that Dominica limits its economic growth. But actually, wealth that is generated by sustainable food production and an abundance of vital resources is, in this day and age, the new rich.
The younger folk have been bitten by the tourist bug and the computer bug, so everybody wants to migrate to the city, drive a taxi or be on a computer. But those families that are very strong in family values, and strong in economics, realise where this bread and butter has come from and, as a result they need to preserve that heritage within the family and continue to work the soil. I dare say that in most developed countries, it is unlikely that I could go into the backyard and pick me my lunch and breakfast.
Waitukubuli National Trail One of the priorities for Dominica, after ensuring that people are safe and well, is to pay urgent attention to the Waitukubuli National Trail — not only one of the greatest long distance walking trails in the Caribbean but also in the world. This includes the villages that make up the indigenous Kalinago Territory. Now managed by the Department of Forestry, it is an exemplary example of community-government partnership when it comes to creating superb natural infrastructures that put countries like Dominica on the map.
There are 14 segments in the well mapped trail, each taking a day to complete. Using a local expert guide along the way, of course. Sadly, damage caused by Hurricane Maria in closed the trail, but repair work is ongoing and progressing well. What you can do Support the Friends of Waitukubuli by making donations which will go directly towards trail management, as well as keeping communities aware of the benefits of such trails.
Responsible tourism tips. Turtle watching is a popular activity on the island, but must be done with great care in order to protect these precious habitats.
For more information on conservation projects and to donate to their work, check out Dominica Sea Turtle Conservation Organisation DomSeTCO although their Facebook page is more active than their website. If taking a dolphin or whale watching tour, choose your operator carefully and ask them questions about their commitment to protecting wildlife. They should have a good understanding of dolphin and whale behaviour, keep a good distance from the animals and never chase them or split a pod.
They should also never feed them, or crowd round when there are other boats present. As with all small islands, there are issues with waste disposal. If diving or snorkelling, never touch fish, coral or turtles , and be careful not to step on the coral. It can take decades to regrow. The Dominica Watersports Association has an impressive membership of diving and other watersport companies, adhering to responsible practices in the water.
From protecting the marine environment to ensuring high health and safety standards. So if you think any of your instructors are transgressing the rules, contact the organisation to report them. Lionfish are an invasive species in the Caribbean that breed voraciously and threaten all other reef species. Numbers have doubled annually since , and show no sign of slowing.
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