Friday, September 29, 2006

The Garifunas a little history

The last night I was in 'Triunfo de La Cruz' I chatted over few nice Coronas with this old Garifuna fella. He was a sort of Social Assistant worker.
He was employed by the government.
He was encharged of an education project for the Garifunas.

Triunfo Beach

I was interested in the Garifuna culture so I kept asking him questions.
He was telling me how concerned he was about the imminent loss of identity of the Garifuna community. The same old story.
The youngsters leave and go to the big cities abroad, in this case the USA, so they lose their own language and tradition. The local Garifuna youngsters don’t work anymore because they receive little amounts of giros from their relatives in the US. They dont have their traditional crafts or the delicious Yuca bread anymore.
The Garifuna were traditionally catholic but our old man was commenting about the increase of new churches in town, Jehová witnesses, baptists etc.... they were brought in from North America too.


My friend Antonio Blanco Rodriguez lives in El Salvador

Tony playing with the kids


There are plans already to build a big resort in the area. That will probably be the end of the Fisherman Garifuna Culture?

I really hope not...


Girls and Jeremy-Garifuna Kids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garífuna
Triunfo de la Cruz. Honduras part 2

We stayed at 'Hotel Colon', some bungalows placed few yards from the sea, owned by an old Garifuna fella called 'Margarito'. [Or at least we call him like this] :-D

The bungalows were decent and clean. And it was extremely cheap, everything was cheap. You could even hear the waves at night. It was very relaxing.

Bahia local lager was excellent so was Port Royal!

There weren’t many people at the Margaritos bar on the beach. Just a Dutch girl who worked for a Theatre company and was relaxing few days, and a German hippie couple. Those were the only foreign people we could find in the whole area.The German guy was very angry at Iberia [Spanish airlines] because they had lost all their luggage. I spoke a bit with him and shared a couple of spliffs, he recommended me to go and visit some Honduras Islands, Roatan, Utila and Guanaja. We did that a couple of days later.

I spoke with a black guy who told me there was a live theatre comedy they were rehearsing that night in the social community center. Tony&me, the Dutch girl and the German couple we were all invited.

Antonio Blanco Rodriguez Tony finally enjoyed his Seadoo ride in Honduras too.

We went to the theatre rehearsal in the late afternoon. It was in the Garifuna language, so we didn’t understand a bloody thing.
But it was fun, they were doing African chants and dancing all the time. It looked to me like a love story between two guys and a young girl. There were about 30 or 40 kids and young teens around. They seemed to have a very good time laughing non stop. Soon I realized we were the only whiteys around.

I meet also Jeremy. I felt sorry about him as he had a kind of disease on his skin feet . But he didn’t seemed bothered. He wanted me to take pictures of him, so he could see them on the camera afterwards and have a good laugh.

Jeremy's friends were there too.

We stayed a couple of nights there, but there wasn’t much else to do than relax and relax, so we decided it was time to move.

The places the German guy told me about sounded very good.

I was looking for ' the beach' and I knew things could get even better.
My Garifuna friend turned up with his brother and his grandad.
He was the coal supplier in town.
I gave him my Pretzl head lamp I use normally when I climbed mountains. He was so pleased with it. He told me how useful it would be for him on dark nights when he had to supply the coal.
Although it had 3 small batteries and I was unsure if he would ever be able to affort to buy some.
Bit later, the kid asked me for a soda, so did his brother Genar which seemed 1 or 2 years older than him. At this time of the night, shouldn't be kids on bed? I thought, it was over midnight.
I think it was time for a crab hunt contest.
Erzun's Grandad

I offered the sodas [Refresco] and some crisps who brought the bigger crab. Them wee little fuckers normally come to the beach at night. It was full moon and just when they left to hunt the little creatures, it started to rain heavily again.
It was the rainy season [May to November], so you expect the odd heavy but brief rain.
There was thunder and lightning too.
I felt guilty about the kids, but 5 minutes later they turned up with the crabs! The lightning helped them.

I think we have two winners, innit?



Genar and Erzun wanted me to take a photo of them in the watercraft, but there was not enough light, so they asked me when we were leaving, and I told them early in the morning.

And guess what, next morning about 6 am....There were the kids!






We had to go. It was a fantastic time where I enjoyed a lot the place and also had the opportunity to meet and hear, for the first time, a new and very interesting culture for me.

It was a very poor place, there is no money in 'Triunfo de La Cruz' at all, but I felt so safe all the time and people were honest and extremly friendly.


I really hope they manage to survive in this strange times we have to live.


Goodbye Erzun, goodbye Genar..... goodbye Garifunas....