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.

 

Garifuna Women’s Work in Oral History of the Banana boom Era

Garifuna Women’s Work in Oral History of the Banana boom Era

By Wendy Griffin

In Honduras This Week, I did a two article series on the Black Women’s work during the Banana boom. This was partly inspired by working doing oral history together with Glenn Chambers, now a University of Michigan history professor, about Black English speakers during the Banana boom. He was not interested by the work of the Black women, both Garifunas and Black English speakers, but I was surprised at how many Black women professionals there in this process, and also the wide variety of roles the Black women played in the economy of the port towns like Tela and Trujillo. I think these articles are some of my finest research.

Garifuna women as planters of plantains and bananas, and also as sellers and sometimes as people who used canoes, were among the independent banana producers who sold to the banana ships before there were docks and before the banana companies had their own fields. The banana companies did not permit women to work as field hands in the planting of bananas during the banana boom.  Very few Garifuna men accepted to work as field hands in planting bananas, since planting is women’s work. Herman Alvarez of San Juan Tela said if the other Garifuna men saw a Garifuna man dressed for work in the banana plantations like a hat, a machete, rubber boots, they made fun of him and called him “indio”.  Garifuna men had many roles in the banana companies, but planting the bananas was not a big part of the experience of Garifuna men there. The planting seems to have been done by mestizos or Ladinos or even Indians from the mountains or the Miskitos, both Hondurans and Salvadorans. The Salvadorans are in Honduras much earlier than 1945. When there were 5-6,000 West Indian immigrants, which the Hondurans made a big noise about, there were 26,000 Salvadorans which the Hondurans said nothing about at the time, according to Glenn Chambers’ research.

Garifuna women also worked washing clothes and ironing, they made breads and sold them, they grew crops and they sold them to the workers, especially to the Jamaicans who had no land and who ate similar crops to what the Garifunas grew. The Garifunas were mid-wives and healers and massage therapists, not only to the other Garifunas or the West Indians, but also to the mestizo men and women from the banana camps. The Garifuna women worked as cooks, either taking care of a group of men who were single workers “cuidar gente”, or as cooks in people’s houses, usually for mestizos, and they also cooked in restaurants usually for mestizo bosses. The professional jobs like nurses and teachers at that time were only open to Black English speaking women, either from Belize or Jamaica, because of the lack of schools in the Garifuna communities and because it was not the custom to send girls to school when my friends were young. Also the first schools were bilingual schools run by the Episcopal Church in Puerto Castilla and Tela and la Ceiba, and English speaking teachers were needed, not Spanish speaking ones. Still in the 1930’s not all Garifuna women even spoke fluent Spanish. One older Garifuna woman, Doña Lencha said when she went to the hospital in the 1930’s, the doctor was surprised that a “morena” like her could speak such fluent Spanish. My older Garifuna friends who either spent time living or selling in Puerto Castilla still speak words of English. They said in Puerto Castilla that was the language that was most used in Castilla at that time.  I have interesting stories of healings done by Garifunas for even the wealthy white people in Trujillo and of healings done by Jamaican Blacks for Garifunas who were high up in the banana company and had access to all the modern science of the Railroad Company’s hospital. 

Witchcraft existed in the Trujillo/Puerto Castilla area at the time of the Truxillo Railroad. Among Black English speakers there were both male and female witches. The same seems to be true among the Garifunas, although there seem to be more female Garifuna witches than male witches. Garifuna witches are not the same as buyeis. Garifuna witches do things like tie a man to a woman (amarrar), make another person crazy or other punishment for wrongdoing, including cheating with one’s husband and stealing, making snakes appear if you bother his agricultural plot or coconuts, plant plants which will make you lost in the mountains, and use poisin to kill people.  Miskitos, Garifunas and Black English speakers all have fame as being “grandes brujos”. There are also Ladino “brujos” and “brujas”, who are usually separate from the people who are “curanderas” or healers. Snake magic seems to be a speciality of male Garifunas.

My Garifuna friend Sebastian Marin who was over 80 when he died said that there was enacted a law that the banana companies could not have more than 5% black workers. Glenn Chambers looked for this law and did not find it. There is a law that no company in Honduras can over 5% foreign workers.  This does not mean that there was not some private agreement between the banana companies and the Carias government that they would not have over 5% Black workers which might have affected the decision of the Truxillo Railroad to close, since according to Sebastian Marin the workers from Trujillo to the east were all Blacks-either Garifunas, Miskito Indians, and Black English speakers. However, there were definitely ladinos to the East of Trujillo too, as I have met people who worked in Sico and there are still people in Sico descended from Ladinos who went to the area with the banana companies and stayed.

My periodization of Garifuna work does not agree with Nancie Gonzales’s. She notes contraband ending in the 19^th century. The Garifunas were still definitely active in contraband at least until the 1930’s. Family members of the survivors of the San Juan Tela massacre remember that their family members had just come back from a successful contraband run to bring back liquor from Belize. Also in Trujillo, my Garifuna friend Yaya her father worked in bringing contraband and selling it to white merchants into the 1930’s.  The drastic measures of Carias—the massacre of San Juan, the requiring of passes to go from one community to another, private cementaries of the  commandants at Trujillo and Iriona, seemed to have had the effect of curbing most contraband among Garifunas, although Bay islanders still regularly travelled to Belize by skiff, probably until at least the 1950’s. The Garifunas of Iriona start immigrating to the US at this time in the 1930’s running away from political persecution as liberals. After the massacre at San Juan, the majority of the Garifunas were active in the Liberal party.

Garifuna men were very active in the banana companies in the Trujillo area until the Truxillo Railroad closed in 1945. They often reached high levels including chief of the yard or dock, fruit inspector, train mechanic, and breakman.  When the Truxillo Railroad closed, Garifuna men in the Trujillo and Santa Fe area continued working for the other banana companies including Standard Fruit and the Tela Railroad. I have heard of Garifuna men working in Coyoles Central and in the other banana camps of  Yoro, and also as barman and other jobs with the Standard Fruit in La Ceiba. Garifuna men were active on the docks in Tela when he was young, remembers Herman Chavez. I know Garifuna men in Tela who worked as timekeeper and as painters of train cars before the Tela railroad left Tela. There were a few professional Garifunas in La Lima who worked until recently like the head of microbiology lab at the United Fruit Hospital of the Tela Railroad.  The Garifuna participation in the work of the railroad companies and banana companies did not stop in 1919 or even in 1954, although for a number of reasons including moving the ports, moving the headquarters, mechanizing, container ports, switching varieties of bananas which required bananas to be packed in boxes near the fields instead of loaded as stalks, and discrimination, the number of Garifuna men involved in banana companies has seriously declined. But a few Garifunas continued until recently with the Standard in Puerto Castilla, for example one Garifuna man had learned refrigeration and did that. He now lives in Spain where he works in refrigeration.   We are actively doing an oral history project of Garifunas and other ethnic groups at the time of the banana companies and hope to present something next year for the 100^th anniversary of the Truxillo Railroad. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions about Garifuna participation in the banana business, plus that of other ethnic groups,  which this oral history project might make clearer.

 

Changes in Garifuna Material Culture Caused by Wage Labor in Banana Companies

Changes in Garifuna material Culture Caused by Wage labor in the banana companies

By  Wendy Griffin

It has been very interesting to compare the timing of changes in the Garifuna material culture with similar changes in the Lenca culture (as identified by Doris Stone’s 1943 article) and the Pech culture, through oral interviews with older Pech women in the Trujillo area. I think these changes help explain why the Garifunas felt the need for cash and when the jobs which had provided cash disappeared in the Garifuna region, this led to their immigration.

Already in 1919, The Garifunas used hammocks of azulon, blue denim from Guatemala, instead of traditional Garifuna hammocks woven from the bark of a tree called weñu in Garifuna and majoa in Spanish. The Pech were still making hammocks of majoa in the 1980’s when I began to work with the Pech.

Already in 1919, the Garifunas were using either cast iron griddles (budauri) for making cassava bread or “laminas” pieces of zinc roofing to make traditional Garifuna breads. These breads were made in cast iron  skillets among both the Garifunas and the Bay Islanders. Some high up Garifunas in the fruit company even had American style cast iron wood burning stoves that the Truxillo Railroad imported from Pittsburgh, PA.  They bought them on credit. These type of stoves were necessary in houses with wood floors and wooden walls like the Fruit Companies built, because you can not start a fire to cook cassava or to cook food on a wooden floor as you do in a traditional Garifuna house with a dirt floor. Other people made kitchens besides their wooden houses.  The Pech and the Lenca were still cooking in clay pots and clay frying pans and over three stone fires in the 1940’s. The Garifunas were eating off of plastic or metal or china (loza) dishes in the 1920’s while the Pech and the Lencas were still using guacal gourds. The Garifunas were also cooking in metal pots in the 1920’s and hauling water in factory made containers.  The Pech and the Lencas were cooking in clay pots they made themselves, except for cast iron pots for cooking sugar cane juice for making rapadura or “dulce”, which they walked from Olancho to Trujillo to obtain.  The Lenca and Pech hauled water from creeks in cumbos or calabazas, a large gourd like plant that grows on a vine, cut open at the top instead of in the middle like a barco or a guacal. The Garifunas make no mention of even knowing of this plant, but the Miskitos mention it in their stories.

In the 1920’s everyone in Honduras was wearing cotton clothes made from manufactured cloth. This manufactured cloth was imported. In the 18^th and 19^th century, England had been the big source of imported cloth, but in the 20^th century, the US becomes the big supplier of cloth for Honduras. Different ethnic groups became associated with different types of cloth. The Pech women usually wore zarasa, which is calico in English, and usually has small flowers. The Garifuna women typically wore gingham, with a print of checkered squares in one color on top of white, often contrasting with a solid color cloth. Garifuna and Bay Islander men wore all white clothes in the early 20^th century, a style known as tropical whites, although Garifuna men has black suits for funerals and Good Friday.  The Lenca and Chorti Indians were associated with manta, a white cotton cloth. The Pech and the Lencas still made their own thread into the 1920’s for the Lencas and into the 1960’s for the Pech, but the Garifunas wore clothes sewn by machine made thread and bought sewing needles which were imported. The Pech and Lencas wore caites, homemade sandals in the 1940’s, but the Garifunas in the 1930’s were barefoot (chuña) reported Doña Clara. The stores of the United Fruit Company were famous for their fine shoes, and there are contemporary reports of campeños people who worked in the fields with great shoes that they bought in the ports.

A Pech man mentioned that they walked 10 days with fat pigs in the forest to reach the Coast to sell the pigs in Trujillo during the time of the Trujillo railroad specifically to buy underwear.  The Pech and Lenca women still made their own camisoles and slips into the 1950’s, cutting the cloth with a machete, but underpants, (called bloomers in Honduran Spanish) were bought factory made in Trujillo. So the issue of getting cloth to make clothes, after the local people had lost the technique, was a significant motivator to get people to travel great distances in Honduras. The Lenca men of Guajiquiro, La Paz sometimes traveled on foot to Esquipulas, Guatemala to buy wedding clothes for their wives. The Ladinos of Copan Ruinas took mules to El Salvador to sell and cloth and a sewing machine in El Salvador.

The Garifuna mothers of the 1920’s also slept on beds bought in stores, usually cots made of sail cloth (lona) stretched over a frame. The Pech and Lencas were still sleeping on wooden beds, like tapescos. The Garifunas started fires with matches (the word in Garifuna is machi, and becomes introduced at this time). The Pech of the 1960’s still knew how to start fires with fire stones and cotton, the same used by the Lencas of the 1940’s.

The Garifuna men hunted with rifles at the time of the Truxillo Railroad. Some men still hunted at the time, bringing home tepescuinte, deer, guatusa, quequeo (white colloared peccary), jagüilla (another kind of peccary), armadillo which the women cooked in coconut milk (Garifuna food said one woman whose father hunted).  There are no reports of Garifunas hunting with bows and arrows, but the Pech and Lencas would still hunt with bows and arrows at that time if they had no money for bullets or a gun.

Old style Garifunas who farm and who cut firewood and cleared fields are known in Spanish and in Garifuna as “Garifunas de hacha y azadon” (Garifunas of an axe and a hoe).  The Pech report even going to Nicaragua on foot to work in cutting mahoghany to be able to earn to get an “hachuela” (a curved wood cutting tool used for making canoes) and axe.  In the early days, companies paid in goods rather than in cash, since there were no stores in the rainforest, what good was cash?  The Garifunas clearly also used machetes as cooking tools and agricultural tools in the 1920’s.

Garifuna men even then were very cash economy oriented. They make crafts to sell. Of the over 40 Garifuna crafts only 3 types of crafts are made by Garifuna women.  They fish and sell the fish, sometimes even requiring their wife to pay them for the fish if she sells fried fish.  The Garifuna men liked to eat pork and beef, which they usually did not raise themselves so they sold things like crafts or fish, or their wives and daughters sold things like firewood and breads and fresh crops to be able to buy beef and pork and other necessities. In the 1930’s, many Garifuna men still fished and while they were out fishing away from shore, they would get water from the sea, and the Garifuna women would boil it down and make salt. The Pech also made their own salt at this time, but from burning vines and trees known as “sal de tierra”.

The Garifunas now have a variety of foods made with wheat flour which is imported from the US.  The most famous is pan de coco (coconut bread), but they also make gingerbread (caballitos), cinnamon rolls (enrollados), they add flour to all the “pot cakes” or breads like pumpkin bread (pan de ayote), yuca bread, ripe banana bread, etc.  These foods and the related atols are of African origin, but the Garifunas have substituted traditional African flours (yam flour, banana flour, plantain flour, yuca flour etc.)  for wheat flour. This is also probably what happened in the soup base “takini” (harina quemado in water), and the ceremonial food “beili” which is now made of wheat flour, water and salt. The Garifunas and Bay Islanders report having made banana flour, Chata, and plantain flour in the 1960’s still, but they do not make them now. Even in Africa, these flours which are used to make atols or porridge have become scarce. This substitution of wheat flour for traditional Mesoamerican flour of corn also happened in the banana camps which gave rise to the Honduran food baleadas (wheat flour tortillas filled with beans and cheese and sometimes other ingredients) which banana workers took to eat at “lonch” in their “loncheras” (lunch boxes). Garifuna breads made with wheat flour require other imported ingredients like baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, too. Garifunas and Ladinos have both adopted the custom of making cakes for birthdays and especially for New Years. Bay islanders are infamous for their habit of making cakes almost every week. During the time of the Banana companies, the Garifunas of Trujillo danced Gunchey every Sunday from Christmas to Saturday of Holy Week, and they made a cake with a bean in it and the person who got the bean had to make the cake the following week. This custom of putting the bean in the cake, comes from the Spanish, who called these cakes “el roscon del rey” because they did it for Three Kings Day.

The Garifuna men fish. They either use nets which they weave from silk which is imported or they fish with fish hooks which are imported. The Garifuna men have not made weñu which can be used to weave nets or to fish with fish hooks for almost a century.  The Garifuna men also clean fish with knives. Garifuna women also use imported knives to prepare bananas and plantains and yucca, etc. The Garifunas already used silverware during the time of the Truxillo railroad, the Pech and Lencas generally did not.

The Pech in the 1960’s still made their own soap. The Garifunas so preferred the blue soap made by Belizeans that Garifuna men like Yaya’s father brought it from Belize by canoe as contraband to the big white store owners like the Glynns and the Melhados who sold it to the Garifunas. It was a three week round trip canoe trip from Trujillo to Belize. The Garifunas also like to make their clothes whiter with indigo, which in Honduras is usually imported from El Salvador. Some Garifuna women knew the use of a plant you could use if you did not have money for soap, but others did not.  Unlike the Bay Islander men who were very particular about starching their clothes, and the Bay Islands women had to spend a whole day making starch, boiling the clothes, drying them and ironing, this custom does not seem to have been popular among the Garifunas or the Pech.  The Lencas at this time knew how to make starch to starch clothes from yucca. Cast iron irons were imported.

The Honduran government made the selling of chicha or corn beer illegal. The selling of homemade sugar liquor, known as cucusa in Honduran Spanish and mamara in Garifuna is also illegal under Honduran law. The purpose of this law, is to try to get taxes generated by guaro (sugarcane liquor) and by beer (cerveza), the same as laws which generated G-men, the Whiskey Rebellion and songs about selling white lightening in the hills of Tennessee like Thunder Road in the US. 

Among the Garifunas in addition to being accustomed to drinking alcohol socially, alcohol is a necessary component of all rituals associated with death—wakes and burials, fin de novenario one year after death, lemessi, chugu, and dugu and all of its associated rites like mali and gusiri gayu. Guaro is used as medicine internally and externally, as a purifier, usually sprayed, is put on the hands of the drummers, singers drink it to make finer their voices after singing a while, it is shared with guests, and offered ceremonially to the ancestors at ceremonies and to the spirits which help the buyei daily. The amounts of guaro needed for a dugu can be quite high-one dugu bought 500 liters of guaro and had to rent a house just to keep the guaro in. Beer is also drunk at wakes and offered to ancestors. The decision of the government to require Garifunas to use bought alcohol as opposed to alcohol they made themselves has added considerably to the cost of these ceremonies. These ceremonies often require other bought things including candles.  These rites did not used to be so expensive as the men of the families collaborated with making the house for the ceremony and the drumming and making the alcohol and the women collaborated with crops and  cooking and singing and a pig and chickens, but since immigration all of this is paid for, making some dugus cost $10,000.

The railroad companies also introduced new games—tops (trompos), marbles (mables), jump rope (suiza) among Garifuna kids and these games required buying toys for children and some children feel sad if they do not have them. It is not clear if Garifunas had the custom of making rag dolls before the children were introduced to rag dolls made in the US like Raggety Anne. In all of Trujillo only one older Garifuna woman knew how to make rag dolls  in the 1920’s and she would trade them for firewood with the younger girls who wanted a doll.  The adoption of having dolls among the Pech is only in the last few years, and is a result of being given free clothes and toys usually by missionaries.

During the time of the railroad company, water pipes were introduced and the Garifunas of Trujillo and Puerto Castilla paid for water. At first they used kerosene lamps for light, but then the banana company introduced a dynamo or turbine for making electricity. So the Garifunas had to pay for water and for electricity before the railroad company left.  The Honduran municipalities were also implementing systems of taxing land, which in the case of the Tela Garifunas caused them to lose their land, because they did not put up fences and they did not pay taxes as required by the municipal government, because they were cash poor. The Tela Garifunas used to live where the customs house is right on the beach in Tela, reported Sebastian Marin. They fled to villages outside of Tela like Triunfo, la Ensenada, San Juan, etc.

By the time the Truxillo Railroad left in 1945, most Garifunas had lost the ability to make the things, de primera necesidad (of first necessity) which they had substituted by buying everything from furniture, to pots and pans and griddles for baking, to agricultural tools and rifles, to matches, to flour, to salt and “Manteca” (lard), soap, alcohol,  to clothes and shoes.  They also had costs in cash of things that they also thought of as of first necessity—light and water and taxes for the houses, medicine, schooling for their kids, etc.

When I asked Don Sebastian Marin about why he became a sailor and worked as a sailor of 35 years, he said when he finished school he worked for Banco Atlantida as a teller in Tela, but he only earned about $1 day and he eventually had 10 kids.  It was not possible to support these kids on $1. Agricultural workers report wages of L1 a day into the 1960’s. The Garifunas became involved with sending kids to school much earlier than most other Honduran ethnic groups, and currently the Garifunas have the highest literacy rate of any ethnic group in Honduras. But to go to school you need cash for uniforms, notebooks, pencils, homework assignments, paying matricula (registration). The Garifunas also got used to going to hospitals to buy medicines and to have babies. They got used to travelling by train or by bus or even by airplane at a time the Pech were still walking 10 days to the Coast.

So the Garifunas had very little possibility to get a significant cash income as the banana and coconut and the mahoghany cutting and contraband industries changed. To say that they began migrating not because of poverty but rather because of the desire to buy certain manufactured goods seems to me to not embrace the reality that they no longer had the ability to make these things themselves, they needed to buy them and they were not frivouslous things but rather clothes, shoes, pots and pans,  agricultural tools, etc.. Poverty was a significant problem, not so much for lack of food, but rather tools, things to cook with, how to sleep, etc. which affected the decision of some Garifunas to immigrate. The making of concrete block houses in the Trujillo began after hurricane Ana in 1959 and excelerated after Hurricane Fifi. Immigration affected this decision because when the men did their own roofs, it did not matter that they had to replace a manaca roof every 3 or 4 years. But if you have pay someone to do it, as most Garifunas have to now, it is cheaper to build with zinc I am told. Also since the men immigrated, the young men did not know how to repair clay houses, or cut yagual to make yagual houses or make viscoyol houses. People who wanted to rebuild with traditional materials often could not after Mitch due to loss of knowledge of how to build with traditional materials.  I have seen women with holes in their clay walls the size of various rats to get in, but they have not repaired it for the combination of issues that men should build clay walls among Garifunas, and there were no men, and the women did not know how to do it or were not willing to do it and could not direct their sons to do it. (Among the Pech clay walls are the responsibility of the woman and she is active every month repairing them.)

The Garifunas in Trujillo consider water, which they must pay for, electricity which they must pay for, medicine which they must pay for, taxes so they do not lose their houses, as necessities. They consider sending kids to school is important, even though it is a leading reason why Garifuna culture is being lost. My friend Angelica who is very sick with arthritis and depends on money sent back by a daughter in the US even considers the refrigerator a necessity, that the telephone is not a luxury at her age if she falls, the cable TV is important because she is home by herself most of the time and she uses to distract herself “distraerse”.

 

Why the Garifuna Traditional Subsistence Economy Broke Down

Why the Garifuna Traditional Subsistence Economy Broke Down.

By Wendy Griffin

There are reasons why fishing is no longer economically viable for Garifuna men related to commercial shrimping which throws away tons of edible fish, (twelve times more is thrown away than is sold), plus Ladino fishing in the fish hatcheries like the Guaymoreto lagoon, and the problems of commercial conch and lobster diving. The commercial fishing for shrimp, frozen fish, conch and lobster diving were all helped by World Bank projects in the Bay Islands. The loss of the wild game also affects the food supply. The fish and other aquatic food like fresh water shrimp (chacalines) and edible snakes (lenguitas) in the rivers are dead.  If the Garifunas can not access fish in the sea, and fish in the rivers and lagoons, and the animals in the mountains are extinct, it is not surprising that what most Garifuna restaurants serve is chicken, which the Garifunas have to buy, rather than raise, because of the problem of theft of chickens in Garifuna neighborhoods. Older Garifuna women complain, I have eaten so much chicken I will grow feathers. Garifuna men who try to fish with nasas, fish traps, say other people get up earlier than them and steal the fish out of the fish traps.  The fact that the Guaymoreto Lagoon is now a protected area has led to the Ladino environmental protection agency FUCAGUA burning nets of the Garifuna men whose families have lived beside the lagoon for 200 years. These nets since they are silk are significant investments of time and money. Ladinos fish in the Lagoon with nets piled high in their canoes with impunity, in violation of the law. Garifuna young people have not learned to make canoes, because they were in school instead of learning skills like fishing and canoe making. The wood for making the canoes is in the protected areas. There is also a significant problem of theft of canoes. My friend Jerry had his canoe stolen 5 times. The last time he said the hell with it. Ofraneh has applied for the donation of lanchas, fiberglass boats with motors for the Garifunas of Trujillo.  The Garifunas did not know how to use them correctly and lost two of the motors immediately in the Bay falling off the boats. Eventually they sold all the three lanchas.

The new 2013 law which will permit commercial fishing within the three mile limit established for artisanal fishermen and the proposal to prohibit artisanal fishing will be the death blow to Garifuna fishing. See Ofraneh’s blog www.ofraneh.wordpress.com.  A teacher in Santa Fe was trying to warn the fishermen in Guadelupe that soon they might not be able to “chinchorrear” to put big nets in the sea in the area of Betulia, because Betulia has been almost all privatized.  Her uncle said, “Have you ever heard of being able to fence the sea?” the next day the story about this law appeared on ofraneh’s blog.  Men who did chinchorrear used to go to the sea in larger canoes special for chinchoreando, and there would be maybe 6 or 8 men fishing together between two big canoes. They did not fish near the shore, because the Garifuna traditional wisdom was that the fish near the shore would grow up to be bigger fish if they left them alone, so they fished out deeper so as not to bother the development of the smaller fish.  The practice of Garifuna men to chinchorrear from the beach is relatively recent and is related to not having the ability to make the big canoes needed to chinchorrear in the deep sea. 

 The problem of theft of agricultural produce makes agriculture not economically viable in Trujillo among the Garifunas either. If you read my book Los Garifunas de Honduras is full of stories of older women farmers being threatened by the thieves who steal their land or steal their produce. The lack of men in canoes to take them to the agricultural areas like Barranco is also leading to these areas’ abandonment.

The loss of forest land suitable for the craft plants the Garifuna needs has also severely affected the ability of some communities to make traditional Garifuna crafts. This forest land was generally taken away by Agrarian Reform for the purpose of giving to peasants who sold it to African palm growers. For many Garifuna crafts there is one artisan left and he is above 70 years old. I heard he had trained a granddaughter to make the crafts, even though women did not traditionally make these crafts. We have had reforestation projects of some of these craft plants. In Trujillo there is a case of Garifunas training a Ladina daughter in law to make some of the most sacred Garifuna crafts, for lack of young Garifuna men who wanted to learn and to help her raise grandchildren when her Garifuna husband left her.

Problems with Garifuna Construction Materials and Traditional Houses.

 

Even if the Garífuna Young men in Sambo Creek wanted to build a traditional GArifuna house they probably could not. I have not seen much manaca, the thatchpalm used for the roof in the Sambo Creek área. In Triumfo de la Cruz they traditionally used yagual, the Wood of the royal palm, for the walls or maburu, caña brava, a type of wild cane. In Trujillo, they used the Wood of mangroves, both White and Red for making the posts and roof beams of the house, and the tique palm for uprights, and cana for the horizontal pieces and then filled in with red clay. I have seen no yagual or caña brava in the Sambo Creek área, nor tique, nor mangroves, and if there are mangroves, they are usually protected by Honduran law and ilegal to cut down. If they had yagual, which is very difficult Wood to Split (es mañosa) they would not know how to do it. They did not learn the skills from the older men who are not there or they were not interested when they were Young to learn.

 

The traditional houses in Barranco east of Trujillo and in Tournabe were made completely of manaca. The walls were palm leaf, the roof was palm leaf, the door was palm leaf, the posts were mangrove Wood.  People told me that in Tournabe you could poke your fingers into people's houses, because it was just a palm leaf. There was no theft problem in Garífuna communities at that time and people even planted watermelons and ayote squash on the beach without people stealing them. People went to plant all day and left their Windows open and their doors unlocked. They slept with the doors open for the breeze. When Ladinos came and began to steal then they needed more secure houses and doors with locks.  The Garífunas used to use witchcraft to protect their crops and to punish people who stole. The loss of witchcraft among GArifunas and the addition of guns among ladinos has left them more vulnerable to theft. The Pech also switched from houses with no walls to clay houses with Windows that shut and doors that locked when the ladinos came to Olancho in the 1950'1960 period.

 

Relationship between loss of ability to make traditional houses and to obtain land in areas affected by tourism and modern social problems in the Garifuna community.

 

Sometimes there is a symptom in a community,like 80% unwed mothers, but there are also reasons behind that. i have been trying to get behind the reasons the Young people are not forming stable families,why they have such AIDS rates, why they are immigrating,why they are not farming why they are so frustrated they turn to drugs or theft. The results are interesting,but disheartening