La Mer

When I first arrived in Guadeloupe, I noticed almost immediately that many Guadeloupeans could not swim. At the beach, adults would wade into the water waist deep, but would go no further. Adolescents would squawk and screech if they strayed too far and found themselves unable to touch the bottom while children remained firmly planted on the shore, just where the waves would wash up on the sand.

It seems ludicrous that any Guadeloupean should not know how to swim - this is an island, after all. Shouldn't everybody know how to swim? But history has played a significant role in forming the modern day Guadeloupean and until the 1960's, Guadeloupe could be defined, by and large, as an agricultural society. The plantation or farm was the center of existence. Still, the explanation may go deeper than a traditional lifestyle tied to the land. Patrick Chamoiseau, a Martinican writer, says:

The sea in creole culture, its very particular. You must not forget that at the core, in the Antillais imagination, there is the slave trade. Therefore, I think that the sea represented for many generations the place of initial suffering. It had also been the place of imprisonment because the slaves who wanted to escape the slave plantations, they came up against the sea. So the sea was also the jailer. So that in a general manner, the Antillais did not look towards the sea until much later, moreover through the influence of tourism (1).

To be surrounded by miles and miles of sea, a source of regret, fear and hopelessness...such a terrible burden on the psyche of the Antillais.



(1) "La mer dans la culture créole, c’est très particulier. Il ne faut pas oublier qu’à la base, dans l'imaginaire antillais, il y a la traite des esclaves. Donc, je pense que la mer a représenté pour beaucoup de générations le lieu de la souffrance initiale. Ça a été aussi le lieu de l’enfermement parce que les esclaves qui voulaient fuir les habitations esclavagistes, ils butaient contre la mer. Donc la mer, c’était aussi la geôlière. Ce qui fait que d’une manière générale, les Antillais ne se sont tournés vers la mer que très tardivement, d’ailleurs sous l’influence du tourisme."
This quote was taken from the program Thalassa, France 3, shown on December 12, 2008.