A piece of France away from France or a French baguette in the Caribbean (part 1)

Posted by: Maria in May 2024 (1 year, 8 months ago)

From an administrative point of view Guadeloupe is a French overseas region (département d'outre-mer). All shops, banks and administrative buildings are the same as in France. You can send a postcard using the mailboxes of the French post office. Everything is written in French, Guadeloupe’s official language. Your French phone number will work as if you have never left France. The local currency is the euro. You can buy a baguette, a croissant or a pain au chocolat for breakfast, a log cake (bûche de Noël) for Christmas or even a King cake (galette des Rois) for Epiphany from a legit French bakery and yet… As soon as you start digging deeper, from any other point of view this bunch of islands in the heart of the Caribbean Sea is everything but France!

The 9-hour flight between Paris and Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe’s economic capital where the international airport is located, already makes it clear that you are far far away from the European continent. Once you have spotted the gorgeous turquoise palette of the Caribbean Sea and the lush greenery of the main islands of Basse-Terre and Grande-Terre in the shape of the two wings of a butterfly, you will have the absolute certainty that you are definitely not in France.

Welcome to the tropics, to the shining sun and pouring rain, to the stunning sunsets and flamboyant rainbows!

Welcome to the beautiful nature of the Caribbean with its colourful flowers and animals, its endless white-sand beaches and the ubiquitous sea…

The archipelago was called Karukera (or "The Island of Beautiful Waters") by the native Arawak people and you can definitely understand why!

In 1493 Christopher Columbus named the main islands Santa María de Guadalupe after Our Lady of Guadalupe, a shrine to the Virgin Mary venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe. When the area became a French colony, the Spanish name was retained but altered to French orthography.

Later on, the locals took the matter in their own hands and affectionately nicknamed their islands Ti Gwadloup or simply Gwada!

Interestingly enough, Guadeloupean people call mainland France “the metropolis” or the mother country while inhabitants of smaller islands of Guadeloupe refer to the two main islands as “the continent”!

If French being the official language made you think it would be easy for a French speaking person to communicate with the locals, you would realise pretty quickly how wrong you were… Yes, you will be able to read all road and other signs but if you want to speak with the locals, it is a completely different story!

In their day to day life most Guadeloupean people speak a language which sounds only a tiny bit like French and otherwise like an entirely different language that even native French speakers cannot understand… It is the famous Guadeloupean Creole, aka Patwa or Kreyol (not to be confused with Haitian Creole or Martinique Creole which present some similarities but also lots of differences). It is a French-based creole language with some vocabulary from English, a few African languages, the local French dialects from Brittany and Normandy and a few languages native to indigenous people of the Americas. This mix emerged in the 17th century as a result of the need for all ethnic groups in Guadeloupe (French, African and Amerindian) to be able to understand each other.

If the local bakeries look very much like those in France, they sell local savoury pies and pastries with tropical fruits in addition to the traditional baguettes, croissants and pains au chocolat. You can also get a coconut log cake in addition to the traditional chocolate or coffee ones and a coconut or guava King cake in addition to the traditional frangipani one.

It is of course possible to buy your groceries from one of the supermarket chains that you also find in France. However, a more authentic option would be one of the tiny mom-and-pop stores or outdoor markets displaying wonders of local fruits, veggies, homemade jams, syrups and cakes, spice doughs and sauces, vanilla, chocolate, rum, sugarcane, you name it…

You will also find the local produce on your plates in the typical colourful outdoor restaurants.

Some of them are located straight on the beach!

You can remove your shoes and feel the warm sand tickling your toes while enjoying some stunning sea views, delicious freshly caught grilled fish and a coconut punch.

Guadeloupean cuisine is an amazing mixture of African, European and Asian influences. There is something for everyone!

The vegetarians will find lots of roots and other local vegetables such as sweet potatoes, yams, maniocs (aka cassavas), turban squashes (aka giraumons), plantains (aka green bananas) and chayotes (aka christophines).

The meat lovers will enjoy the coconut chicken, as well as the chicken or goat colombo. This dish equivalent to an Indian curry was brought to the French-Caribbean by Indian immigrants who came during the 19th and 20th centuries to work on the sugar plantations.

For seafood lovers, there is the fish colombo (yes, you can make a delicious colombo with any protein), fish court-bouillon (or fish poached in a flavoursome broth), grilled fish and various dishes with river shrimps (aka ouassous), lambis (aka giant conches) and sea urchins.

And there are of course the accras who will make everyone happy. These cod, seafood or roots fritters flavoured with spices and often served with a spicy “dog” sauce are on each restaurant’s menu and are simply delicious.

The Guadeloupean desserts will put everyone from vegetarians to meat lovers on the same page and on the same planet of pure deliciousness. You can go for the usual match made in heaven of chocolate cake and coconut ice-cream or opt for bananes flambées or a sorbet with tropical flavours.

It will be difficult to choose your sorbet flavour amongst cassava, mango, pistachio, raspberry and lychee, passion fruit, pineapple, soursop or Christmas currant (aka groseille de Noël) - a fruit from the hibiscus family.

And there is no way to miss the omnipresent guava fruit which is literally everywhere, in particular in the homemade cakes baked by the local aunties!

You cannot say that you have been to Guadeloupe if you have not tried the local rum, the consumption of which is in the DNA of Guadeloupean people. You can go for the light version of a rhum arrangé - a preparation based on fruits, plants or spices macerated in rum, or the famous ti-punch (literally meaning a “small punch”) - a drink made with rum, lime zest and cane sugar.