But if you look beneath all I have mentioned Roseau is a treasure trove of historic architecture. My favourite time to wonder is on a Sunday. Then you can spend less time looking down and more time looking up and around and can really appreciate the old buildings and little wooden "Ti-Kaz's" tucked in between newer buildings.
It is sad to see that each year more of the old buildings are either gone, severely neglected or in ruins. The cost of up keep I guess is just too high for the owners.
I am not sure if the Society for Historic Architecture, Preservation & Enhancement (SHAPE) is still functioning but they were the first to give me an appreciation of our impressive historic architecture.
SHAPE also produced a really nice Historic Roseau Walking Tour which I wish would be purchased by the cruise ships for the tourists who just want to stroll through the town.
Hopefully the new back road and Goodwill bypass road will ease traffic going into the centre of Roseau but maybe a pedestrianised Roseau and ruins and neglected old buildings restored to their former glory would really showcase our hidden diamond.
But I know the cost would be huge I guess and not everyone shares the view that restoration of old buildings are worthy symbols of development. Big advert TV screens and flyovers are what we have been told signifies we are no longer "backward".
There is an old West African saying, symbolised by the Sankofa bird, - "se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenki" which translates to "it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot".
It means that sometimes "we must go back to our roots in order to move forward and it is sometimes necessary to go back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward....Whatever we have lost, forgotten, forgone or been stripped of, can be reclaimed, revived, preserved and perpetuated."
wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankofa
So maybe this is true with our architecture and there are modern day lessons in how these old buildings were constructed and some of them are worthy of preservation to blend with the new...
In May, Barbados will be hosting The 11th annual Caribbean Conference on Sustainable Tourism Development and I see that there are a few slots on Heritage Tourism.
Maybe as with other areas of Dominica culture and life we already have the assets for yet another tourism product and all it will take is for someone to come and tell us...oh and some money too.
Dominica Buildings and Structures Photos
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