Culture Shock

Learning new things about other cultures is always very interesting, however, experiencing them first hand can be very unexpected. When I took a trip on a cruise with my family, we made a stop in Dominica. Dominica is a very unmodernized island. I remember coming off of the ship and having no clue what my family and I were going to do to entertain ourselves. It was like no other place I had been at before, especially on a vacation. We found a tour guide who took us in a large van around the island. First off, the van was not totally enclosed which is awesome for a tour on an island, but not when the driver of that van is cruising around at a nice speed of 60mph on a very curvey road overlooking a very steep moutain. As i feared for my life, the tour guide reached into his glove compartment, pulled out a few beer bottles, and offered those of us taking the tour. My dad politely told him no thank you and asked what Dominica's laws were regarding alcohol and driving. The driver told us the cops never really enforced driving under the influence laws. I really did not understand at the time how the police could allow people to drink as they drive around especially on such dangerous roads. Now that I think about it though, how many policemen could the small island have? Surely it can't like America where there is a cop car around what seems every corner waiting to catch its next speed victim. Maybe the few policemen this small island had were preoccupied with more serious offences than DUI's. Anyway as we were nearing the end of our very interesting tour, we passed a few men carrying either a machette or a machine gun. Now, in America you do not see someone walking around with such a weapon unless they're up to no good. In Dominica, however, these men were part of the island's small army. The men walk from one place to another everyday with their weapons.
We left the island of Dominica in one piece with a very different outlook of the world. I had never seen a place with so little modernization. Our tour guide had told us it was a very rare thing for people from Dominica to leave, meaning if you were born there, you stayed there for the rest of your life. Basically the culture that he was accustomed to had been the same from the beginning of Dominica. I think it was very cool to see such an untouched culture because normally when you vacation, the location has been totally influenced by tourism. I hope that tourism to the island remains minimal so it can keep as much of its ancestory as possible.