Day FOUR - Livingston

DAY FOUR I decide it’s time for a shower before I leave the hotel Saturday; think about taking these braids out but decide to just wash my hair with them in. Obviously some of my standards are going fast. The shower is so cold I can’t get under the water, but manage to wash my hair, and rinse everything else. Then there is the towel provided by the management. I don’t think it’s even made of cotton – some thin synthetic material. How I wish I’d followed my first instinct and brought my own towel. When I’m done drying my hair, I hang the towel on the line of clothing that stretches across the garden of the hotel and never see it, or any other, again. The day is overcast as was yesterday. Light sprinkles occur occasionally, like a mist in the air. As I leave the hotel there is a big splash in the little creek-like pond near the lawn. I have heard this before and suspect large goldfish, but this time I see the culprit: a huge turtle…with a carapace maybe two feet long. He’s so big he’s a little eerie looking, but soon disappears in the muddy water. I have talked to the restaurant owner about living here in Livingston and she has said she would help me find a place. When the owner of the hotel calls me over to say we owe for the last day, we settle that question quickly, but I mention to him how much I like it here and he says, too, that he would help me find a place. I say the one thing I don’t like is the cold showers. He says that’s a really simple problem to fix – hotwater showerheads are available. He asks me how old I am and then goes thru the rigamarole about seeing me walk down the street in such a sprightly way (he doesn’t use that word, but..) he thought I was so much younger. He is starting to hit on me, so I smile warmly and make my way out of there. The President of Guatemala is supposed to be here today to make a speech at 10 am at the ONEGUA center on the hill. I notice all the uniformed soldiers and police in town, who hadn’t been there before. I don’t see anything going on at the Garifuna center at 10 am, so I go down to the seminar again and sit in on an hour of talks. Later I learned the President arrived and left in a helicopter a little after I was there. After the seminar the German girl agrees to meet with me the next day to fill me in on what she has learned, attending all of the talks. I spend an hour or two talking with a woman who arrived in Livingston yesterday for the weekend. We have a good conversation about projects for kids, and the counseling she does in Seattle for couples who are trying for open marriages. She says hers has been successful for ten years. I guess “successful” includes the hickeys she shows me that she got on her first night here. I feel as though I’m just a sponge for people’s stories, this weekend. I am so interested to find out what sort of people gravitate to this culture – both the culture of Livingston and the Garifuna, that of Guatemala, and that of the free travelers. Later I see her with her new “shadow,” a beautiful shy little Garif boy who has followed her ever since she bought him some potato chips. She thinks really it’s just the attention he wants and I agree. While we talk outside the store, a family of pigs - mom and two different-sized babies - comes wandering by, nuzzling each plastic bag on the ground. The cleanup crew, I suppose. I run into the Argentinian sitting with a friend in front of one of the hotels, where the friend, a jeweler, has his lovely wares displayed on a big cloth. I had seen them earlier and waved cheerily; now I sit down with them. Neither of us comment on my request to have the Argentinian “squire” me one night so I could see some dancing at the bars.   I presume he has forgotten all about it. He introduces me to the jeweler, a 40 year old blond skinny red-faced Swiss, with a wide grin, who has lived here six years and speaks good Spanish, but no English. At some point I ask him how long it took him to feel like a part of the community; he says five years. Whew. And I would only think of living here for two – that says something. My free-marriage friend comes by and we sit and talk with the two men for a bit, other people stop to chat with them, or with me. This sort of loose, easy camaraderie is familiar to most people who have travelled or hung around bars, I suppose, but is totally unknown to this essentially hard-working mother and farmer. My hanging-around was confined to afternoons at the pond on a friend's land, or at parties of friends in a small rural community. So this continual ebb and flow, like the lapping of lakewater, is intriguing to me. I go off with her and her friend to see the crowning of the adult Garifuna Queen for the year. The junior queens were picked yesterday. 

By 8 oclock the gimnasio is filling up. These two women and I pay 5Q each and go in, sitting on the bleachers. The room is filled to bursting with noise – primarily from the huge speakers blasting disco music at the front of the room, but also all the people – families, kids, adults of all sorts – trying to talk over the music. The audience is on two sides of a central square, with a long table – presumably for the jurors – on another side of the square, and microphones for the announcers and the drummers on the 4th side. The two drummers are from the Jovenes de Garifuna group I met in Antigua, whom I spoke to my first day but haven’t had contact with since….this seems like quite an honor for these two young men. Everything takes forever to get going, but eventually there is a hush and the first Queen candidate comes in, in traditional checked cotton dress and headscarf, dancing a slow step to the music, and curtseying as she gets to each quadrant of the square. She then takes her place near the announcers and the next woman advances. The first is a perfect beauty queen, lovely to look at and very demure in her attitude. The second girl is younger and less sure of herself; the third woman is a little older and heavier. When they have all taken their places they then advance one by one to the center of the square and do a slow step-dance, shaking their rear ends, but no more advanced steps or rhythms. They then leave and some other women all dressed alike come in and do some dance steps in concert, nothing as fascinating as I saw in Antigua, but interesting. Then the candidates return, dressed in raggedy costumes and carrying something depicting some part of their heritage; they act this out, starting fires, cutting wood, stirring food, cooking, For the third return they are dressed again in clean light-colored checked traditional clothing, and they dance again. They then each give a speech, first in Garifuna and then Spanish. The third woman’s speech in Garif is greeted with cheers, but she muffs the Spanish and retreats. They are then each asked to answer questions about Garif. History or something about discrimination. Finally the choice is made by the jurors. The larger woman, who gave the great speech and was the best dancer (and perhaps the most popular in her community to judge from the audience response) is the Queen. The 3rd runner up, the pretty woman, wins an electric iron; the 2nd runner up gets a big electric fan, and the Queen wins a new bicycle. There has been much attention by the crowd of about 500 up to the point that the Queen is picked, but as soon as she is selected, everyone barrels out of there, leaving her with a crown and hugs from her family. There is a huge party planned for 11 p.m. up at the Garifuna center. The couple from the Conference have been sitting in front of me for most of the crowning ceremony, and they agree to walk up the hill with me, since their hostel is over in that direction. The two women I came with got bored long ago and left. When we arrive up on the hill at 10:30, there is nothing much going on and noone I recognize is there. I realize that I have been spending my time with Hispanics and foreigners, exclusively, ever since I’ve been here; no wonder I don’t know anyone. We walk on, and part company at the top of the hill. I make my way down the trail to my street, and my hotel. People from the party will be up all night, and then attend the ceremony of the landing of the Garifuna people to these shores at 6 am, my agenda says, but at the crowning the announcer said it would be at 5 am.