Bantu and Mali Influence in the Garifuna Culture Part I religious Ceremonies and Garifuna Shaman

Possible Bantu Influence in the Garifuna Culture  Part I Religious Ceremonies and Buyeis 

By Wendy Griffin (2013)

Historic Origins of the Garifunas

The Garifuna are an Afro-Indigenous People, the mixture of Arawak and Carib Indians from the Island of Saint Vincent in the Windward Islands who intermarried with Africans who arrived in Saint Vincent through various ways, including a shipwreck around 1635, slaves who escaped by rafts in the night from nearby islands like Barbados, slaves from nearby islands that the Caribs stole/rescued in their canoes, and according to the Garifunas Africans who arrived in the Americas prior to the coming of the Europeans.  See Avila, 2009  for a discussion of these origin stories.

 

The Garifuna lost the war against the British for the control of St. Vincent in 1796, and were exiled to Honduras in 1797 (Avila, 2009). The people exiled included “Black Caribs” (Africans mixed with the local Indians) and probably the French speaking Black soldiers from Martinique who had been sent to help them in their war against the English.  In Honduras the Garifunas lived in areas where there was the presence of other Afro-descent people including English speaking Blacks brought by the British and later the banana companies, French speaking Blacks exiled to Honduras because their participation in the revolts prior to the victory of the Haitian revolution, Spanish speaking Blacks descendants of slaves brought to Honduras during the colonial period, and Miskito speaking Sambos (mixture of Blacks with Indians).  There may have been some intermarriage, as there are Garifuna last names of French origin (Franzua, Batiz from Francois and Batiste), of English origin (Gil, Green and Güity from Hill, Green and White), and African origin (Sambula, Bengochea, Arzu and Arauz). 

 

Most Garifunas in Honduras have Spanish last names which, according to Gloria LaCayo the daughter of  Dr. Alfonso Lacayo,  the godparents gave their last name to the baby as well as the first name.  For example, the father of Alfonso Lacayo had the last name Sambulá, and Mr. Lacayo, a Nicaraguan Ladino, was the godfather.  Also in the study of Guatemalan Garifunas, the Garifunas and French speaking Blacks who arrived in Honduras in 1797, by 1799 already had Spanish first and last names. (Arrivillaga Cortés, 2007). In Trujillo, most Garifunas have first names in Spanish mainly from Christian Saints, but in the traditional county or "muncipio" of Iriona, Honduras located east of Trujillo,  many Garifuna women have names that are not of Spanish origin. The Garífunas also quite commonly use nicknames for people. Garifuna artist Maxima Tomas, was known as “Lucy”. My friend Sebastian Marin put his granddaughters names on his canoe PechiLila and he said after that Cristales forgot his real name and he was ever afterwards known as PechiLila.

 

Some examples of  Possible Bantu Influence—healing and ancestor ceremonies among the Garifuna.

 

Unlike most Afro-Latin American religions, the Garifuna religion generally known as dugu, for the name of the principal ceremony, (See Avila, 2009, Wikipedia, dugu, and Wikipedia,  Afro-Latin American religions) places little emphasis on “gods”.  The Garifuna know nature spirits (kolobu or korbiti in general, one specific one is known as “duende” a Spanish word used for different nature spirits, which possesses people), evil spirits who possess people and live in the bush (mafia) and tree spirits (both known generally in Spanish as “devils” (diablos), water spirits (there are several including humeru, Agayuma, biyubiyuti, and the spirit of the sea who controls how many fish you catch), and ghosts (ufiyu) which appear in Garifuna stories, in Garifuna medicine, and some used to have ceremonies for them(Griffin and CEGAH, 2005), but in the ceremony of dugu, also known as the dance of the "gubida" (ancestor spirits),  these other spirits are all outside and the shaman or buyei uses incense smoke/ “medicine” to keep them away. This incense smoke includes copal, bitter orange leaves, and other leaves.  All of the spiritual possession of the dancers during a chugu or dugu is by ancestor spirits (gubida), although once an “ufiyu”, the unhappy spirit of a European  with a Garifuna wife and children who had died in Trujillo, got in and possessed people during a dugu in Trujillo, Honduras. 

 

The buyei determines a sick person’s ancestors are unhappy with him or her or has some special need and requests a ceremony. Examples of this can be seen in the movies Garifuna in Peril and El Espiritu de Mi Mama.  In Avila, 2009 he describes one way buyeis divine this.  In Griffin and Garcia, 2012 I describe another way to do this.  There are several Garifuna ancestor spirit ceremonies that the ancestor might request, including a bath, lamessi (a Garifuna mass), chugu (a one day banquet for the ancestors which includes drumming and singing and dancing special gubida songs which cause people to become possessed by ancestor spirits), and dugu (a very expensive series of ceremonies which take up to three years to complete the whole cycle, which includes drumming, dancing, and singing gubida songs and healing songs without drums by men (arumajani) and women (abeimajani), plus the sacrifice of up to 30 red roosters and 4 black pigs and an ancestor’s banquet, in a temple made special for the ceremony of cohune palm leaves) (Griffin and CEGAH, 2006, Avila, 2009). 

 

In South Africa, neglected or unhappy ancestor spirits are also known as a cause of illness and Bantus  go to diviners to identify the cause of their disease and to determine what the ancestors want.  Sometimes, the ancestors require special healing ceremonies which include drumming, dancing and singing and animal sacrifice (Wikipedia, Traditional African Medicine, Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa).

 

Uyanu, the Garifuna special healing songs which are divided into  arumajani (men) and abeimajani (women) are sung with the women or the men singing with their hands linked by their little fingers, a style of handhold also reported in Bantu origin dances. Examples of uyanu can be heard on the Folkways recordings of Garifuna music like When The Spirit Cries and Inside the Temple, available through the Smithsonian.   These songs are often revealed in dreams, reports my buyei friend Yaya, ( also in Avila, 2009). 

 

When the ancestors possess the Garifuna during a dugu, they often want to sing old arumajani songs, similar to how ancestor spirits possess people in Sangona healing ceremonies among the Bantu in South Africa  who want to sing ancestral songs (Wikipedia, Traditional African Medicine, Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa). Sangona ancestral songs were mostly about hunting, according to the Wikipedia, Traditional African medicine and Traditional healers of South Africa articles, although many sangona are women.  Garifuna arumajani songs were about fishing, hunting, the adventures of a man in love, problems with his children, personal problems like not having a family to buy a coffin when he dies, etc.

Among the Garifuna, both men and women can be buyeis.  I have read that in Bantu ancestor ceremonies they sacrifice an animal of four feet and an animal of two feet, like the Garifunas. 

 

The sacred gubida songs for a dugu or chugu among the Garifuna are sung with a leader and every one else is the chorus, accompanied by drums, maracas, and special dances including one called dugu.  In Avila’s book, some people describe this as singing in unison, while others as call and response (Avila, 2009). More specifically the leader sings perhaps half a line and then the rest of the chorus picks up the song. It gives a very African sound to Garifuna music.

 

 Most Garifuna music is polyrhythmic with the second drum carrying the basic beat (in Honduras two second drums are used, as noted in Griffin and CEGAH, 2005 while in Belize only one as noted in Avila, 2009), and the first drum playing a different beat, including during extemporaneous drumming in the middle and following the dancers’ movements in some songs), but the most important dugu rhythm is in unison-one strong downbeat and then three weak beats, like a heart beat. This rhythm is also known in Afro-Cuban traditional religion, according to American musician Michael Montano.  The main drum at the dugu ceremony is in fact called the heart drum.

 

The women’s voices carry all the melody, as the Garifuna instruments are all percussion instruments, and often sing to a different tempo or beat than either drum.  The sacred drums used in the dugu ceremony are larger (all four drums are male drums, with a deeper tone) and may only be played in these sacred ceremonies, while for other songs like punta the second drum is male or deeper and the first drum is female or higher pitch, according to Garifuna drum maker and player Francisco “Pancho” David. In some African cultures like in Ghana, they also divide drums into male and female.

 

 In Honduras, for punta for example, two second drums and one first drum are used, while in Belize for punta, one second drum and one first drum is used (Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2006).  For a dugu ceremony in Honduras, four huge drums are used—one first, two second and one third drum.   In Belize, three large drums are used in a dugu (Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2006). The drums of the ceremony are purified with the buyei spraying sugar cane liquor (guaro in Spanish) from the mouth on the inside of the drum, reports my buyei friend Yaya, a technique used in several other spiritual contexts among the Garifuna. I have seen this technique in a film about West African religions, but of an unknown ethnic group. Francisco David says he also does special things while making the sacred drums, like making part of it at midnight while saying certain prayers.

 

In Garifuna  ceremonial music for lemessi, mali, chugu, dugu  and gusirigayu, only drums and the buyeis’ maracas are used. Examples can be seen in the movie El Espiritu de Mi Mama (The Spirit of my Mother).   The maracas of a buyei have something special in them to call ancestors, reported my buyei friend Yaya.  The Garifunas report other instruments for non ceremonial music like the jaw bone of a horse or donkey, and a gut bucket (upside down metal washtub with  a stick and intestines of some animal), thought to be of African origin (Flores, 2003), but now seldom used.  Gut buckets are thought related to an instrument of Bantu origin.  Also still used are “claves” (two thick sticks beaten against each other), another instrument thought to be of African origin (Flores, 2003) and turtle shell drums. Photos of these can be seen in the notes of the CD by the Garifuna Collective “Ayó” (Good bye in Garifuna, as the CD is dedicated to the recently deceased Garifuna singer Andy Palacios).

 

 The Garifunas use a conch shell as a “horn”.  I have heard the Congo music group Umoja of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania play a song and do a dance similar to punta among the Garifunas, and they used an impala horn as a “horn” playing the same rhythms as the conch horn in Garifuna punta, and a gourd with the seeds on the outside instead of the Garifuna maracas which have the seeds on the inside. The dance the Garifunas call Punta, which has different couples go to the center and dance sensual dances with the woman dancing to both sides, forward and back while the man dances around her,  may be the same as Jamaicans call “Black and White dance”. Discos where Garifunas go to dance punta, are sometimes called “Black and White” in English, even by Spanish speaking Garifunas.  Garifuna sailor Sebastian Marin has reported dancing dugu together with the Maroons of Jamaica and the Afro-Cubans of Havana. 

 

The Afro-Cubans of Havana used to dance dugu every Friday night, according to Sebastian Marin, but the Garifunas only dance it when the ancestors require a ceremony, often only once in the lifetime of a descendant.  Some years there are 5 dugus in one year in Trujillo, other years there is one or none, since I have lived there since 1996.  Doña Sasa, an 88 Garifuna woman of Trujillo, says they used to be more infrequent, like one every 5 years.  Several researchers like Nancie Gonzales think that Garifuna immigration to the US, and thus more access to funds for the very expensive dugu ($5,000-$10.000) is part of the reason for the increase in dugus. Some Garifunas think that now that most buyeis no longer have other jobs like fisherman or farmer, they ask for the more expensive ceremony more often to get more money.  Good descriptions of a Garifuna dugu in Honduras and other Garifuna ceremonies in New York are in the book Diaspora Conversions, available through Amazon.com.   

 

Others could point out that increased Christianization among Garifunas has led to neglect of the ancestors.  Several of the people I have attended dugus for did not believe in gubida (ancestor spirits) before they were made sick.  One woman said, “I thought I am having this dugu, but I do not have to dance.”  Immediately she became numb.  She said,” OK OK I am not slow.  I will dance” and got up to dance.  Sometimes Garifuna students think, it is more important to go to class than attend a dugu.  But they become possessed by ancestor spirits while on the bus or in school, and a classmate has to put a headscarf on them and take them half unconscious and dancing or singing to the dugu.

 

Once a Garifuna man, the brother of Sebastian Marin the sailor, became sick.  He went to a buyei and the buyei said, “Your mother wants a mass (lemessi) and a table of food and drums.”  He prayed, he said, “Mother I have no money for the mass and other things.  Please let Sebastian know that you need these things.”  Sebastian was on a ship of the United Fruit Company, near Belize.  He felt sick and went to a Garifuna buyei in Belize, The buyei said, “Your mother wants a mass, etc.”  He went home to Trujillo and had the mass, the table of food, and the drums and music, and both he and his brother were cured.  Another Garifuna woman was made blind while she was in New York.  She went to a Garifuna buyei  in New York, and he said her father wanted a dugu.  She went back to Trujillo, Honduras had the dugu and her sight was restored. So the gubida have international reach among the Garifuna. All the descendants of the 4 grandparents of the sick person have to attend a dugu, and when there is a dugu in Trujillo Garifunas from New York, Belize, and different parts of Honduras come at least for the main three day ceremony. Friends and community members can also attend.  All contribute something, such as close family might contribute a pig, a rooster and some money and guaro, while community members have to bring at least a liter of guaro  (sugar cane liquor) and a candle, and are asked to contribute with food to feed the over 100 people who show up for a dugu.

 

 Punta, whose name in Garifuna Banguity, means “New Life” is danced at wakes and the ceremony at the end of one year after the death, which is done after saying prayers for 9 days (fin de novenario in Spanish, end of 9 days of prayer). According to Michelle Griffiths, a native of South Africa, the dance done by the Bantus at the wakes is also called “New Life”.  From the literature, it seems that Bantus also did a ceremony one year after death, called “final prayers” in English.  

 

A Garifuna buyei's presence is not necessary for a wake (veluria) or the "End of payers", but buyeis like Clara Garcia and Esly García often go, partly to visit the greiving relatives, but especially since they know many punta songs and they can help lead the singing.  The drummers at a wake are paid, but the singers are not, so sometimes no one comes to sing and the wake is not successful.  The best wakes are considered those of women who were active in Garifuna dance clubs during their lives. 

 

Garifuna dance clubs members learn Garifuna songs and sing and dance them all night long on special occasions like Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, and the Patron Saint's  Festival.  They used to work together putting clay on Garifuna clay houses, an activity which has its own songs, and planting yuca when they usualy sang punta songs, and grating cassava to make cassava bread, another activity which has its own songs (Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2005). When the club members dance from house to house on New Years Day (parranda), they collect money which they distribute to club members in case of a death of their family to help with the expenses of a wake.  Also all the club members come to sing at the wake for most of the night. Yaya has been a dance club member and male Buyei Esly García leads a women's dance club, which is very unusual for a Garifuna man to sing Garifuna women's songs. Yaya has also composed 5 songs, which she then taught to some friends. She says they sing her songs in the nearby town of Santa Fe.

 

Yaya’s life story (Griffin and Garica, 2013) parallels both the description of a shaman (Wikipedia, Shamanism) and the life of a traditional African healer like the “sangona” (Wikipedia, Traditional African medicine, Wikipedia, Traditional Healers of South Africa).  She was possessed by the spirits several times before she became a shaman who caused her to do things like walk to the river at night, climb up on roof beams, and overturn cooking beans onto a wood burning fire.  She was sick from witchcraft before she was cured by a plant provided by her deceased grandmother in dreams.  She saw the spirits who would help her in dreams and they showed her a place with many dead people living in cohune palm thatch houses, and said they would take her if she did not accept to be a buyei.  She said she would not go with dead peopel, so finally she accepted to become a buyei.

 

She had to have an initiation which included Garifuna songs, dances, drumming and food for the ancestors (Griffin and Garcia, 2012).   She has not told me many details of this initiation, but I have seen the iniatation ceremonies of other buyei like Zoe Laboriel, which took place in the context of a dugu held specifically for that.  For a week before the ceremony she was enclosed in the dugu house with another buyei and learned from the spirits.  Another buyei, niece of Balbina Chimilio, reported also being enclosed in the dugu house for a week and having her initiation as part of a dugu.  The buyeis sing and play maracas during the ceremony and the drummers drum and all the other people sing. There are buyei assistants. Sometimes the new buyei is possessed by the ancestor spirits and climbs up on the roof beams.

 

 Don Beto, a Garifuna, told me his son Santos was a buyei.  For two months, another buyei Elsy García came and stayed with them and spent every day learning Garífuna ceremonial songs.  Now Elsy is the principal leader of Garifuna ceremonial songs in Trujillo and he has his own group of singers, mostly old women, who go and are paid to sing at dugus and chugus. He also heads a dance club group for hunguhungu songs or fedu, Club Wabaragoun (We all go ahead together) which recorded a CD of Garifuna music for Radio France (Les Chansons des Caribes Noires), which includes dugu and abeimajani songs as well as other genres. For this CD the group was called Ensemble Wabaragun, and the Schomburg Center for Black Culture in NY city has a copy.  According to Avila’s book, Folkways Records also recorded dugu and fedu songs in Honduras and Belize (Avila, 2009).  I asked Yaya how she learned the ancestoral songs for the dugu and chugu, and she said the ancestors would reveal in dreams which songs were to be sung.  She also said that an ancestor of hers who had been a buyei, taught her in dreams how to play the maracas so that she could call the ancestors. 

 

All Garifuna buyeis divine if illnesses are caused by ancestors and can lead Garifuna ancestor ceremonies like mali(held prior to a dugu, promising to do the dugu within a certain time usually a year, sometimes combined with the planting of the post for the dugu house), chugu, dugu and gusirigayu (held once year after a dugu to send the ancestor spirit back to the land of the ancestors, seiri). The most important song and dance during a dugu is called amalijani (to do the action of Mali) and the initial ceremony of the dugu cycle when the post is planted and the ground where the temple is to be built consecrated is called Malí. This lends credence to the Garifuna oral tradition that they are descended from Africans who came from Africa before the Europeans, including those under the leadership of the King of Mali. See the Mali Empire article in Wikipedia to see that his leaving Mali with 4,000 small ships to cross the Atlantic is confirmed in writings and in oral tradition of Mali which is where the great Islamic university of Timbuktu was located.  Only a few buyeis like Elsy also know all the ancestor songs.  Because the dugu lasts for three days and two nights of almost continuous singing in the Garifuna language, and none of the songs are written down, it requires considerable work and memorization to learn all the dugu songs, as well as other songs.

 

The buyei does not drum.  There are special men drummers, now paid and the special drums are rented. For a dugu 8 drummers are needed, because one group of 4 sleeps while the other group of 4 is playing, since the ceremony is day and all might. There is a problem that few young men are learning to drum or make sacred drums.  Because you need permission from the ancestors to play sacred music and almost no one has the drums, it is probably impossible to arrange to teach Garifuna sacred music, even if you had the money to pay the instructors. 

 

In Trujillo, one family, the David Family, headed by Francisco David, has had a musical group, “Los Menudos” (The Intestines or Chitterlerings) and for the last 30 years the older members of the family have taught the young men in the family to drum and sing.  But between AIDS, immigration, alcoholism, and acculturation of many younger Garifunas, even they have trouble finding enough drummers for all the different Garifuna celebrations.  Garifunas from New York have recorded one CD of “Los Menudos“ music, but it does not include  most of the many genres this family group is famous for, including sacred music.

 

Some buyeis  like Yaya of Trujillo and Salamon Lino of San Juan, Tela are both buyei and  healers (curanderos) with medicinal plants, while other buyeis do not know medicinal plants.  Among the Bantus of South Africa, it is possible that the person who divines the cause of the illness(sangona), also knows the plants to cure it (healer with plants--inyanga in South Africa) or sometimes they are separate people(Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa).   There are also healers among the Garifuna who are not buyeis and the use of medicinal plants is still common among Garifunas, even the urban Garifunas of Trujillo.

 

Yaya is unusual in that in addition to heal with medicinal plants, she is also a midwife.  She learned to be a midwife and a healer of the illnesses that affect young children in a dream when she was 15, many years before she became buyei, and has been a midwife even since.  At age 91 and blind from cataracts she was still delivering babies and healing babies of traditional illnesses like evil eye (mal de ojo), pujo, and empacho ( a type of congestion that affects the digestive tract) (Griffin and Garcia, 2012). In addition to using over 100 plants, some of Yaya’s remedies include the use of the “lard” (manteca) of certain animals including chickens, pigs, wild peccary, boas, and cattle, which she usually buys from Honduran Spanish speakers called Ladinos. There is also a special test to see if a children will live or die from a fever, by killing a female chicken, open it, and place it around the stomach of the child, tying it there.  If the next day, the chicken smells bad, the child will die, if it does not, the child will live.(Griffin and CEGAH, 2006).  This is a special divination technique(Wikipedia, Divination, Rooster). In cultures where the female shaman leads the souls to the land of the ancestors after their death ( See psychopomp inWikipedia), it is not uncommon that she is also a midwife and leads the souls from the land of ancestors from whence they are sent into the new world of people. She also maintains contact with the ancestors and this child throughout its whole life.

In addition to healing illnesses caused by common problems like intestinal parasites, ancestors, other spirits like humeru and evil nature spirits, and witchcraft, Yaya has also helped people find lost things, provides medicine to help women become pregnant, and provided amulets or plants for protection from spirits and physical attack.  She grows plants like Santa Marta for good luck in sales in her yard which is carried, and also knows how to prepare a bath of good luck, to change one’s bad luck. South African healers also find lost things (Wikipedia, African Traditional medicine). 

 

Salamon Lino also teaches people how to recognize plants that enemies put in the person’s way so that they will become lost in the mountains and what to say so that that plant will have no effect.  In Garifuna culture, there have been people who provided love magic, or poisons, or knew how to do curses or to protect crops via magic, such as causing a snake to appear if someone tries to steal coconuts, but they are not the same as buyeis and are known as witches (brujo o bruja in Spanish). 

 

Other Garifuna and sometimes Ladinos insult the Garifuna buyeis by calling them “brujo” (male witch) or “bruja” (female witch).  This was so common, Yaya wrote a song about being called “bruja”, but that she was going to continue on her way and plant bananas and plantains for her grandchildren (Griffin and CEGAH, 2006).  Traditional African healers also asked the government of South Africa to review the Witchcraft laws, which were sometimes directed at their healing activities (Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa).

 

Profesor Santos Angel Batiz said that the Catholic Church in Honduras used to be so against the Garifunas who provided medicinal plant treatment or composed dugu songs, that they prohibitted the Garifuna elders from meeting, the Catholic Church opened a pharmacy, and would not permit Garifunas who participated in these activities to have funerals in the church (Santos Angel Batiz, personal communication.) Since I have been in Honduras, the Honduran government has occassionally launched "anti-witchcraft" campaigns, which mostly resulted in removing medicinal plant sellers from the central areas of Tegucigalpa.

 

Yaya and Salamon Lino both report taking care of diagnosing and caring for sick people in their homes, unlike South African healers who seem to have a special healing hut (Wikipedia, Traditional healers of  South Africa).. Where the Garifunas treat their patients, is part of the main house where they live, often in the same bedroom where they sleep. In Yaya’s bedroom where she treats patients, she has a “guli” or sanctuary for the spirits who help her.  They are ancestor spirits of Garifunas, but not of her direct ancestors. They have names--Melchor, Yolanda, and Josefa and they appeared to her when she was  first made sick by witchcraft to warn her.

 

There are also prints of “saints” (Jesus and the Sacred heart and God and the holy spirit) and a small statue of a saint, San Antonio (St. Anthony), sand, rocks, her special curing stick, her special curing sash which is cotton dyed yellow-orange by anetto seed (a sacred color among the Garifunas which only buyeis can have in their house and used by the family sponsoring a dugu ceremony), a small calabash cup with sugar cane liquor (guaro), and her maracas in the form of a cross. There is no pot where there is a “dead person’s spirit” like in Palo among Afro-Cubans (Wikipedia, Afro-Latin American religions).

 

When she wants to call the spirits she lights one or two small white candles and shakes a maraca, and sometimes sprays guaro over the altar. Yaya uses these candles to find out what the ancestors want(Griffin and Garcia, 2012). She does not cast lots to divine, like some South African diviners (Wikipedia, Traditional healers of South Africa). I have not asked Garifuna male buyeis how they divine illnesses.

 

Ancestor spirits can deliver messages when they possess someone either in the context of a chugu or dugu or during the divining of what is wrong or preparing for a dugu among the Garifunas (Avila, 2009, Balbina Chimilio. personal communication). In South Africa, the diviners also use “channeling”/ being possessed by ancestor spirits to divine the cause and the treatment of  the illness(Wikipedia, Traditional Healers of South Africa). Yaya gives the spirits at the guli guaro every day, and occasionally gives them food.  Sometimes the helping spirits of  a buyei ask for an ancestor ceremony for themselves like a chugu or a dugu.  Yaya has done a chugu for her spirits that help her and Elsy had to do a dugu for his spirits.

 

 When doing a chugu or a dugu or gusirigayu, the buyei sets up a special guli where candles are burnt and drinks are offered.  The buyei does special things to call the ancestor spirits to the ceremonies which are different for a chugu or a dugu, and also for a dugu the buyei does special things to purify the site and temple to ensure no witchcraft or evil spirits can enter (Griffin and CEGAH, 2006, Avila, 2009).  The drinks offered at a dugu to the ancestors include soft drinks like Coca Cola, commercially produced beer, guaro(comercially produced distilled sugar cane liquor), and jiyú, the beer made of grated and toasted cassava, mixed with grated sweet potato. One Garifuna said their family bought 500 liters of guaro for a dugu, however very little of it was used for drinking.  Most is used to purify the dancers and offer to ancestors.

 

Shamans have pipes and use special plants to induce trance.(Wikipedia, Shamanism).  The Garifuna buyei like Yaya use a pipe for different purposes.  The pipe with tobacco mixed “buei” is given to Garifunas to make them fall into a trance where they are possessed by ancestor spirits more readily(Diego Norales, Personal Communication).  Yaya says “buei” is the dried bark of a tall tree of which there is one in Barrio Cristales, Honduras. The pipe with tobacco is used to make flee bothersome spirits in the context of a dugu. Smoke from the pipe is also blown on the dancers at a dugu who are being bothered a lot by the spirits.

 

 Yaya as midwife also smokes a baby born almost dead, for example with its umbilical cord around its neck, or it takes a long time in coming down and the baby revives (Clara García and Geovani Zuniga, Personal Communication).  The Garifuna word to become possessed by ancestor spirits is "obeimaja" which is similar to the word used for the spiritual leader of Anglo-Caribbean traditional African based religions, the Obeah man.  Maybe the Obeah man also led people to become possessed by ancestor spirits, in addition to his more famous work with magic. The dance where Anglo-Caribbean people became possessed by ancestors was called the Jumbee dance maybe from the word in the Malinka language jembe a type of drum. The Miskito Indians of Honduras also use the word ubia daktur (Obeah doctor), and both Miskitos and Black English speakers of the North Coast of Honduras have songs related to going to the Obeah man for being cured.  So while there seems to be Bantu influence in both the Garifuna and the Miskito Indians of Honduras, there also seems to be significant influence from the rice growing area of the area of the old Mali Empire where the Malinka or Mandiko, Wolof (gelefe in Spanish, also pronounced Jolof in English such as the dish called Spanish rice in America is called Jolof rice in Africa), Fulani or Fula peoples lived among others.  

 

In many religions the shaman or healer is different from the person who offers animal sacrifices.  Among the Garifunas, the buyei smokes the pigs sacrificed  for the ancestors at a mali (a ceremony held one year before a dugu promising to do the dugu within a year) and for the dugu itself (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  However, a special Garifuna man actually kills the pigs and prepares them to be hung up at the dugu ceremony.  During the dugu ceremony, during the second night, dancing, singing and drumming  is done in the presence of the 4 sacrificed pigs in Honduras, hanging one in each of the 4 cardinal directions, tied up by their hind feet, head down. The interiors of the pig are removed off site, before the pigs are hung at the dugu.(In Belize, they only sacrifice 2 pigs, Avila, 2009).  According to Bantu beliefs, the ancestors gather around the carcass of the animal sacrificed to them (Wikpedia, ) and for angry ancestors one should sacrifice both  two legged animals and four legged animals.

 

The roosters and sugar cane liquor (guaro) at a dugu are presented to the ancestors by the dancers/ the descendants of the gubida requesting the dugu, during  special dances, amalijani,  done several times during the day and night, especially right before 12 and before midnight. It is considered bad luck if the roosters do not crow. Four of the red roosters are grabbed by the drummers, all Garifuna men, by their feet, and are presented to the four directions during a circle dance when the song “San Guyu” (Sacred Rooster) is sung, and at the end of the song and dance, the drummers throw the roosters down and break their necks, either at 12 noon during a mali (the ceremony promising to do the dugu) or at 12 midnight during a dugu.  This time at 12 midnight is considered the time when there are the most spirits, nature or bush spirits, water spirits, evil spirits(mafia),  and ancestors (gubida), and  it is considered exceptionally dangerous to go outside at this time.

 

The Garifunas believe that the mafia (bush spirits) like the music at a dugu and come close to the village, so that it is dangerous to go to the fields to plant or work on those days.  Traditionally when a dugu was held, no one went to their fields or hunting (al monte), for this reason(Griffin and CEGAH,2005). According to the Garifunas of Trujillo, the Haitians also do this "San Gayu" (sacred Rooster) dance and sacrifice of Roosters. Alectyomancy is a technique using the sacrificing of a sacred rooster as an intent of communication between the gods and man (Wikipedia, Rooster).

 

In Garifuna ceremonies, neither the blood of the roosters or pigs at a dugu, or the offered chicken during a chugu is split inside the structure where the ceremony is held. After the roosters are killed, they are prepared as food and served to guests and drummers and as prepared dishes for the ancestor spirits. One Garifuna told me that the Garifunas used to sarifice cattle at ancestor ceremonies, but switched to pigs, because cattle were too expensive.  I only know of one dugu in Trujillo, where at first the ancestors did not accept the ceremony, and the family had to sacrifice a cow, too, after it was all over, and then the ceremony was accepted. The ancestors show they accept a ceremony, because one of the tables the food was presented on is covered with a rum based punch called fonsu and set on fire. If the table is completely burned, the ancestors are considered to have been satisfied. An example of this is seen in the movie El Espiritu de Mi mama (The Spirit of My Mother) by Ali Allié. The tables of food--often 3 or 5 tables of traditional food, are offered at the end of two days and nights of singing and dancing. The Garifuna men and women sing abeimajani and arumajani (songs of older women and songs of older men without drums) while the food and drink is offered to the ancestors. At the end of the ceremony, the ancestors are escorted to the beach with music and drums, and the food is dropped into the sea for ancestor spirits who were not invited to the party of the dugu, and also for the fish. The buyei Yaya said, "The fish have to eat,too."  A dugu is seen as a party that some ancestors request, and that they invite their other friends and family in the land of the ancestors (seiri) to join to come and sing, dance, eat and drink. The land of the ancestors of the Garifunas was perceived as being located either under the sea or across the sea in some undefined place so that some think it is St. Vincent, and some think it may be in Africa. The Garifuna ancestor spirits both arrive by sea and leave by sea for an ancestor ceremony, so the beach area plays a significant part in the dugu ceremony.  Ceremonial fisherman are also required to sleep on the beach for two nights while they are out fishing for the dugu ceremony, and the send off and the arrival of the ceremonial fisherman have their own songs, and their arrival signifies the real beginning of the actual dugu part of the ceremony.    

Another divination technique is used by the buyeis at the end of the chugu or dugu ceremony. A special table is brought in and the buyei pours fonsu (punch made of guaro and egg) on the table.  Garifunas believe this liquid has special healing powers and from the table put some of it on their hands and rub it on places that are sore.  Then the buyei sets fire to the table.  If the table burns completely, the ancestors received the ceremony and offerings and are satisfied.  If it does not burn completely, the ancestors were not satisfied, and the buyei has to consult with his spirits and the ancestors to see what else they want, why they are not pleased or what they want now(Avila, 2009, Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  Usually. the ceremonies are accepted, but there was a case in Santa Fe, next to Trujillo, that the family had to repeat the dugu 4 times and in the end the ancestor spirit said the person sick himself does not believe in gubida and so they are not going to heal him of insanity. In Santa Fe, many Garifunas have become evangelical Christians whose churches are against Garifuna ceremonies as devil worship, and against dancing of any kind, even non-religious Garifuna dances like Mascaro, so many family members did not come to the dugu, which was part of the reason the dugu was not accepted by the ancestors.

 

The Garifuna buyei also traditionally visited a person when they were dying.  They would put guaro on them, say prayers, and sing special songs to tell them how they would get to seiri, the land of the ancestors. Yaya my buyei friend says sometimes people get better after she does this.  The songs say that your deceased family members, your mother, your grandmother, etc. are waiting for you in seiri, so that the person will be comforted and know where they are going they will not be alone.  According to Profesor Santos Angel Batiz, the Catholic Church has fought against this role of the buyei, because the priests feel it is their duty to tell the deceased spirit how to reach heaven.  (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  Few buyei still know these songs.  Before the Bible was translated into Garifuna, the Garifunas believed that seiri was across the water, maybe even in Saint Vincent (Avila, 2009).  Now that the Garifuna Bible translate "heaven" (cielo in Spanish) as seiri, most younger Garifunas think seiri is in the sky.  The whole symbolism of the dugu with the ceremonial fishermen going out and getting the fish and the "angel de la guardia" (guardian angel or ancestor spirit), a boy dressed in tradtional Garifuna clothes, and arriving at dawn where everyone greets them with song, drums, dancing, incense, guaro and candles, is lost if you don't under seiri is over the water.  Also at the end of the dugu ceremony, the food is ceremonially left in the water for the other spirits and other people's ancestor spirits who were not at the dugu and escoritng the gubida back to the water, so that the idea that seiri is over the water is central to the dugu.  A mock version of most of a dugu ceremony and the calling home of a Garifuna woman in Los Angeles for an ancestor ceremony can be seen in the film "The Spirit of my Mother" (El Espiritu de Mi Mama) which is for sale on the Internet at www.garifunainperil.com and through Amazon.com. 

 

The words of the Garifuna shaman buyei and for the ancestor spirits (gubida) are believed to be of Arawak origin  (Suazo,2002).  However, the word "mutu" which means "people" in English and "gente" in Spanish, which includes both the living and dead, for example "mi gente" (my people) includes both the living and deceased members of the family.  Mutu is believed to be of Bantu origin according to A. Crisanto Melendez.  Although the neighboring Miskitos tell many stories of "kisi", a nature spirit probably related to the Bantu word nkisi "a nature spirit" (Miskiwat, 1995a, Jeanette Allsopp, personal communication), I have not heard the word "nkisi" or "kisi" among the Garifuna.  However, for  many of the nature spirits like those that live under the mahoghany tree, the silkwood tree, the cohune palm, the avocado tree, etc. the Garifuna just tell me it is the devil "diablo" in Spanish and do not tell me the names of these spirits in Garifuna.

 

The African medicinal plants used and cultivated by the Garifuna include aloe vera, and the plant used to make castor oil.  Some Garifunas may also cultivate sorghum, a common African grain, which at least one Garifuna  midwife uses medicinally,usually called maicillo in Honduran Spanish (little corn) (Griffin and CEGAH, 2005).  The Garifunas used to cultivate okra (neju in Garifuna and in Panamanian Spanish), an African vegetable, which in addition to eating as a vegetable and in soups, they ate to get rid of kidney stones.  The Garifuna also use medicinal plants native to Honduras, to Asia, and to Europe. I have collected 100 of Yaya's medicinal plant recipes (Griffin and CEGAH, 2006), but in Dr. Sonia Waite Lagos's study of Garifuna medicinal plants, they collected recipes for over 300 Garifuna medicinal plants and sent them to TRAMIL in the Dominican Republic. TRAMIL, a project to study medicinal plant use in the Caribbean, has a webiste, but I have been unable to get even simple Garifuna recipes like naranja agria (bitter orange) to come up.  That project seems to have been a clear case of biopiracy.  My study with Yaya of Garifuna medicinal plants we gave copies to all the Garifuna schools and libraries in the Department or State of Colon, Honduras where we worked and lived.