Yaya as victim of witchcraft and user of healing plants.Part 3

Chapter Three-Clara as victim of witchcraft and user of healing plants.

 

By Wendy Griffin

 

Yaya lived in the house of her parents in Cristales, Trujillo.  For a time she went to work in Olanchito, Yoro.  She went there by train.  In spite of the fact that the train was run by a US company, mestizos and blacks sat together on the train.  Yaya said that if a mestiza saw her get on the train, she would say, “Come here, Miss.  Here is a seat”.

 

When she came back from Olanchito, she lived with her parents again.  She began her family.  She had 5 children with Simeon Marin—Rudy, Tomas, Polo, Mantua, and Juana Julia. She raised her children by herself. He was not present in the house and did not help her economically with her children.

 

Then she built her own house near the cementary.  She had a large yard.  She had built a clay house with a cohune palm thatch roof.  She planted her two milpas (crop lands) and was a midwife.  She did not have problems with anyone.  She did not have any enemies.

 

She did not lock up her house with a key.  She left the window open.  In her house she had a bed for her and hammocks for her children.  She put a sheet over their hammocks to protect them from mosquitoes and she slept with a mosquito net. Before, there were no mosquitoes in Trujillo, only in Castilla and Barranco.  But the mosquitoes traveled in the rain, and now there are mosquitoes in Cristales.

 

Not all people are good.  She arrived at her house.  She saw some dirt on her bed, but she thought it was dirt from the palm leaf thatch.  But she could not sleep in her bed.  She sat in two chairs.  Her children were sleeping.

 

Half awake, half asleep, she heard a voice.  “You can not live in this house because you will not have a long life.”

 

Three persons fell from the beams, one after another.  They were Melchor, Yolanda and Josefa.  This day they became visible.  These were the spirits that took care of her and help her as a buyei or Garifuna shaman.  “Long life I will not have?  Why?”  They said, “If you live in this house, you will not have a long life.  People will say you have tuberculosis.”

 

In the morning she told her mother about this dream.  She went to live with her mother again.  She went to a spiritist and found out some people had thrown dirt from the cemetery in her bed in an attempt to do witchcraft to kill her.

 

Every day she went out in the street to be a midwife.  She did good things for people.  They did bad to her because of envy.  The next day she began to feel bad, but she always came and went. 

 

When she walked to her milpa, she heard a voice, “Clara”.  She said, “Eat shit. I live with God.  Don't speak to me.  Be mute and deaf if you are a malignant spirit.”  She arrived at her milpa.  She made a fire for the smoke.  She harvested  white yams and red grow yams (purple yams, in Garifuna guchu—purple.).  At one o'clock she came with her food.  It had been an evil spirit that knew her name and wanted to kill her.

 

Another day she felt a man come down from a tree.  She said, “I am a devil the same as you.”  Later she realized it was her cousin who was checking to see if she had a good spirit.

 

After living with her mother for a while, she went to live in La Ceiba.  The people told her mother, Your daughter has two milpas and they are ready to be harvested.  It took them two days to harvest the milpas of Clara.

 

When she lived in La Ceiba, she felt bad, but she always went to and fro. She worked as a domestic in the house of the Gody, who owned Farmacia Godoy.  In a dream her grandmother appeared to her.  Clara had not known here.  She was from Roatan, an island north of Honduras.

 

She said, “Listen to me.  You feel bad.  Someone has done witchcraft on you.”  She showed Clara a plant on the beach.  It was a vine, suiza.  But at that time, she did not believe in plants.  She did not pay attention to what her grandmother said.

 

After a while, the grandmother appeared to her in a dream again. “Listen to me.  Pay attention to me.  You are sick.”  She showed her this vine on the beach.  She said, With this, indigo, lemons, rue, and holy water you are going to be healed.  You have to say three our father's on a Friday at 12 o'clock.”

 

Clara went to the beach and found the plant that her grandmother had shown her.  One Friday, first she bathed with soap.  Then she pounded the plants.  She made the sign of the cross.  She said three Our Fathers and bathed with the plant, indigo, lemons and rue and holy water.  With this she was cured.  She bathed like this 2 or 3 days.

 

After this she began studying plants.  Now she knows over 100 medicinal plant recipes which are published in my book Los Garifunas de Honduras (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005)

 

A short time after being cured by the bath with suiza, she felt bad, like a little bit of cold.  She went to a cousin who was a buyei, a Garifuna shaman.  She told him, “I feel bad.”  Her cousin said to her, “You know what you have.”  “No, I don’t know,” said Clara.  “It is your grandmother.  She gave you the medicine and now she is charging.  She wants a mass.”

 

“Tell her not be worried about the mass.”  She felt better.  She had a mass said in the Catholic church where they call the name of the dead person.  Then with several friends, she had a Garífuna mass (lemessi) for her grandmother with a chocolate drink (corn toasted and ground, mixed with cacao), white bread, Catholic prayers in Spanish said by a “rezadora” or Garifuna prayer leader, a table of traditional Garifuna foods, drums and Garifuna dances.  Later she felt better.  After that she used plants to cure people.

 

Her son Ruddy was also a victim of witchcraft.  While Yaya was in Trujillo, she had a dream that she went into some people’s house.  There were two candles burning—a tall one like Garifunas use during a rosary for the dead, and a small one.  She said, I will put out the tall candle and leave the little one. She told people this dream.  The next day, people came looking for her. “Jesus, what a dream. Your son Ruddy is very sick in La Ceiba.” She went to Glynn’s and bought an airplane ticket to La Ceiba.  She took her son to a female healer (curandera).  She said your wife has given you two kinds of biting ants and leaf cutting ants, so that you will be faithful to her.  She treated him, and then gave him a “purgante” or purge to clean out his system.  He said, in my house we are accustomed to take purges, but this looks very strong.  Yaya convinced him to take it.  He was in the bathroom a long time, and needed help to go back to bed.  He had to take medicine to regain his strength (reconstituyentes).  Many Garifuna men leave their wives or girlfriends if they find out they are going to witches to make them faithful, but Ruddy and his wife are still together.  

 

Healing of Humeru

 

Humeru are small creatures that look like people that live near the shore.  The daughter of Clara, Juana Julia, has seen them.  There were 4 twins—two girls and two boys.  They collect mussels and other seafood along the shore.  If the mother eats seafood touched by the humeru, the baby comes down with a rash.  If you put cream on the rash, then the rash comes back in a different spot.

 

Once I saw Yaya heal a baby of humeru.  First she examined the baby and then asked the mother some questions.  Then she set fire to “guaro” (sugar cane liquor) in the bottle.  Then she blew it out.  Then she mixed the warmed guaro with rosemary.  She massaged the baby with this mixture.  This made the rash go away.  Sometimes you have to repeat this two or three times.  It is also possible to use allspice boiled in water to bathe the baby. The mothers of the children pay Yaya to cure their children or to be a midwife and in this way she could buy food.

 

The humeros sometimes carry away Garifuna children to have someone to play with on the beach.  Before it was the custom of Garifuna mothers to sweep well their patios, so that the humeros would not follow the footprints of their little children.  According to a Garifuna legend, once when the humeros took a Garifuna child, older Garifuna men and women got together on the beach and sang songs in Garifuna for many hours so that the humeros would return the child, but they never saw the child again (Griffin and Garifunas of Limon, ms.)

 

Not just medicinal plants are used.  Some animals have healing properties. For example Lard of the boa is good for asthma and for the hair.

 

If a child has a fever, and might die of it, kill a black hen, open it with a knife,  put it over the stomach of the child and tie it down.  The next day if the chicken has not decomposed, the child will live.  If the chicken smells bad, the child will die (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).