Possible Bantu Influence in Garifuna Culture Part II Crafts and Foods

Possible Bantu Influence in Crafts and Foods

 By Wendy Griffin

Garífuna Crafts and Possible Bantú Influence

The Garífunas make a lot of crafts, which are shown in Griffin and CEGAH, 2005.  The word for "mat" or the Garifuna mattress is "ñadu", which I believe is also the Bantu word for mat.  A Garifuna mat or mattress is made of "enea" a water plant similar to papyrus.  Many pieces of "enea" are tied at the top and bottom to form the mat.  In the past, if company came, the children gave their hammocks to the company and slept on the floor on the ñadu.  Also some families were so poor, only the mother had a hammock, and the children generally slept on the floor on the ñadu (Suyapa Alvarez, Personal Communication)..

 

The buyei Profesor Felix included among Garifuna crafts the wooden wand of the buyei (varita magica or magic wand or little stick in Spanish) and the healing strip of cotton cloth dyed orange yellow  with anatto seed (cinta curadora--healing cloth in Spanish).  Although my buyei friend Yaya has a wooden wand in her guli or sanctuary, I have never asked her what she uses it for.  In Tomas Avila's book, he mentions that when a sick person goes to a buyei and thinks they are being made sick by their ancestors (gubida), the buyei calls down the ancestor spirits with the help of the wooden wand. (Avila, 2009).  This wooden wand probably goes with the buyei to form part of the guli at dugu, which is in a separate room with a cloth separating it from the rest of the dancers where only buyei and the buyei assistants can enter.  A similar wooden wand, called "palo" (which means tree in Honduran Spanish) is a central part of the Afro-Cuban religous tradition simply  known as "Palo" which is thought to be of Congo origin(Wikipedia, Palo).  In altars for "Palo", there is a "dead person" (un muerto or “kisi”).  (Wikipedia, Palo)

 

 During a Garifuna dugu or a chugu, there are special mounds of earth in which are buried different things like coins from the time the person lived, dirt from a path he had walked, etc. to call the spirit of the deceased for whom the ceremony is being held.  In a chugu, this mound is called "lanigui chugu" (the heart of the chugu).   This mound is part of the guli where the buyei puts the burning candles, offers the bottles of guaro and other drinks, says prayers and checks if the ancestor is satisfied with the cermony.

 

The healing strip of cotton cloth, the buyei wears around his neck like a priest's stole when he is working in a ceremony.  Some buyeis have a red cross at each end of  the cloth.  In photos that I have seen of women from Trinidad dancing for Xango, the god of Thunder, in New York, they all wore this yellow orange color.  In parts of the Caribbean Xango is related to St. John the Baptist.  St. John the Baptist is the Patron Saint of Trujillo, and also the Garifuna community of San Juan Tela.

 

The Garifunas of Trujillo believe there is a connection between St. John and the thunder, that he is in charge of it.  The Patron Saint's day of San Juan is 23 June.  Previously the festivities leading up to the day of San Juan ended after 23 June, and after that the summer rains would start on the North Coast of Honduras.  The Garifunas say he liked the party so much, that now he is sad it is over, and that is why it rains.  The Ladinos in charge of the fair now often try to have another week of festivities after the 23rd, but these are often rained out. The Garifuna women of  Barrio Cristales, Trujillo sing hunguhungu songs, a secularized version of dugu music, in Garifuna and dance to drums all night long the night before St. John's Day in their dance club house in special dance club uniforms, while the statue of St. John from the Cathedral stands in a nearby altar. This is known as "Velada de San Juan", the all night vigil of St. John. 

 

A Garifuna woman Doña Alisa, told me that only the buyei can have this yellow orange color cloth dyed from achote or anetto seed in their homes.  If another person has clothes dyed this color because they are a member of the family putting on the dugu, when the dugu is over, they have to bleach their yellow orange clothes white again, because this color is sacred.  If a person  leaves a dugu, they have to change out of the yellow orange cloth clothes, because they can only be used there. There is a special part of the dugu ceremony preparation of dying and blessing the achiote colored clothes. Some Garifunas grow achiote trees on their house plot, to have available achiote for cooking and for a ceremony.  At a dugu, the buyeis and their assistants are dressed completely in this color, including the head scarf of both male and female buyeis.  Generally the drummers do not use this color or headscarves.

 

The neighboring Miskitos believe that the god of Thunder Alawan is the principal god, and that when people die, their spirits go to the land of rain spirits.  Later the ancestor spirits (isigni) can fall on their descendants with the rain.  It is the task of the Miskito shaman, the sukya, to find out what the ancestor wanted and why it came and to send it back to the land of the rain spirit (Scott Wood Ronas, personal comuunication).  There is still a Miskito ceremony to do this, necesitating finding a lightening bug and releasing it in a darkened room, and through the lightening bug, the sukya learns what the ancestor spirit wanted.  This information is quite specific, for example, so and so owed me L300 and I can not rest until he pays my wife this money.  Garifunas, Miskitos and Bay Islanders all believe pending money matters can tie a person's spirit to this earth.  This is an origin of biyubiyuti (spirits protecting treasures) and ufiyu (usually newly dead spirits who have not yet gone to the land of the ancestors) among the Garifuna and the duppies among the Bay Islanders. 

 

The Miskito connection of the land of the ancestors and the home of the rain spirit, has been reported as a belief among the Bantus, too, but there seems to be no connection among the Garifunas between the rain or thunder god and the land of the ancestors, Seiri. Some Garifunas have told me the Miskitos do "dugu" ceremonies, too, but in fact  the Miskito ceremony for the ancestors described above is quite different from the Garifuna ceremony. Seiri seems to be located over the sea, as the ancestors both arrive by sea and are escorted to the beach when they leave during a dugu. The confusion of Seiri and the Spanish word “cielo” (sky, Heaven) is recent and is caused by the translation of the Garifuna Bible which uses the word Seiri as Cielo.

 

Possible Bantu Influence in Garifuna Foods

 

The Garifunas make "machuca" in Spanish or "judutu" in Garifuna.  They put in a large wooden mortar called a jana in Garifuna green and ripe boiled plantains and mash them with the long part of the mortar.  They mix a little water and salt with the mashed plantains as they are mashing them.  They also make judutu out of mashed  white yams, plantains, manioc or Cassava (yuca), cocoyams (malanga), and sweet potaoes (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).   Judutu among the Garifunas is served with soups, such as coconut milk soup or burnt flour with water soup (tikini).  (Griffin and Garcia, 2012, Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  This is similar to fufu in West Africa, pirao or funje in Angola and usima or ugali (thick porridge) in East Africa. (http://www.ikuska.com/Africa/Gastronomia, Wikipedia, List of African Foods, Wikipedia, Fufu, Wikipedia, Plantains).  This mortar or jana is also used to dehull rice (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005) and to mash the centers of the nut of the American oil palm (corozo) so that they can be boiled to make lard (manteca) (Griffin and García, 2012).  This large wooden mortar is probably used in Africa and among Asian and Pacific Islanders for the same purposes.

 

The Garifunas also make a variety of porridges called "atol" in Spanish.  A special porridge made of green bananas or "chata" bananas that are cut length wise, dried in the sun for three days, and then pounded in the mortar or jana to make green banana flour which is used in a porridge called "pluplumaña" in Garifuna.  The thick porridge with green banana or plantain flour was called ugali in the Kenya, Tanzania area.  It was also possible to make a thinner porridge. Among Bay Islanders in Honduras this porridge was known as konkantee, a name from Ghana (Wikipedia, List of African Foods, Griffin, 2004).  Thick and thin porridges in South Africa (pap) and East Africa (ugali) could be made of a variety of plants that were boiled and mashed including sorghum, corn, plantains, cassava,bananas and pumpkin.  The Garifunas make these thick porridges with corn (lebuya), ripe plantains (gurentu), ripe bananas(letu), cocoyams/malanga, pumpkin, cassava(pinkuitrin), sweet potato (gurentu mabi)or rice with coconut milk or cow's milk and sugar and nutmeg or cinnamon. In East Africa, nutmeg and cinnamon were known before the Europeans came through the Indian Ocean trade route of the Arabs between India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and  East Africa (Wikipedia, East African Cuisine).   A related food among the Garifuna are the breads, which are made almost the same as the porridges, except that they add a little wheat flour and put the mixture in a greased cast iron frying pan and put a piece of metal on top and put a fire on top of it and bake the porridge mixture into a custard like bread  or cake(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). These breads include ripe banana bread (pulanbread), cocoyam bread, sweet potaoe bread (peteta tani mabi), sweet manioc bread (casará), corn bread (peteta tani awasi), rice bread, and pumpkin bread (fagueya). These are not similar to American foods with these English names, as these cakes have very little wheat flour and have lots of mashed root crops and coconut milk and often a little cinnamon or nutmeg.  The porridges and breads of mashed root crops or banana and plantains are also made by the Garifunas' neighbors the Miskito Indians and the Bay Islanders(Griffin, 1996, Griffin, 2004).  Just the breads are made throughout the Caribbean Islands (Jeanette Allsopp. Personal Comunication). In East and West Africa these types of thin and thick porridge or cakes are an important part of the diet and like among the Garifunas are made from a variety of crops.

 

Also similar to the thick and thin porridges, are the Garifuna tamales which are made from boiled and mashed bananas (darasa), plantains (gadamalu), sweet potatoes (amanu) or sweet manioc (dani) mixed with sugar or "rapadura", cinnamon, and coconut milk (tidunari faluma) and wrapped in plantain leaves, tied, and boiled like tamales. Cooking in plantain leaves was common in Africa, although I have not seen these exact recipes.

 

Garifunas do not  make the whole ripe bananas wrapped in banana leaves and buried and left to ferment, that the Miskitos make (Griffin, 1996), which is probably related to the custom of burying ripe bananas and fermenting them to make "pom", a local banana wine in Rwanda, although the Garifunas do let plantains ferment wrapped up in plastic hanging up, in order to make vinager (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  The Garifunas also do not mash uncooked sweet manioc which the Miskitos wrap in leaves and use to make sasal, similar to East African kwanga (Griffin, 1996, http://www.ikuska.com/Africa/Gastronomia/kwanga).

 

The Garifunas do eat boiled as side dishes boiled in water green bananas with just a little salt, boiled plantains, boiled sweet manioc,  rice cooked with coconut milk and rice and beans cooked in coconut milk. The Garifunas are also famous for making cassava bread, both thin ereba and thick marumaruti and many of the derivatives made from processing bitter manioc(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005), including tapioca pudding (farina) with coconut milk and casareep (dumari in Garifuna) the seasoning for Garifuna and Afro-Caribbean soups. Tapioca pudding is widely eaten in Africa (Wikipedia, List of African dishes).   In some parts of Africa, they eat the leaves of the manioc or cassava plant and other green vegetable leaves, but the Garifunas do not eat their manioc leaves and seldom any other greens.

 

The Garifunas use coconut milk extensively to cook other foods as well.  For example, most seafoods, fish, and game meat as well as salted beef, salted pork, and fresh pork could cooked in coconut milk, either by itself or in a stew (tapado in Spanish, tapau in Garifuna) with root crops and bananas and plantains (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  This use of coconut milk is similar to East African dishes like plantains in coconut from Zanzibar and common in the whole Swahili area (http://www.ikuska.com/Africa/Gastronomia/platanos_leche_coco.htm), futari which is pumpkin, and yams in coconut milk from East Africa (http://www.ikuska.com/Africa/Gastronomia/futari), and pumpkin in coconut milk. 

 

In South Africa, they now cook chicken in coconut milk, but the chicken could probably be replaced with other meats as happens in Garifuna dishes.  The Bay Islanders, and the Miskitos, the Garifuna's neighbors also make some of these coconut milk dishes (Griffin, 1996, Griffin, 2004). The crafts the Garifunas use to make coconut milk are smaller versions of the crafts they use to make cassava bread, which are of Arawak origin. (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  From the coconut milk, the Garifunas, Miskitos and Bay Islanders made coconut oil, but most of the North Coast Honduran coconut trees have died due to Lethal Yellowing.  The traditional Garifuna foods like tamales, breads, soups, watermelon, etc. are all offered to the ancestors at ancestor ceremonies like chugu and dugu. For a chugu, one table of food is enough, but for a dugu there are at least three tables of prepared foods and the older Garifuna men and women sing the songs without drums arumajani and abeimajani and dance with younger relatives who drink beer and later rest in hammocks, while the food is presented, so that the ancestors can eat, listen to music, and drink. 

 

The principal crops planted by the Garifuna and used in their cooking with their Garifuna names are:  Bitter manioc (guein), Sweet manioc (gumanana), Arrowroot (inginára), Sweet potato (mabi), White yam (yami), soup yam (gubugubu), purple yam (guchu which means purple color), cocoyam/malanga (wahü), badu (badu) a large root crop, plantains (barururu or baú), bananas (bimina), Saban bananas (chatas), coconuts (faluma), pumpkin (weiyama), corn (awasi), rice (ri), sugar cane (gániesi or asigaru), avocado (wagadi), okra (neju), bitter orange (kahela), wild marjoram (basin), watermelon (badia), and Lemon Grass (tii).

 

 Among Garifuna men there were men who were good hunters and would go to the mountains for extended periods of time hunting and other Garifuna men, probably the majority, would fish both freshwater fish and fish in the lagoons and the ocean. There are also Garifuna who keep cattle (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  In Africa, there are hunters, fishers, and cattle ranchers among the Africans and the Bantus. The Garifunas knew how to make salt and they knew how to salt and dry game meat.  They also knew how to salt or smoke fish to preserve them, techniques also known in Africa (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005, Griffin and Garcia, 2012, Wikipedia, Cuisine of South Africa.)

 

 While among the neighboring Miskitos, a man has to pay a bride price with a cow (Griffin, 1996), similar to among the Bantus, among the Garifunas the young men had to catch fish and give them to the girl's family and also earn money to buy all the pots and pans and furniture for the new house before he could get married.(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005, Griffin and the Garifunas of Limon, 1995). The Miskitos also slaughtered a whole cow and barbecued it for a wedding to feed the whole community, like Bantus (Griffin, 1996, Wikipedia, Cuisine of South Africa), but this was not a custom among the Garifunas.  This bride price system has totally broken down in modern times among the Garifuna and there are many Garifuna single mothers.