Yaya The Life of a Garifuna Healer and Shaman Growing up in Cristales during the Truxillo Railroad Part I

Yaya: The Life of a Garifuna Healer  by Wendy Griffin

 

Chapter 1 – Growing up in Cristales, Trujillo, Colon Honduras

 

Yaya was born 29 December 1919.  Her complete name is Tomasa Clara Garcia Chimilio.  Her father's name was Loreto Garcia. Her mother's name was Margarita Chimilio.  Her parent, both Garifunas, had 4 children --Sabas who died when he was young, Zoyla, Clara and her younger sister Goya.

 

They lived in a clay house with a palm thatched roof and a dirt floor.  A Garifuna clay house has 4 corner posts made of mangrove wood and roof beams of mangrove wood and vertical posts of tique palm and cross pieces of wild cane.  It was constructed on a house plot cleared by her father, the same house plot where she lives now in Barrio Cristales, Trujillo, Honduras, one block up from the beach road.

 

The house did not have running water originally.  They bathed in the Cristales River.  They washed their clothes in the Cristales River.  There were 5 houses with faucets for running water.  They would go to these houses for drinking water.  It cost one peso.  At first they went to the bathroom in a field further up the Cristales River.  Later there was a sanitation ditch in Cristales.  Later on there were bathrooms in the houses.  She and her sisters slept in hammocks made of blue denim.  Their mother would put a sheet over the top of the hammock like a mosquito net.  The house was illuminated with kerosene lamps.

 

Her mother was a farmer.  She planted fine white yams, plantains, “chatas” (Saban bananas), malanga (a root crop native to South America), bananas, three kinds of sweet potatoes (yellow, white and red), and bitter and sweet manioc or “yuca”.  She also sold firewood.  She sold firewood and food in order to buy fish, wild game meat, or beef and pork.  They raised their own chickens.

 

Her father would go to Belize in a canoe with three sails.  There were no motor boats yet.  The round trip took three weeks from Trujillo to Belize and back.  They brought passengers and smuggled goods.  They brought fine sugar cane liquor, indigo, blue and yellow soap.  The Melhados and Johnny Glynn's grandfather, the English and American owners of the shops in Trujillo, would wait on the beach at one in the morning for him.  He would take the smuggled goods to a “guapinol” tree and hide it under the tree where they would take it out little by little.

 

Later he worked in Puerto Castilla for the Truxillo Railroad Company, a banana company, subsidiary of the United Fruit Company.  He would travel to Castilla by canoe, except when he was working in the ship.  Then the company sent the train to Trujillo, they took on workers and took them to Castilla about 14 km away.  When they finished their turn, the Company would send the train again to take the workers home and take the next shift of workers to the port.  He packed bananas and young banana trees in the ship.  He worked on the dock like thousands of other Garifunas of the North Coast of Honduras.

 

Her father fished. He fished with a large double net (chinchorro) and a single person net (trasmayo) and with line and hook. Her father fished until he was old.  He would sell his fish to buy beef and they would eat beef soup. He would collect sea water while he was far from the Coast, and Yaya’s sister Zoyla would boil it over a wood fire little by little to make salt.  He also cleared the planting plot for Clara's mother.

 

From Tuesday to Friday her mother went every day to her farm.  They got up at 4 am because the farm was far away in Campamento, about 4 km from Cristales.  They would walk along the beach until Rio Grande River. Monday they washed clothes.  Sunday they went to mass twice—doctrinal mass at 6 am and rosary in the night.  Clara did not go to school.  At first she stayed home taking care of her sister Goya.  When she was bigger, she accompanied her mother to her farm.  When she was bigger, she had her own two growing plots. 

 

She returned from the plot with firewood to sell. She went to the center to sell firewood to the mestizos.  She spoke Garifuna in her home, but spoke Spanish with the mestizos.  She would say, “I am selling firewood.”  What type of firewood?  “Candela? Menudo?  Dried krabow tree?  She would tell them or say, “I do not know.”  They sold firewood cheap.  Five pieces of firewood for three “fichas” ( 1 ½ cents US).  Now the Ladinos sell firewood and they sell it expensive—L200 for a carga of firewood ($10).

 

Thinking of her childhood, what she most remembers is the delicious food that her mother and Zoyla prepared.  For example one day her mother or Zoyla would clean the fish.  They would break open 2 coconuts to make coconut milk.  They had a coconut grove in Barranco, an agricultural area around 11 km away from Cristales.  They would go in train or by canoe to bring the coconuts. They would make coconut milk.  They cooked manioc, yams, condiment the soup with black pepper and garlic (not onion.  Onion cuts coconut milk).  They would serve it with two pieces of fish on top.

 

Another week they would burn wheat flour in coconut oil. They would cook this with water, onion, and lard. They would cut a fish into pieces.  They would pound green and ripe plantains and serve this soup with machuca (the pounded plantains). To make machuca (judutu in garifuna) they cooked the plantains in water.  They put them in a big wooden mortar made of Honduran mahoghany called jana in Garifuna.  They  would pound the plantains with a little water and salt. They serve this with coconut milk soup or burnt flour soup and fried fish or seafood.

 

In the past, Garifunas collected “corrozo” nuts, the nuts of the American oil palm to sell to a Ladino merchant who took them to a factory of oil and soap near Puerto Cortés. .  Zoyla, Yaya’s sister, would break open the nuts with a stone and take out the “almendra”, the white center part with the oil.  She would put these in a Garifuna wooden mortar called jana and mash them up. Then she would cook them in a little water and make a delicious vegetable shortening.

 

Other week they would break open coconuts to make coconut milk.  They would condiment it with garlic, pepper, and cook a fish with it.  They would eat it with cassava bread, a thin bread the Garifunas make out of grated cassava or manioc.  Sometimes they would make the thicker cassava bread called “marrote”, moisten it in the soup and it would get soft.

 

Her father would sell fish and buy beef, pigs' feet, pig's tongue, or a head of a pig.  They would make beef soup with manioc, white yams, malanga, sweet potato, onions and black pepper.

 

Her mother would grate sweet potato and coconut.  She would make sweet potato bread, pumpkin bread, coconut milk, cassava cake (sometimes called cassava pone in the Caribbean), coconut candies, and coconut oil.  If they made a lot, they would sell some.

 

Clara would go in her father's canoe to Guaymoreto Lagoon near Trujillo, more than 5km by sea.  She would collect botoncillo firewood from the lagoon, crab, little seashells. It was possible to fill a tin washtub with crabs. Along the edge of the shore she should harvest mussels, conch, and crabs. In Barranco they had planted watermelon, cantaloupe, manioc, two types of sugar cane (black and striped), and coconuts. The coconuts sold cheap—2 or 3 coconuts for three “fichas” ( 1 ½ cents US)..  Now they cost L8 or L10 (50 cents US) a coconut and they have become scarce as well as expensive, because of Lethal Yellowing disease.

 

There were freshwater shrimp in the river.  When she bathed or washed clothes, the shrimp would stick her.  After bathing, she would catch a lot of shrimp.  Now there are none.  They have been terminated.  There were big fish below the bridge at River Cristales.  The men fished them with harpoons. Duba were red fish with many children.  Now there are none.  Aduri were the fishes in the river.  Dunbiyu were snails.  They were cooked in water.  We lived poorly but we did not lack for food.  The mestizo grabbed these foods and ate them in soup.  Now there are none.

 

At 4 am they got up.  At 4:30 am they were to their farm.  When they came back from farming, they would eat.  She would come back by herself, just with God.  Then they would rest in a hammock.  At 3 pm they would grate coconuts.  They would make wheat flour tortillas or rice and beans (in coconut milk, either red beans or black eyed peas), bimikakuli (rice with raw cane sugar), or alabondiga (grated green banana dumplings cooked in coconut milk soup).  They would make beili, a starch made of white wheat flour, They would make pikuitrin,  They would mash up cooked sweet manioc.  Grate a coconut and make coconut milk.  Add cinnamon and nutmeg and raw cane sugar.  In this way they would make manioc porridge (atol). Similarly they would make atoll or porridge of ripe bananas.  They would eat salted fish.  They would grill it and serve with dumplings made of grated bananas and beans. 

 

They would make gafetu—eggs. Sugar and flour.  They would bake these.  Also they would make pulali—flour, nutmeg, coconut milk, vanilla, and raw cane sugar.  To drink they would make bachti—lemon grass tea with coconut milk.

 

Provisions were cheaper before.  With L5 or L10 ($2.50 or $5) you could buy provisions in the center of town,  20 centavos a pound of wheat flour, 20 centavos a bag of salt, and 20 centavos a pound of yuca or manioc, ten centavos a block of raw cane sugar, with two “fichas” (1 cent)  you could buy soap. 15 centavos for a pound of yuca.  With a “medio” three fichas, (3 cents or 1 ½ cents) you could buy a lot. Before a red rooster to sacrifice at a dugu cost L5 ($2.50). Now they cost L50 ($2.50).  About 30 roosters and 4 pigs are sacrificed at a dugu.

 

Before it cost 30 centavos for a pound of meat. Previously meat was cheaper.  The gringos slaughtered beef out where the airport is now.  They would give away the stomach that you use to make “mondongo” soup.  You could go with your people and just pick up “mondongo”. Also when they loaded the ship, there were bananas left over.  They would leave the leftover bananas on the beach in the Trujillo neighborhood of Jerico. The Garifunas would go and pick them up.

 

When Clara was young she played jump rope, ball, tops, and marbles.  At night no one was in the street.  At 9 pm they blew the trumpet.  The soldiers were in the street.  Trujillo was safe.  You could walk by day and by night and not have problems.  They did not rob from her farm. They would ask her, Yaya give us some “bastimento” (a starchy side dish).  She would give it to them.  Now they rob.  She would come home from being a midwife at all hours of the day and night at 12, at 1.  She did not have problems.  Now people smoke drugs, and they are still in the streets at dawn.  They do not sleep.

 

It was necessary to say to the children to not eat in other people’s houses.  They prepared poison. They would give it to the children.  When you went to your farm in the morning, your children were fine.  When you returned, one of them had died.

 

She liked Christmas when she was young.  She would dress up as a shepherdess and go from house to house singing Christmas songs.  She would watch the adult women dance “fedu” at night or when they danced from house to house.  Indio Barbaro (Barbarian Indian) would come out at Christmastime.  The people shut their door to protect themselves from the Indio Barbaro. This is a game with a man with a mask completely ugly and who painted his body with anetto seed, oil and clay.  The children run away from him.  They would stop speaking from fright.  It was something new.  The people said, “The Devil is in Cristales. “

 

The men would dance piajamanadi.  A man would dress with a nice dress and put two bitter oranges in a bra and dance like that. The Garifunas no longer dance piajamanadi in Trujillo.

 

Holy Week was celebrated solemnly.  Good Friday everyone went to Central Park and participated in the procession of the Sacred Burial.  On Saturday after Good Friday they would dance gunchey, a traditional Garifuna dance that is danced by men and women who form partners in a circle, similar to the European dance of quadrille.  The music was provided by Garifuna instruments, particularly the drum. Now the Garifunas of Trujillo dance to old popular music in Spanish like cha-cha-cha, tango and boleros for the Saturday before Easter.