Paget’s Belize Journal #28

November 24: A Good 19^th

As I told you earlier, November 19 is the major Garifuna holiday
and Dangriga is the center of Garifuna culture, so it is a very
big thing here. (You refer to it as “the 19^th” just
like you would say “Happy 4^th” and everyone in the
States would know what you meant.) I’ve already talked a little
about the preliminary partying, but I haven’t told you about
preparations. Since there is a big parade, the streets where
the parade would go had ALL their potholes filled. Mostly it
was just a few shovelfuls of gravel, but some of them got actual
asphalt and a roller machine and everything.

Previously, several weeks ago, a small army of men and boys
armed with machetes (pronounced ma-shet) went along those same
streets chopping back the roadside vegetation. This vegetation
doesn’t get swept up; it just lays there and turns to straw.
Likewise, in many areas, someone went through and gathered up
the roadside trash and garbage, but then, instead of disposing
of it, left it in a pile on the corner of a vacant lot. And since
it wasn’t in bags, the garbage truck didn’t take it, so there
it is until the dogs scatter it about again making for NO net
gain in tidiness. This is one of the things I find saddest (and
it is country-wide, not peculiar to Dangriga). People seem proud
of their country’s beauty and natural resources and proud that
they have done such a good job of preserving the rain forest
canopy, for example, even the street hustlers, but no one thinks
anything of just tossing litter wherever they happen to be. Well,
I don’t mean no one. Certainly Tony and Therese’s children, friends
and relations have been raised to dispose of trash “properly,”
but clearly they are upper class and privileged and few other
people make the effort.

Anyway things were pretty spiffed up for the celebration.
Even the statue in the churchyard got a new coat of paint. This,
by the way, was a little disconcerting to me, because I have
assumed all the time it was a statue of the Virgin Mary. But
when they began to paint the cloak red, I wondered, and when
they were finished I went for a closer look. Sure enough, a beard.
So it’s now clearly Jesus. But the statue is so worn and well-patted
that you have to have known.

By the eve of the 19^th everything was as ready as it was going
to get, the town was full of relatives, friends and visitors
from other parts of the country, everybody with an oil barrel
had set up a chicken barbecue stand in their front yard, beer
was iced down ready for sale every 100 yards or so, and everyone
was all dressed up (more about the dress in a minute). From 5:00
pm until 10:00 pm I feared the celebration consisted entirely
of “dragging the gut” drinking beer or watching people
drag the gut drinking beer (both watcher and watchee).

But then things got livelier. I ended up at an open-air tent
set up in a vacant lot. The covered area was about 50 feet on
each side. A bunch of beach sand had been hauled in for the floor
and a string of Christmas lights all around for illumination.
Along one side, half a dozen drummers and major singers (lots
of other people sang, too). On the opposite side, the beer and
pop in ice-filled washtubs and a row of plastic pop crates for
the grannies to sit on. People standing all around the edges
and then, in the middle – the dancers. These were not formally-designated
dancers, you understand, just anyone who wanted to dance. And
boy, can they dance!

This dance is the Punta. It concentrates heavily on very rapid
hip rolls, something like 200 per minute. The women, having more
inertia in the hips, are better than the men are, but there are
also some very good men. Still the proportion of women to men
dancers was about 20 to 1, which was too bad, because you sort
of lose the seduction game involved in the dance when you don’t
have enough men to go around. I suspect other drumming/dancing
spots that had a more modern punta rock band attracted more and
younger girls and consequently more men as well. Our tent was
clearly for the traditionalists and the older generation. There
were always at least three drummers drumming (there’s a song
in there somewhere) and the beats are very complex. The drums
are mahogany and deerskin, locally made (by Mr. Rodriques mostly,
who even shoots the deer himself) and surprisingly melodic.

I got to sit with the grannies, which is good because I couldn’t
have stood for the three hours I spent there. Of course, I kept offering
my crate to a woman who told me she was 92 and she kept turning
it down because she wanted to dance another song. She didn’t
turn down the cokes I bought her though. I danced one time, on
my way home for the night. I did not attempt the Punta. Even
going home early I overslept and did not make the re-enactment
of the Landing at dawn the next morning. Maybe next year.

I did make the parade, though, because it went right by my
house. On the 19^th, even more than the days before, everyone dresses
in Garifuna finery. The colors of the flag are white, yellow
and black, so those are the predominate colors of the outfits.
Women’s dresses are all very similar in style and consist of
a straight or slightly-gathered skirt, a fitted overblouse with
a peplum (the better to show off the hip-shaking perhaps), and
often a kerchief or turban of the same material. If the fabric
is not in shades of yellow and black, then other bright colors,
but almost always in a plaid or flowered pattern. Sometimes one
piece of the ensemble, often the skirt, will be in a coordinated
plain fabric, but usually the whole outfit is patterned. This
makes for a very colorful crowd. The men mostly just wear black
and yellow shirts.

But actually, it’s often impossible to tell the crowd from
the parade participants. Everyone marches along for a while.
The parade was:

1) Palomino horse and rider with Garifuna flag (and colt)

2) A float (a wagon decorated with REAL tropical flowers,
palm fronds, vines) with Settlement Day queen and princesses

3) One marching band, mixed ages, but all high school age
and adults

4) One drill team, ranging from about age 18 to 3

5) One truck (the kind with fence sides) carrying nuns and
a passel of children

6) Another float with more pretty girls

7) Three flatbed trucks depicting historical day-to-day Garifuna
life, old coconut grinders, traps and other artifacts and demonstrations
of hut-building, drum-building, basket-weaving, etc.

A group of various local funeral musicians (I was pleased
to see several young players this time and am more optimistic
that the funeral bands won’t die out as the older men die)

9) Several more trucks (semi-size, but open topped, the citrus
trucks) carrying local Punta rock bands playing away madly, compete
with sound system, management, roadies and privileged groupies
in the truck and followed by their loyal fans.

It was a great parade – just like the kind you remember
from the small town your grandmother lived in. (If you have the
right kind of background; if not, you can imagine it). Well,
I’ll have to leave the Christian music revival for next time.
Hope you had a good 19^th.

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