Diane: Thursday AM

One aspect of Belize that Chuck has been eager but unable to sample is Garifuna culture. My understanding is that the Garifuna (ga-rif-oo-na) are the product of the African slave trade. Escapees of slave shipwrecks, they found their way to the Belizean coast near present-day Dangriga in Stann Creek. There they developed a unique subculture of music and rhythms and language that still persists today.

Georgetown is a Garifuna village. One story I heard is that it was established by the government in the ‘70s as a Garifuna relocation settlement after a hurricane wiped out a village near the coast.
Diane is Garifuna, and a citizen of Georgetown. She stands about four foot ten and is of indeterminate age. I’m a lousy guesser, but she could be anywhere from 18 to 30 by my reckoning. She was at the water building by the time we arrived Wednesday morning. She had a half gallon open container with a café au lait colored liquid she said was coffee for the painters. I never saw anyone drink it.

Diane was voluble, curious and opinionated. She wanted to know everything we were doing and why. She had her hands on everything she could touch and was eager to be given tasks to help out. She offered suggestions on everything from how many layers of Teflon tape to use on our joints to how tight to crank our fittings to why we had leaks in our glue joints and what we should do about it. I found her to be a delight.

She told us where we should go for lunch and why we should bring our church back to Georgetown to worship with her church and their 15 year old pastor. She occasionally lapsed into a delightful sing-song speech pattern that sounded nothing like any language I was familiar with. When I asked, she grinned and said it was the Garifuna language spoken by her mom and dad at home.

As we were preparing to lock up for lunch, after essentially rebuilding the entire system from Tuesday and eliminating all our leaks (except one tiny one by the trash filter) I watched as she policed the site, picking up a collection of our cast of valves and unions and couplings. I thought she was just helping us clean up until I saw her bicycle away as we were leaving with a plastic bag full of our castoffs on her handlebars.

- dan