Arumuga beyabu quei mebebegui.
So, I’ve done a little bit of research on the Garífuna culture. Undoubtedly, they found themselves here as a result of slave operations, but how? And I’ve learned that they have some indigenous carribean blood in them, but what’s the story there? So, apparently, they were deported from Caribbean islands (mostly, I think, the British island of St. Vincent). Most of them were either escaped or just stranded due to shipwrecks. On these islands is where they married and mixed with the indigenous Caribbeans (who I don’t know much about either; like, how do they differ from Central American indigenous, such as the Mayans?)
So, anyway, I wanted to go to one of the nearby Garífuna villages, and rather than wait a day for the tour (where you spend a few hours there and do some canoeing), I just decided to go there myself and spend the night. I went to one of the smaller ones, that was still accessible by bus, called Tornabé. I got on the bus to Tornabé and waited with several large black ladies, all speaking Garífuna, a language that is learned just amongst themselves (no formal training…everyone still speaks Spanish…unlike in Belize, they don’t speak English). It looked like they were all returning from town to purchase their groceries and the like. Sitting in the seat across from me was a latina chick, breastfeeding her child, another rather common sight. I’ve seen more than my share of swollen breasts lately.
Speaking of swollen breasts, allow me to digress for a moment, if you will. All throughout Central America there are stray dogs. Most of them are scrawny and scruffy, to put it mildly. You see them scrounging around for food everywhere – in garbage cans, on the street (as there is lots of garbage everywhere), and around restaurants. There are basically two types of dogs, male and female. The males, well they just run around, do their thing, search for food (and females), and survive. The females, sure, run around doing the same thing to survive, but all, ALL with their swollen nipples dangling all over the place. They’ve really lost the whole, ‘oh look at our little cute pet dog’ look, even beyond the whole nasty/scrawny/dirty thing; here, as wild animals, they really aren’t so cute and loveable. They actually kind of look like little cows. So then, you have the correlation of the swollen breasts of the dogs to those of the women, where most of the women of child-bearing age are openly breastfeeding, showing breastseses left and right, and it’s like everything’s gone primal right in front of my eyes. As a final note, I would like to add this disclaimer that I really have no problem with breastfeeding in public…a women’s gotta do, ya know? This is a simple human observation that, juxtaposed with all these bovine-like bitches running around, if I may use that term in its proper context, really reminds one of man’s basic animalistic and mammalian lineage.
During the ride an old, old lady got on the bus (well, she was rather almost pushed/carried up the stairs), and I got up to give her my seat. She looked like she could just break in two, if someone were to attempt such an atrocity, though I was slightly concerned that my backpack might fall onto her and crush her. And I loved that little old lady…just taking her little bus to wherever it was she was going, unbothered by the bother of it all, getting pushed up the stairs, thrown around by the hard bumpy dirt road, blasted with the Garífuna drum rhythms being pumped out from the speakers…she probably didn’t go a mile when she was carried off the bus and left in the dust as it pulled away.
I didn’t know I had arrived in Tornabé, but suspected it might be the place I was looking for, so I asked a few people who confirmed my suspicions and also directed me to a hotel, or maybe the hotel, as I don’t think there were vary many options. So, this was just a concrete room with a door and lock; she was also nice enough to bring me a fan. I took a stroll around town (there’s like only one main road, so I just basically walked up and down that), and people kept saying ‘adios’ to me. That means goodbye. I thought it was strange, you know, instead of saying hello, but whatever. I met some Honduran vacationers there…one girl brought me some lychees that her father sells (these are really popular here), and I bought a nice homemade coconut milk ice pop from some little Garífuna girls. That was lunch.
I returned back to the ‘hotel’ and laid out on the beach. I had the whole beach to myself, and I just laid between two wooden dugout canoes all day, occassionally going in the water or falling asleep (luckily not at the same time). I think maybe a half a dozen people passed me during the course of the whole afternoon. Woke up, went to the room (where I realized some sort of animal had eaten its way into the small amount of bread and crackers I had), took a very refreshing cold shower, and went down the street for dinner. It was just a little stand on the side of the road, but the lady was quite nice, so I sat there for a while, just making conversation with whoever wanted to.
I talked to some other people around town that night, went back to the beach at the ‘hotel’, and sat down to write about the day when I looked up and three horses were just strolling along the beach. They stopped right in front of me to eat something or other, and I was slightly alarmed. I mean, are horses allowed to just roam around, or did someone loose them, or was this like their nightly stroll in search of some different grass? And they’re kind of big, you know. Not that I really thought they would harm me, but have you ever encountered a free-roaming horse, let alone three, in the middle of the night? Yeah.
I bought myself one of them fancy bags of water before going to bed. This bag in particular informed me that god loves me, so I had that going for me.
The next morning I went back to the little foodstand and had some breakfast. I met the owner’s mother, sister, and aunt. who were on their way to church. Sitting there, I saw the 4×4 tour vehicle plowing through town, filled with a bunch of older, stuffy-looking white people, and I was quite glad with my mellow adventure. Solo.
PS The title to this post? That’s Garífuna for “I sleep on the beach like mosquitos.” Don’t ask…someone just told it to me. And no, I can’t be sure that’s what it actually means. Sorry for any offense.
Tags: Honduras, Tag Index
Tania
November 4th, 2005 at 7:33 pm
GOT MILK?????