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. 

Yaya as a Garifuna Midwife and Massage Therapist Part 2

Chapter Two: Yaya as a Midwife and Massage Therapist

 

By Wendy Griffin

 

When she was approximately 15 years old, Yaya dreamed of two people—an English speaking doctor and a black woman.  The gringo doctor explained to her in English how to be a midwife.  Clara said to him, “I do not understand gringo yet.”  The black woman translated what the doctor said.  Since that dream she is a midwife.  At 91 years old people still looked for her to be a midwife.

 

She still remembers the first time she acted as a midwife.  Someone told her, “Your cousin is sick.”  She went to see her.  The husband of the cousin had gone to the neighborhood of Rio Negro to look for the midwife there.  Clara examined her cousin.  She was bleeding.  Then her water broke.  The placenta came with the baby.  She cleaned the baby and put clothes on her.  Then the husband arrived with the midwife.  She was a black English speaker.  Clara told him what he had to do is pay the woman for her walk and that is what he did.

 

She has worked with difficult and ugly births.  For example a woman who was pregnant felt something.  It was the hand of the baby.  Clara was able to get the baby out and the Mama lived.  Clara put oil of almonds along the birth canal and on the baby.  She told the mother when to push.  She blew smoke her in the face.

 

Another time the woman felt birth pangs. Clara felt the foot of the baby.  She pinched the foot hard and the baby pulled the leg in again.  Then Clara was able to massage the mother until the baby was in a better position. It came without a problem.  The Mama asked, “Why didn't you tell me that the baby came foot first?” “ I did not want you to worry,” Clara said.  “God helps me.”  Before there were no diapers, they just tore cloth from an old dress of the Mama and dressed the baby in that.

 

Three times she has had to be the midwife for a birth of a baby with the umbilical cord around its neck.  She put almond oil on her hand and put her hand in and moved the umbilical cord so that the baby could slide down without any problems.  All these babies are big now.

 

She has never failed in a birth, but once there was a pregnant woman.  She had birth pangs.  The baby went in and out.  Clara gave her rue to chew and a lot of water.  The baby came.  It was a boy.  But the afterbirth did not come down.

 

She gave her the plant San Antonio.  She said, “I am going to die. Clara asked, “Do you have a hammock?  Put her in a hammock and take her to the doctor's clinic.” There was no hospital.  The Truxillo Railroad Company had left, closing the hospital in Castilla.  They took her to the dispensary.  The doctor changed gloves 7 times trying to get the afterbirth to come down.  The woman died in the doctor's clinic.

 

This death had been dreamed of in this house.  The father said, “I do not blame you.  You know your work.  They took her to the clinic with enough time.”  She did not charge them.

 

The woman who died had taken some money of a Mr. Griffis of Guanaja. She and her husband took the money.  She bought flour and made a lot of coconut bread.  The man whose money they took paid someone to kill her and her husband by witchcraft.  The son still lives.  While they were preparing the wake of this woman, Yaya was called to be a midwife at another birth.  The woman already had the birth pangs.  The people commented Yaya was brave (tiene valor) to attend another birth after this one died.  This birth went fine.

 

Clara knows techniques to get the afterbirth to come down. If the afterbirth does not come down, she put her hand down hard to the Mama's head.  The afterbirths falls.  Also she gives the patient a bottle and tells her to breathe in it.  Or she breathes strongly into the mouth of the mother.

 

The most famous person that she been a midwife for is the actual president of Honduras Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo.  When he was about to be born, his parents lived in a Garifuna neighborhood of Trujillo, Rio Negro, where they raised pigs.  Twice a week they slaughtered pigs and sold the meat.  Yaya  was with the mother of the President of Honduras during the first part of the birth, but then her cousin who was also a midwife came, and she finished birthing the child.  Until today, the President of Honduras says, “A Black woman cut my umbilical cord.”.  

 

The care of the pregnant mother begins months before the birth.  Clara knows how to massage pregnant women and she taught this to her daughter Mantua.  The women come so that she can check them out.  Sometimes she said to them,” You are not pregnant.  What you have is a tumor.  Go to the hospital.” The tumor can be treated if it is small.  Put three drops of criolina in water every day.  Do not put in more than 3 drops.  The tumor will come with the menstruation.

 

Clara can identify if the baby is a boy or a girl.  Touching the Mama, the baby moves, floating towards the back if it is a girl.  A boy does not move.  The boy tries to settle down below the rib.  The girl does not.

 

There are women who could not have children.  Their husband was on the point of leaving them because they could not have children.  Here is the remedy.

 

Buy honey from bees, “guaro” (sugar cane liquor), pericon, anise, camomile and allspice.  One part of the vegetables cook well in a pot.  The other part does not get cooked.  Cut up the part that is raw.  Put it in a plastic container. Add the honey and guaro.  Drink it every day.

 

She gave this recipe to a woman.  At the end of one year, she returned to say, “Here is your granddaughter.”

 

After giving birth the woman is bleeding.  She should wash with lemon leaf and the leaf of bitter orange and warm water.  If she does not do this while she is bleeding, she will get a tumor.

 

When they built the hospital in Trujillo, they invited the midwifes to a short course (cursillo).  She went to the cursillo and explained to the doctors what they did for a successful birth.  The midwives checked the pregnant woman at the hospital.

 

Even after the construction of the hospital, the women still looked for Clara to be the midwife for them.  A woman went to the hospital.  She had birth pangs for three days.  In the hospital they told her, “This is going to be a difficult birth.  You should go to La Ceiba.”  The doctors and nurses went to La Ceiba.  They should have taken her with them, but they did not.  The woman did not go.  She looked for Clara.  It was a difficult birth, feet first.  Clara called on God.  This is his work.  The woman gave birth without greater problems.

 

When Clara went to live in la Ceiba, this woman followed her.  Clara said to her, “Here are two hospitals.  You can go to the hospital.”  “Not even if God wants it. I want you to be my midwife.” answered the woman. She was with Clara for three days. She put on a special belt and went to Trujillo with the baby.  Clara was her midwife for three births—two girls and a boy.

She plants San Antonio.  You pull it out with the whole root.  This gets the afterbirth to come down.  Yaya tells them to use a laxative before they are going to give birth like Laxsol.  It is sweet.  They drink half, not the whole thing.  She prefers to take out the baby without gloves.  She cuts her nails.  She uses a special brush to clean her fingernails.

 

Once when she lived in La Ceiba a woman stopped her and asked if she knew a woman who lived around here named Clara.  She said, “No, I do not know her.  I am recently arrived in La Ceiba myself.”  The woman insisted.  “Don't you know a woman who lives around here, named Clara?” Finally Clara said, “I am she.”   The woman was pregnant.  She stayed with Yaya and had the baby.  The next day she said, “I am going out.  I will be right back.”  But at 10, 11 o'clock she did not come back.  She left the baby with Yaya. Clara was going to raise the baby as her own.  Another woman said she heard that a woman left a baby with her, and said Clara should give her the baby.  But no, Clara was going to raise the child.  After a long time, the woman came back.  She said she wanted the baby back.  Clara gave it to her, because it was hers.  She had a husband in Boston, but she had this baby with another man.  The husband forgave her and that is why she went to pick up the baby.

 

Clara has been a midwife for twins.  Sometimes there is one placenta, sometimes two.  One woman had twins.  First one came and then the pains stopped for several hours.  Yaya fixed up the first baby. Afterward the pains started again and she had the other baby.

 

You have to be careful with twins.  If one dies, it is easy that the other one dies also.  The first one calls it.

 

Sometimes the baby drinks the dirty water when the water breaks.  She gives the baby garlic well cooked, and rue and honey in the mouth so that it vomits all the dirty water.  This baby will not have asthma, nor bronchitis.  Some children just have a cold followed by another cold, etc.  This is because they drank the dirty water.  None of the kids she has midwifed for have asthma.

 

If the baby is born with the placenta still intact, she cuts it with scissors and dries the baby.  This is a mystery.  The baby inside the mother does not drown, but if you leave it 5 minutes with the water still around it outside the mother, it will drown.

 

Once a woman went to the hospital.  For two days she was in the hospital with labor pains and the baby did not come, so they sent her home.  Yaya massaged her.  Then she had a pain.  Then again.  She bled a little.  Then the pains came one after another. Yaya touched the baby.  It was close. Yaya told her to push.  The baby came out and the grandmother said, “My little girl had her baby.” It was a girl.  Yaya cleaned up the baby.  She fixed the umbilical cord.  She gave her raw sugar cane (rapadura).  This gets all the coagulated blood out.  She was with Yaya for two days. Before she  charged only a little money.  Now she charges L500 ($25) for being the midwife at a birth.

 

Once when Doctor Pablito, a Garifuna doctor, was recently arrived, Yaya did a birth feet first.  “God helped me”, she said. The doctors and nurses went to La Ceiba.  Yaya massaged the mother.  The two feet came out.  She felt the head.  She put almond oil on her hands. She told her to push.  Doctor Pablo said to her, “You are brave.”  Yaya said, “If I am not brave I am going to fail.” She cleaned her up. She put the belt on the baby and a little dress.  The placenta came with the baby.  Yaya buries the placenta in a secret place. 

 

Sometimes Yaya recommends that a woman have a baby in the hospital.  Once when she was working as a buyei in a ceremony, a chugu or banquet for the ancestors that lasts all day, they called her to attend a birth. The woman was already in labor.  The woman was going to have twins.  She had very narrow hips.  First they took her to the hospital in Trujillo and they referred her to the hospital in La Ceiba.  They operated on her in La Ceiba at 6 am and she was there in the hospital for a week. Yaya came back with her.  When she became pregnant again she had by Cesarian again.

 

Recommendations on the Care of Pregnant Women

 

At the beginning, in the first three months, the woman should not be massaged.  The fetus is delicate.  When a woman is pregnant she should eat well, drink a lot milk, eat cooked eggs and oatmeal.  There are cases when the mother gives birth, the baby lives, but the mother dies.  The mother had anemia.  Yaya tells them, “Go to the doctor.” when they are pregnant.  They should take vitamins to avoid being anemic.  They can also take caña santa with raw cane sugar for anemia. They  should peel and mash up the Caña Santa and leave it in water with raw  cane sugar (rapadura) for three days.  Then drink this medicine every day.

 

There are women who when they are pregnant all types of food bother them.  When a woman has a lot of nausea, she could drink lemonade with sugar and ice.  With this, the nausea and the need to spit end.

 

There are women who have pain even though they are pregnant.  What they have is cold in the womb.  Cook camomile, allspice and anise. Drink this.  That is the end of the pain and the cold.  The cause of cold in the womb is bathing all the time when they are menstruating.

 

A boy at 42 days of being pregnant, you can feel it, like a little snake.  They  climb up over the stomach of the Mama.

 

At 3, 4, 5, months the woman can be massaged.  At five months the baby turns over.

 

During the first six months the woman should not drink cinnamon bark tea.  This can cause an abortion.

 

At seven months the baby has its head down.  The baby does not move until 7 months if it is a girl.  The mother should sleep on both sides.  The baby will give the mother pain if she just sleeps on one side.

 

The month when the baby is due, boil a lot of cinnamon, oregano and ginger.  Wash these and pound them.  Drink this every day the month the baby is due.  The baby will come out quickly.

 

The week the baby is due, the midwife checks the baby to see if everything is OK.  She knows if it is necessary to have a Cesarian or if the baby is going to born feet first.

 

When the baby is ready to come down, she puts almond oil on the woman so that the baby can come down easily.  The midwife says prayers to God while the woman is having her pains.

 

When the baby is born, she ties the umbilical cord.  She cuts the umbilical cord.  She puts gauze, alcohol and a cloth belt.  If the head came out a little disfigured, she massages it.  She cuts a stocking, and puts it on the baby so that the head will be OK.  She cleans the baby with oil or alcohol.  She puts a diaper on the baby, some clothes and puts it down to sleep.

 

When the birth is difficult to get the placenta to come down, she makes tea of San Antonio.  She lets it get cold and adds sugar.  This causes the placenta to come down. Some people use camomile, allspice and cloves to wash the womb of the mother and to wash the umbilical cord.  Yaya puts almond oil on the mother.  After she has given birth, it is necessary to close the woman at three days.  The midwife does a massage and puts a broad cloth belt on the new mother.  The mother drinks camomile, rosemary, anise and allspice to clean out the womb.

 

For pain after birth, eat raw cane sugar (rapadura).  This causes all that is causing the pain to come out.  For hemorrhaging after birth, Yaya uses strong coffee.  After the birth, she gives the mother an antibiotic like sufatacina.

 

If the mother was scratched by the baby on its way out, boil leaves of piñon and the milk from this plant.  Wash the mother with this.  In three days she is as good as if she had had stitches.  Also wash with castor oil.

 

During the pregnancy generally the mother takes nothing to purge herself.  A month after giving birth, take three oils—castor oil, almond oil, and eating oil to clean out her system.

 

When the woman is bleeding, she should avoid hot air from above and from below from the feet.  For example, she can not make cassava bread with firewood on the ground and an iron griddle above this, because a lot of hot air would enter from below..

 

When it is time to nurse the baby, wash the breasts with water, not with soap.  The mother should try the milk.  If the milk is salty, it is no good.  Culantro should be boiled with bitter orange.  Drink this.  The milk is washed and comes out sweet.  Drink this also if the milk does not come.

 

To a baby the midwife also does massages.  At three days old the baby turns over.

 

There are umbilical cords that do not fall off at 9, 10 days.  They are thick.  Sometimes as long as 15 days, they fall off dry.  She puts alcohol on the umbilical cord.  Before, there was no alcohol.  They used to use Mentholatum and iodine.

 

Illnesses that Require a Healer/Massage Therapist

 

In her dream on how to be a midwife Yaya also learned how to massage to cure illnesses that affect young children.  For these illnesses a mother should not go to a doctor as they are not recognized by doctors.

 

Puho-If the father does heavy work, if the father is outside with another woman, the umbilical cord begins to bleed again.  If a pregnant woman passes by the baby, it can become sick.  To avoid this, the woman should make the sign of the cross with her saliva.  If the baby is sick, put around it the sweaty shirt of the father and on the bellybutton.  Heat up a Guarumo leaf or tobacco and put this on the bellybutton.

 

A child Affected by the Evil Eye-- This is caused by being seen by a person whose vision is strong and brings illness to the baby.  It can not go to bathroom and can not pee.  Burn leaves of chile chiltepe, and a cigar on hot coals from a fire.  Pass the child in the form of the cross through the smoke.  Turn over the baby.  Pass it again in the form of a cross.  Massage its body with dampened tobacco.

 

Empacho-The symptoms of empacho are the baby defecates a lot.  He will not nurse.  The tongue makes a sound.  His little tummy is inflated and it sounds like a drum when you hit it.  Massage the baby going down all over, the arms.  Put a little salt and a little sugar in water, sweeter rather than saltier.  Drink this.  Pass the salt over the stomach also.  If it has diarrhea with green mucus, give it the antibiotic sufatacina.

 

If the mother eats avocado, pigs’ feet, cabbage, this gives the baby diarrhea with mucus.  If the baby has diarrhea with green mucus, Yaya massages it and gives it the antibiotioc sufatacina. There are young mothers who are not careful.  They give heavy foods like machuca (mashed cooked green and ripe plantains) to little babies, like 15 days or 2 months old. This gives them “empacho”.  She massages them.

 

Hundida de la Mollera (The sunken Soft Spot)- Touch the soft spot on the baby's head.  You can feel that it has sunken.  Massage the baby carefully. She puts water on the baby’s head,   and the healer puts her lips around the soft spot and hauls it up.  She lays the baby on its stomach and touches its feet.  If the case is serious, mix wheat flour with the yolk of an egg. Put this on a plate.  Put this mixture on a rag or a piece of paper.  Put it on the soft spot.  It will not fall off until the baby is healed, even if you bathe the child every day.

 

Paletillas-There is a bone at the end of the breast bone.  It sinks.  The healer has to raise it up. It is necessary to massage the child. There was a child who went to the hospital.  They could not find anything wrong with him.  Yaya discovered that he had paletilla.  She gave him camomile, allspice, nutmeg, and pericon which he drank every day.  He got well.

 

Empacho and Paletillas also affect adults.  Clara also gives treatment of massages and medicinal plants to adults.  Many patients with AIDS also have a cough and feel bad.  Several Garifuna NGO’s like Enlace de Mujeres Negras, have given training to buyeis on how to recognize the symptoms of AIDS, because people with AIDS often go to buyei before going to a medical doctor, thinking they have paletillas or “guibida” problems.

 

The Ladinos and the Pech also believe in these illnesses which are treated by massage and similar ones like haito of water and haito of milk which Yaya also cures.  Many of the patients of Yaya as a massage therapist, healer, and midwife are Ladinos (mestizos and mulattos who speak Spanish), who she calls indios.

 

Adults suffer from other illnesses that need massages.  “Aire”, dislocations, paralysis, recovering from falls, being hit, and broken bones are some of the illnesses that people seek a massage therapist (sobadora)  for.  “Aire” is not gas in the stomach, but rather a pain that affects the person in different parts of the body like the back.

 

In Cristales, there used to be a man who worked for the Standard Fruit Company (now Dole), a banana company based in la Ceiba, Honduras.  He became paralyzed.  Standard Fruit paid for him to be in medical treatment with doctors for three years.  He did not get better.  Yaya did massages for him during one year.  At the end of the year, he could walk again.

 

An Example of a visit with Doña Clara

 

One day I went to visit Clara.  She was with a patient that was 15 days old.  The baby had puho.  It cried.  It tried to push as if for a bowel movement, but nothing.  It would not nurse.  She massaged the baby with sugar cane alcohol (guaro) and tobacco.  She gave the mother dried leaves of chile chiletepe.  She advised the mother to burn the leaves with the rest of the cigar in a pot that she no longer used.  She should pass that baby mouth up and then mouth down in the form of a cross through the smoke.  This was in case the puho was caused by a person with strong vision.

 

The baby also had yellow eyes.  She gave the mother pieces of caña  santa.  She told her to peel it and the center part mix with raw cane sugar (rapadura).  Leave this two days to ferment.  Give this medicine to the baby until it no longer had yellow eyes.  This is the recipe for hepatitis and other liver problems like jaundice.

 

After half an hour the baby ate again and slept and no long made the movements of puho.

 

Clara said that if the umbilical cord bled, take the leaf of guarumo, heat it up and put it on the bellybutton.  The mother was curing the bellybutton with chicken lard and iodine.  Clara said iodine burned.

 

Clara also advised the mother to wrap the baby in a shirt sweaty from the work of his father when he came home from cutting grass with a machete.  Maybe the baby got sick because his father was doing a lot of  work.  She told us about another baby who got sick because the father was puling up yuca or manioc.

 

Children are delicate says Clara.  You have to bring them to be cured on time.  There was a mother.  The baby bled from the belly button. This began in the morning.  She did not bring the baby to Clara until late afternoon.  The baby died.

 

Another time a girl nine years old got sick.  The mother said, Tomorrow and tomorrow we will take her to see Yaya.  Various days passed like this.  Finally they brought the girl to see Yaya, but she was with another patient.  They said,  Now we are going to go.  But they waited.  When she was done with the first patient Yaya checked the girl.  She said take her to your house and lay her out.  She died there in the living room of Yaya because her parents did not bring her on time.

 

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).

Yaya as buyei or Shaman Part 4

Chapter Four – Yaya as buyei

 

By Wendy Griffin

 

In addition to being a massage therapist, a midwife and a healer with plants, Clara is a buyei, a Garifuna shaman.  People look for a buyei when they get sick and they think the cause of the illness are the spirits of the ancestors called “gubida” in Garifuna.  Sometimes the “gubida” speak in dreams or reveal themselves by day, such as a woman who said, “I saw my mother clearly.”  For these illnesses caused by gubida, Western medicine prescribed by doctors does not work.  “Gubida” do not like hospitals and if a person thinks they have an illness caused by gubida they will leave the hospital.

 

There is not a single illness that is “gubida sickness”.  It can manifest itself through different illnesses.  For example one Garifuna woman in Trujillo went to New York and became blind suddenly.  She promised to do the ceremony dugu for the gubida after visiting a buyei to diagnose her problem, and she was cured. A dugu, the highest ceremony of the Garifunas can take up to three years to do all the steps and can cost up to $10,000. She did the ceremony with all her family and people from the community to ensure the illness would not return.  It is not possible to do this ceremony overseas. It can only be done in Garifuna communities in Central America.

 

Another woman had a swollen leg.  After the woman did the ceremony of chugu, a banquet of traditional Garifuna foods for the ancestors, and special dances for gubida accompanied by drums and maracas held on one day, she was cured.

 

A good buyei will tell you if the illness you has is a hospital type illness or a gubida illness.  Sometimes people do a chugu a one day ceremony with gubida dances and drums, and food for the ancestors when they have a mortal illness like a brain tumor or bone cancer.  Then the person does not get well and dies.

 

Sometimes the Garifunas refuse to do ceremonies for the ancestors.  Mi Garifuna friend Beto Reyes said many Garifunas have died because they did not want to do the ceremonies.

 

Yaya comments to families that are reluctant to have the ceremonies. “We can give to the dead.  We will always have something to eat.  God will give us more.  The dead need us to give to them.  But if someone is stingy, and does not want to give to the dead, the earth will not give to him either.  That person could plant plantains, but will not harvest much, because he is stingy (mezquino).”

 

I asked Clara how she became a buyei.  A buyei is chosen by the spirits.  Before accepting to be buyei, the person dreams of the spirits who are going to help her.  These spirits say their name and ask the person to be a buyei for them.  The spirits that help Yaya are Melchor, Yolanda and Josefa.  They were Garifunas.  Many times in the beginning the person does not want to be a buyei.  They tell the spirits no.  Then the spirits appear to other people in dreams asking that person to intercede for him or her to ask the person to be a buyei for him or her.  The spirits can be Garifunas or other ethnic groups like Black English speakers.  When Clara told the spirits, “No,” the spirits told her, “We are going to take you with us.”  “Me go with dead people, No.”  Finally she had to accept.  Another buyei also said that the spirits made her sick, almost to death, until she accepted to be a buyei for them.

 

Before accepting to be buyei, she dreamed of many things, for example that she was on a mountain where she had never gone.  In the dreams there are difficulties such as having to cross a raging river.  The spirit who will help her, tells her how to get out of these things.  She also dreamed of dead people she did not know.  They lived in houses of pure cohune palm thatch.  Even the walls and the door were made of palm leaves like a dugu house. In Trujillo, the Garifunas used to use cohune palm thatch for their roofs, but in other Garifuna communities like Barranco and Tournabe, the whole house where people lived was made of palm leaf thatch.

 

The spirits possess the person who is going to be buyei.  This possession is called “obeimaha” in Garifuna.  They made Clara walk to different places with her eyes closed, for example beside a river at night or to her grandmother's house. Sometimes the person walks up on the roof beams.  When she comes back to herself, people are watching her, to see if she is hurt, but no she is fine.

 

Until one accepts to be buyei, these spirits bothered her a lot.  For example, Clara said she prepared to go to a wake.  She took a bath, got dressed, left her house, but she had to return home.  The gubida do not like “vaho” the fetid vapor put off by dead people.  They told her when you accept, you will be free to go anywhere.  Now she can go to wakes without being bothered,

 

When one accepts to be a buyei, they ask for a mass in the Catholic church for these people, to call their name during the mass. Then in the house they cook food for the spirits.  There are drums and special gubida songs.  They invite other people to the ceremony.  Other people do the initiation of a buyei during the maximum ceremony of the Garifuna, a dugu.

 

After becoming a buyei, she always has to have a sanctuary for them in her house, called a guli.  There are maracas crossed in the form of the cross, something to drink, usually guaro, a saint's picture, candles, sand, rocks, a piece of cloth dyed with anetto seed (achiote)called a healing cloth and special stick. The orange yellow color of achote is so sacred that only buyeis can have it in their house.  Other people dye clothes achote color for a dugu, but after the dugu they have to bleach the clothes white again, said Doña  Alisa, a Garifuna of Trujillo.

 

To call down the spirits to the guli, she lights two candles. She uses one maraca to call them down.  If they do not come right way, she fills her mouth with guaro and sprays the guaro above the guli.  You can know when the spirit s have appeared because they make the candle flame waver. This technique of spraying liquor in a ceremony has been documented among shaman in West Africa also.

 

Clara says she knows that the family is coming to ask her about a ceremony before they come.  The spirits tell her.  To find out what type of ceremony they want, she asks a series of questions to the candles.  Do you want a mass?  Do you want food?  Do you want Garifuna drums?  When the spirits want to say Yes, they make the candle flame move.  She begins from the cheaper ceremony—a Garifuna mass, and then asks about other ceremonies a chugu (a one day banquet for the ancestors) and a dugu ( a three day ceremony that can cost $10,000 to put on).

 

In addition to telling what ceremony they want, sometimes the gubida ask for special things.  For example for a chugu, the one day ceremony, traditionally they cook a chicken and place it on the table.  But one woman's mother never ate chicken in life.  Yaya told her. Do not get a chicken.  Your mother never ate chicken in life.  The woman got a chicken any way.  The day of the ceremony the chicken ran off and did not come back until after the ceremony.  Yaya took the chicken as part of her pay.

 

Another time when she left her house to go to a chugu, she smelled tobacco.  She asked the hosts of the chugu who smoked?  But she did not smoke during the day only at night before going to bed.  The woman said my mother smoked like that.  Another time, she felt the gubida ask for tobacco, but said the person did not smoke the cigar, just kept it in his mouth.  The woman hosting the chugu said yes my father did that.

 

Sometimes the spirits teach her songs for ceremonies.  Once a relative who had been a buyei appeared in a dream and taught her how to play the maracas to call down the ancestors during a ceremony. Sometimes the spirit helpers of buyeis help people find things that are lost or stolen. 

 

Yaya's children were about 10 or 13 when she was called as a buyei.  In La Ceiba she had a man, but when she came back to Trujillo the spirits chased him away.  They made life impossible for her.  After she came back from La Ceiba she built her own house with 4 bedrooms behind her mother's house.  Her mother said that she wanted Rudy, Clara's oldest son to build his house on the land where Clara's mother's house was.  At first her son built a two story house in front of Yaya's house.  Her sister Zoyla lived there, and Juana Julia and Errol one of her sister's sons. Yaya lived with Mantua in a clay house.  Then her son wanted to make his house bigger.  He wanted to tear down Yaya's clay house.  She said she would accept if he built a house for Mantua and her seven children who until then lived with Yaya.  He did this and she lived in her son's home.

 

She stopped planting.  She made enough from being a midwife and a buyei and selling oranges or food and being a healer.  People paid her for all this.  But now she can not see and has no force in her hands except for very little babies to be a massage therapist.  Now she depends on the money her son Ruddy sends from New York and what Juana Julia earns washing clothes and selling oranges.

 

All the characteristics of a shaman as described in Wikipedia's article on Shamanism are reflected in Yaya's life and work.