Roseau

Roseau stands on an alluvial fan built up as the Roseau River wandered across the coastal plain, and the river drew people long before Europeans arrived: Amerindians migrating through the islands settled here over the last 2,000 years, and the town occupies the site of the Kalinago village of Sairi. French settlers who established a small settlement named it after the river reeds, roseaux, that grew thickly along the banks. They laid it out on the French pattern, with streets running out from a central point — today's Old Market.

France and Britain fought over the town repeatedly. The French built a fort to protect it in 1699; the British replaced it with Fort Young in 1770. In 1778 a French invasion captured Fort Young and Roseau and took control of the island, which returned to British control under the Treaty of Paris in 1784. The British then added fortifications, government buildings, a grid of streets and new districts to the north and south, Potter's Ville and Newtown. The census of 1844 counted 3,954 people. French influence survives in the architecture and the crooked streets around the Old Market, English influence in public buildings and street names.

Growth in the 20th century spread the town outward, to Goodwill in the 1950s and Bath Estate in the early 1980s. Storms have marked recent decades. Hurricane David in 1979 wrecked the Botanic Gardens; in 2015 Tropical Storm Erika sent the Roseau River over its banks overnight; and in September 2017 Hurricane Maria left the capital's infrastructure in ruins, with half the town flooded and power lines down almost everywhere. Rebuilding stronger has been a national project since.

Roseau's culture is the island's Creole mix in concentrated form: French-Catholic and British-Protestant churches a few streets apart, Kwéyòl in the streets and English in the offices. The Catholic cathedral, in Gothic Romanesque revival style, and the Georgian Anglican church on Victoria Street are both examples of European styles with a touch of creolisation. The town is the seat of the Catholic diocese that covers the whole island.

Music runs deep. The musician Prince Ital Joe was born in Roseau in 1963. Calypso, steelpan and the older chanté mas masquerade songs come out at Carnival, and every October the World Creole Music Festival brings Creole performers from across the Caribbean, the French Antilles, Africa and North America to Windsor Park, which also hosts the Calypso finals and the Miss Dominica pageant. The novelist Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea, was born in Roseau in 1890.

Sport is mostly played close to home: cricket in the Botanic Gardens, football on pitches in Newtown, Potter's Ville and Bath Estate, and netball and basketball in the schools. Elsewhere a stretch of street, pavement or beach often becomes a makeshift pitch. The streets of the centre serve as gardens, playing fields and meeting places, and on Sunday afternoons families head for the shade of the Botanic Gardens.

Roseau had a population of about 14,700 in 2011, but the town is the centre of a wider area that has sprawled along the coast to places such as Canefield, Fond Cole, Castle Comfort and Wall House. Few people now live in the old centre; most commute in each morning, filling the narrow streets with cars and minibuses that the town's tight grid was never built for. Courtyards that were once common are giving way to offices.

The town is the island's main port for foreign trade, shipping bananas, bay oil, vegetables, grapefruit, oranges and cocoa, with a deepwater harbour at Woodbridge Bay to the north, and cruise ships are a frequent sight offshore. Services employ much of the workforce: government ministries, banks, shops, radio stations, labour unions and several embassies are all here. Roseau is also the island's centre of education, with secondary schools, Dominica State College and private medical schools.

Weekdays are busy and loud, Saturdays begin before dawn at the market, and Sundays are quiet, with most shops closed and buses scarce. Hurricane Maria still shapes daily concerns: rebuilding houses and infrastructure to withstand future storms.

Roseau eats Dominican Creole food, built on what the island grows and the sea provides. The national dish is callaloo, a soup of leafy greens with coconut milk and sometimes salted meat or seafood, which took the title in 2013. Green fig and saltfish — green bananas with salted cod, seasoned with onions, peppers and garlic — is a traditional plate, bake and saltfish (fried dough with salt cod) is a common breakfast, and fish broth, a soup of seafood and vegetables, is everyday food. Most meals pair fish, chicken or pork with provisions such as dasheen, yam, green banana, breadfruit and plantain.

The Saturday market near the mouth of the Roseau River is where the town shops for tropical fruit, fish and spices, and the food market at the north end of town is full of vendors selling tropical fruit. Roadside stands sell fried chicken, fish and chips and tasty bakes, a fried dough made sweet or salty. Restaurants in the centre cook Creole food with fresh local herbs and seafood.

Cocoa tea, made by boiling local cocoa sticks with cinnamon and bay leaves, is the breakfast drink, and bush teas are brewed from local plants. Fresh juices are made from limes, passionfruit, grapefruit, oranges, tamarinds or guavas, and at Christmas sorrel calyces are boiled into a bright red drink. Rum and coconut water are popular, and the rum shops scattered through town pour Kubuli, the local golden lager, brewed with water from the island's Loubière Springs.