Yesterday my neighbour was telling how salt fish is a Dominican product. I didn't bother to point out that historically a large portion of the salt fish sold in the Caribbean has come from the Grand Banks off the eastern coast of Canada, for centuries in fact. The strange thing is that it has come to be considered as a local food. Here in the DR thye eat bacalao, in Haiti aransol, in Jamaica saltfish--all very delicious and prepared slightly differently in each country. What makes this even stranger, is that in Newfoundland, they drink something called screech, which I thought for years was some sort of local newfie moonshine. Turns out that it is actually Jamaican rum which filled the holds of Canadian sailing ships after unloading the saltfish. Supposedly on the return voyage the mast rigging made a squealing noise, hence the name.

The thing about the Caribbean is that pretty much most of the things it is known for come from somewhere else--coffee, sugar (and the rum it makes), bananas, even the people were 'imported'. I wonder if the early colonialists really where thinking about the grand social experiment on which they were embarking. Maybe. I would love to get inside some 15th or 16th century mind and find out.