Pointe-à-Pitre
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Fri 3 Apr 2009 22:07
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Pointe-à-Pitre
I wanted to go in to town today to
get Bear his favourite photograph enlarged to go on the lounge wall. No small
feat. In St Lucia they had the ink but no paper. In Dominica they had the paper
but no ink. Third time lucky. No. The photo shop nearby that had been suggested
by the marina office was closed down, Bear rang the number left on a scrap of
paper and was told "for about three months", hopefully my passport will have
come way before then and we will be long gone.
So off to town, again after going to
the marina office where the helpful young lady rang ahead to make sure it could
be done. Yes. Finally. A one hour service place in town. We walked down to the main road to the bus stop.
 Bit of an odd looking
roundabout outside the marina gates.
   Opposite the bus stop is the marina in the distance behind the tree, a huge complex
with shops, chandlers and enormous haul-out facility. Next door is the University.
   The bus terminus, the
main square and its fountain. Pointe-à-Pitre. Creole called Lapwent, is the largest city of
Guadeloupe, an overseas
region and
department of
France. Although it is not Guadeloupe's administrative capital (that
distinction goes to Basse-Terre), Pointe-à-Pitre is nonetheless the economic
capital with a population of 171,773 inhabitants in its urban area
(in 1999), only 20,948 of
whom lived in the city (commune) of Pointe-à-Pitre proper. The inhabitants are called
Pointois.
   I thought I would be less septic
toward the town this time as my last visit was called 'post office day'. The
bandstand looked nice enough until you look closer
and see the graffiti and we saw some delectable wiring.
   The memorial to Felix Eboue, Governor General and French Colonial Administrator.
Felix Eboue was born on the
26th of December 1884 in Cayenne, French Guyana.
He began his career after graduating from the School of
Colonial Administration (l'Ecole coloniale). He was appointed secretary general
of the Government of Martinique in 1932 and served in the same capacity in
French Sudan in 1934 before his appointment as the first Black Governor of
Guadeloupe in 1938. He was appointed Governor of Chad later that same
year. Eboue suffered no illusions regarding the implications of Vichy's
capitualtion to Nazi racial philosophy for himself and other non-European French
nationals. Chad was the first French colony to march into the Gaullist camp in
August 1940 and Eboue led the parade. He was appointed Governor General of
French Equatorial Africa after the Free French wrested control of the region's
other territories. Eboue advocated maintaining ties between metropolitan
France and the overseas territories but insisted that they could continue in the
postwar world only on the basis of equality. He played a major role in
organizing the January 1944 Brazzaville Conference that began the transformation
of the French Empire into the French Union. He died suddenly from a
heart attack in Cairo on the 17th of March 1944. His ashes were interred
in the Pantheon in 1949.
   The cinema,
the memorial to lost souls of WW1 and a typical side street.
   The Hotel de
Ville looks very grey and dull. Bear leading the
way. The post office workers currently on
strike demonstrating loudly outside the main post office. A main strike of
all general workers hit the French islands in the West Indies about six weeks
ago. We have been told at worst cars were set on fire, petrol stolen from dinghy
outboards and a general lack of stuff on the supermarket shelves. The result is
many hotels that closed when tourists cancelled their holidays will never
re-open but will be sold off as apartments. The French Government settled and
gave a 30% pay rise, people are still deeply unhappy, the day after we arrived
the electricians went on strike, now the postal workers. Please may my passport
get through.
   Down a narrow road we saw this
roundabout which, on closer inspection is a memorial to a local musician and
drummer called Marcel Lollia known as - Velo. He was
swamped most of the time with traffic squeezing around him, only
just.
   The main town
market is undergoing a re-vamp. The fountain
was dry and again de-faced. Traders carried on
nonetheless.
 The colour of the
market.
   Sadly vandalism and neglect has played a hand here, the high street and a swanky mobile
phone shop.
  A novel little
car, looks like a SMART with natural air-conditioning.
   Another side
street covered in graffiti. In amongst the drab you find brightness,
even the plastic table cloths reflect the colourful national plaids. The main road complete with JCB.
 Not a bad view from this side of the water from the west.
 Looking to the
east you can see on the left yachts anchored outside the marina entrance.
To the right is a river you can use to cut between the two islands of
Guadeloupe.
 
 We saw a
tailor offering Paris fashions, perhaps not. En route to the bus station,
(I use the words very lightly) Bear stopped for some freshly trimmed sugar cane
from a man extremely deft with a very big knife. A pretty
little house that shows the by-gone beauty and architecture of the town
which now gives off an air of tiredness and fatigue. We spoke to a man that said
the people here are basically unhappy, thinking life here should be like Paris,
not in a million.
  Success, we trotted back to Beez armed
with the new view, Bears favourite taken at dusk in Speightstown, Barbados. This
replaces the one we bought when we dreamed of waking up with coconut tree lined
views.
ALL IN ALL a good
day to celebrate with Bear fifty two weeks of retirement today. Congratulations
to Bear, many, many more At-ventures to come. xx
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