Can you pray while dancing?

Canoeing in the Algonquin

There is nothing provincial about “Algonquin Provincial Park”. Admittedly it is far from any great cities but this is the whole point – it is an area of carefully protected wilderness so that inhabitants of the great cities could taste it. So that they could put up a tent at a camp site with hot showers, hire a aluminium canoe and paddle among the wild lakes. It works more or less like a national park but was created by the provincial authorities, hence the middle part of the name. The first part is derived from the name of an Indian tribe which once lived there. This was long time ago, nowadays one does not hear about Algonquins, they must have vanished somewhere. All that is left is the name and the forest whose virginity is carefully protected.

When after the American Revolution the loyalists moved to Canada, they settled in Southern Ontario. It is a fertile country so the forests were cut down and land ploughed over. The northern part of the province has not been ploughed over because it is rocky and uneven, but it is extremely picturesque. Rocky hills covered with virgin forest, innumerable lakes and rivers between them – a paradise for landscape painters if they are prepared to spend some time in the wilderness. The most picturesque corner of Northern Ontario, which now forms the Algonquin Park, was indeed discovered early in the 20^th century by Canadian painters known as “The Group of 7”. Charming canvases of those painters must have contributed to the popularity of the park.

It is an area of carefully maintained wilderness. Apart from highway 60 that cuts the park in two there are almost no roads. There are no hotels but there are camp sites - some of them with hot showers – where you can put up a tent if there is space. You can hire a canoe and paddle somewhere deep into the wilderness. Once upon a time a canoe was the most important means of transport in Canada – in Algonquin Park it still is. The area is covered by a network of interconnected lakes and rivers, you can get your tent into a boat and paddle as far as you can and then camp on a lake shore. There will be no hot showers there and you will have to watch for bears – they may want to steal your food. Don't ever keep your food in the tent or a bear may want to join you there. You don't want that kind of a Teddy in your sleeping bag – they are fluffy to be sure but they have other qualities as well.

Sacred fire

There are a lot of paddling trails criss-crossing the park. There are not many walking trails, though, which is a pity as the area is really beautiful. There are rocky hills over the lakes, sometimes forming granite cliffs just over the shore. The views from those cliffs are stunning – virgin maple and spruce forest, islands in the middle of the lakes, rivers winding through swamps. The view from the cliff over Whitefish Lake is so breathtaking that one can almost feel the majesty of the Creator manifested there. I was walking the trail along this cliff with Ania and Ola when we heard somebody laughing in front of us.

“Hahahaha! I thought I heard voices!”

It was a man dressed a bit like an Indian but without Indian features and speaking with distinctly English accent.

“You heard our voices, didn't you?” I said.

“I meant spiritual voices. This is a sacred rock on the Indians, they come here for a vision. The Indians are here today, on that peninsula on the lake, they have a pow wow today and tomorrow.”He pointed to the triangular peninsula in the middle of the lake. There was indeed the sound of drums coming from that direction.

“A pow wow? Here? And what tribe is it?”

“Algonquin.”

“Algonquin? I thought they didn't exist any more.”

”Oh yes they do. And they have their pow wow right now.”

“Can the non-Algonquins go to their pow wow as well?”

“Of course. Tomorrow at six in the morning there is the ceremony of greeting the sun and at noon the dances start.”

Veteran with his orders

It poured down at six and we didn't want to get out of the tent but it stopped later and at noon we were by the lake. There was quite a big camp at the peninsula, tents, cars, families with children. Some young men under a free standing roof structure tried the sound of a big drum. Away from the camp near the woods there was a camp fire where two girls in what looked like Indian dresses slowly moved their drum over the smoke. We wondered, though, were the Indians where. Most of those who camped there had neither facial features nor skin colour on Indians. Some people wore some kind of Indian clothing, there was even a new shop-bought tipi there, but it all looked a bit artificial. Some outfits look odd to say the least and didn't look Indian at all. For example there was a man in fringed leggings, trainer shoes and a red shirt with a long row of military orders. He approached us and said:

“It will start a bit later, the grand entry will be at one. We ask not to take pictures during the Grand Entry. You don't know what the Grand Entry is? Every pow wow starts with one, when all the dancers enter the holy circle around the drums. We always dance clockwise around the drums, this is the direction in which the sun moves round the Earth. The veteran warriors open the procession. These days they are usually the ones that serve in the army. Behind them are men dancers in various styles, followed by the women and the children. No pictures are to be taken during the Grand Entry as well as during the Veteran Dance and the Flag Dance. The spiritual aspect of the ceremony has to be respected. You also have to stand during those dances and take your hat off, unless you have an eagle feather in it. During other dances you can take pictures and during the inter-tribal dance you can join in. The songs we sing have no lyrics, we chant just meaningless syllables. This is because the pow wow was traditionally a meeting of various tribes speaking different languages. We sing without words so no language is privileged.

The Grand Entry started at one o'clock – some fellas sat around a big drum and started playing monotonous rhythm. They also sang, this was the traditional Indian choral music with piercingly high falsetto voices. There was no single dance step that everybody would dance, each dancer danced in his or her own style. The veterans walked majestically touching softly the ground with their feet before each step as if checking if the ground is hard enough to stand on. The grass dancer behind them danced wildly shaking the huge amount of fringes he had at his arms and his legs. Women dancers in traditional dresses with arm fringes reaching the ground stepped gracefully, the fringes swinging there and back with each step. Young women dressed in bright colours with equally bright shawls in their hands jumped high and the shawls unfurled behind their backs. There were also girls in jingle dresses who jingled as they jumped because they had hundreds of little bells attached to their shifts. Last went children who tried to emulate dance steps of the adults.

Jingle dress

Well beyond the circle of dancers, near the woods, there was a camp fire carefully tended by two men. I wanted to approach this fire but the fire keeper told ma that this is the sacred fire and it can only be approached from the east. The circle around the fire is sacred as well. The eastern approach has been marked by two stones and one can circle it only clockwise – the way the sun circles the earth. By the entry to the sacred circle there was a container with prayer tobacco. If you want to pray, take a handful of tobacco, stand beyond the fire facing east and when you finish praying throw the tobacco into the fire – the smoke takes the prayers to the Creator.

While I was talking to the fire keeper some girls in jingle dresses came with handfuls of tobacco and threw it to the fire. Why?

“Because the jingle dress is a prayer for somebody's health. The jingle dance is in itself a prayer. Usually the family of the sick person ask a a girl for a prayer and gives her a handful of tobacco, after the dance she comes and throws the tobacco into the fire.

What? Is he serious? Can you pray while dancing? These Indians are crazy, aren't they?

If these were stately dances at least. Some of them are not only not stately but hardly serious. For example the potato dance. It has to be danced in pairs – the potato in question is held in place between the two foreheads. Hands of course are to be held behind their backs. There is a prize for the pair which holds the potato the longest.

In the evening there is food – everyone is invited. Of course traditional Native American cuisine is served. There are rules about who is being served first – the elderly first, then women and children, then the warriors and the chief in the end. Of course those who come first have to remember that there has to be enough for those who come last.

I learned also who are these Algonquins who organize this pow wow, apparently every year in the same place. They are descendants of the Algonquins who once hunted here and now live in the surrounding towns. Racial purity is not important. The fact that Canadian authorities do not consider them “Native Americans” is not important either. The musicians, dancers and veterans sometimes come from far away. Pow wows like this are nowadays organized all over America, it is a pan-Indian movement both in the U.S. and Canada. Some of them are organized in the middle of the wilderness (sometimes carefully maintained, like the Algonquin Park), sometimes on reservations and sometimes in the centres of big cities. And the music – which for a white ear sounds like a wild scream – is a proof that this is not tourist attraction. This is modern Native American culture created for Native American consumption.

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":

Which way to Strawberry Fields?

Arnie General in his hat of a royaneh.

When I look at these clouds I sometimes think that the life is like them. They appear, they grow, sometimes they are huge and cause a storm and then they are blown apart. It is the same with people, said Arnie General as he sat on the veranda of his house.

Arnie is an Onondaga chief. I first met him nine years ago. He showed me then the reserve of the Iroquois on Grand River in Ontario. He took me in his car here and there, among other things he brought me to the Cayuga Longhouse in Sour Springs. This Longhouse wasn’t especially long, it was just a house built with huge wooden logs. In the middle of the front wall it had a tiny window and a door on the right hand side. I asked then whether I could enter, but Arnie told me that this is a sacred place, open only for ceremonies. I asked if I could be present at a ceremony. Arnie answered that he couldn’t see any objections, but there weren’t any ceremonies in the near future.

Longhouse ceremonies don’t have fixed dates in the European calendar. The Iroquois were an agricultural people and the ceremonies are connected with the gifts of the Earth that appear during the year, but the dates depend on observation of nature and are not fixed in the calendar. Only recently there have been some adjustments made to the calendar, because most of the participants have regular jobs, so the ceremonies nowadays take place on Sundays.

To say that Arnie is a “chief” of the Onondaga is slightly misleading. His real title is royaneh, which should be translated as noble. This title has existed among the Iroquois at least since Deganavidah walked the earth. Deganavidah, or Peacemaker (his name is sacred and should not be pronounced in vain), wasn’t an ordinary man. His mother was a virgin, his father was the Creator himself. He walked the earth long before the arrival of the white man and it was he who persuaded the constantly fighting Iroquois tribes to bury the hatchet and solve their problems by talking. It was agreed that fifty royaneh representing all five Iroquois nations would meet regularly in the Onondaga Longhouse and all the conflicts would be solved peacefully there. If one of those fifty royaneh dies or is revoked, another would be appointed in his place. Only men can be royaneh, but only women can appoint them or revoke them. All this means that a royaneh resembles more a Member of Parliament than a “chief”, who tells warriors what to do. A sign of royaneh's dignity is a hat with horns of a deer.

Iroquois flags.

The five nations mentioned above are Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk. Later another nation – Tuscarora – joined them and nowadays we talk about the Six Nations – this is practically a synonym of the name “Iroquois”. The fifty chiefs meet in the Onondaga Longhouse to this day. The Iroquois claim that as a result of the lost wars they ceded most of their lands, but they never gave up sovereignty. In the wars fought by the British Crown even today they take part as allies, not as British subjects. Their veterans appear in ceremonies in uniforms of Six Nations. They have their own representations at international sporting events; they have their own flag, even their own passports. Those passports are issued in the name of the council of the fifty chiefs. But the Onondaga Longhouse is not only a Parliament building, it is also a house of prayer. The Cayuga Longhouse in Sour Springs is just a prayer house, open only for the ceremonies.

A Longhouse is called thus because the Iroquois once lived in communal houses and these were long indeed. They were covered from top to bottom with tree bark shingle. Many families lived there together. Religious ceremonies were also held there. However, already in the 18^th century the Iroquois had accepted many ways of the white man, such as agriculture or building houses inhabited by just one family. It seemed that the old religion would also vanish, that the Iroquois would accept the religion of the white man. Many of them actually did so, but not all, because just then appeared the prophet who renewed the religious tradition of the Longhouse.

The prophet’s name was Handsome Lake. As a young man he was a brave warrior, but since he was forced to live on the rez – he became depressed. One day he suddenly lost his consciousness and fell to the floor, but when a few days later his relatives wanted to bury him – he suddenly got up and said that he had been to the Strawberry Fields and met the messengers of the Creator. Strawberry Fields is a synonym for Heaven; old Iroquois people say that a dying person is surrounded by the aroma of strawberries. Thus Handsome Lake was in Strawberry Fields, where he received Good News from the Creator and was supposed to pass on this Good News to his people. This Good News supported acceptance of some of the ways of the white man – like the methods of agriculture or of house building – but certain things were strictly banned. According to this prophecy drinking alcohol and abortion are grave sins. Indians had vast knowledge of herbal medicine, they knew herbs that induce abortion; during the time of national tragedy they were used often and the population decreased rapidly. It seems that the Handsome Lake prophecy helped to stop that process. Of course the prophecy insisted on keeping the old ceremonies alive, but they would be performed in a separate house. This is the Longhouse, which does not have to be especially long.

Interior of a longhouse.

When I met Arnie again I asked him whether there would be a ceremony held in the near future and if so could I be present there. Arnie grabbed a phone and for a few minutes talked in a language I didn’t understand. Afterwards he said:

“OK, come on Sunday to Sour Springs Longhouse. But you have to bring a gift, something to eat. At the end of the ceremony there is a meal and everybody shares food.”

I came with Marysia on Sunday slightly ahead of time. The ceremony was to be presided by Cleve General, a Cayuga royaneh (it was with him Arnie talked over the phone), but he wasn’t there yet. A group of women was gathered in front of the open door. Some ladies wore something that looked like traditional dresses, although they had no connection with what we imagine Indian women should wear. Men came in their ordinary clothing, with no Indian accents. Cleve came after a while and there was a short talk about whether it is OK for us to be present at the ceremony. Apparently not everybody liked that idea, although in the end we were invited on the condition that we take no photographs or notes.

The Sour Springs Longhouse has two doors, one (the front one) for the ladies and one (in the back) for men. Inside men and women sit separately on benches around the walls. In the middle there are two iron stoves and benches for the drummers.

What does a prayer in a Longhouse look like? In the beginning there was a longish speech by royaneh Cleve General in the Cayuga language. Of course I didn’t understand anything. But this was just the beginning, after that there were dances, three hours in all.

The Longhouse prayer is a dance. The row of dancers goes around the room anticlockwise. During one of the dances a large pot with some thick red juice was placed in the middle of the floor. Everybody drank from it, I tried it, too. It was strawberry juice.

Is it meant to be foretraste of Strawberry Fields?

Cayuga Longhouse in Sour Springs

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":

The smoking saint

Saint Simon of Zunil

The Maya do look after their saints. All of them, not only the ones that live in the church. Saint Simon does not live in the church. He used to but one day the priests asked for his figure to be moved out. The Maya, however, didn't want to just dump him, they moved him to one of the homes in the village. They look after him just as well as after the church saints. Actually they look after him more. For example – no church saint ever gets cigarettes to smoke. They do get pretty clothes, they do get flowers, but cigarettes? No! You can't smoke in the church! But Saint Simon has been chucked out from the church and now he can smoke as much as he likes. He likes it a lot. He is always seen smoking a cigarette. The villagers bring them in abundance.

You don't believe it? I have seen Saint Simon with my own eyes. There is one in a village called Zunil near Quetzaltenango. I went there with Catalina, my teacher in Centro Maya Xela Spanish School. It is a school whose owners are Maya Indians and this is exactly why I enrolled there. I hoped that the local Indians might show me some interesting places. The chapel of saint Simon certainly is one. An unusual saint: a full size figure with a suit and a tie, wide brimmed hat, dark glasses – he sits in an armchair and smokes. The faithful kneel in front and ask for a blessing by putting his hand on their heads – which means the figure is not a solid sculpture. The faithful pray, ask for blessings and when the cigarette in his mouth burns to the end – they light him another one. Saint Simon likes his drink, too. Now and again somebody takes the cigarette out from his mouth and pours some tequila there. A row of empty bottles stands by his armchair. They light candles for him as well, lots and lots of them.

Shaman with a cigar.

Who is this Saint Simon anyway? This was the original name of St. Peter, but we know St. Peter as Peter, not as Simon. Maybe then Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus with his cross? But in such case why would the priests want to chuck him out of the church? Perhaps some theologians decided that he is not one of the Catholic saints. If so – who could it be? Maybe somebody from the old Maya pantheon baptised when the Maya became Catholic themselves? For example (I read this suggestion somewhere) the ancestor, the first shaman in the mythical history. Considering that when the Maya shamans pray they address Saint Simon both as “brother” and “father” this suggestion is quite plausible.

The village of San Andres Xecul is famous most of all for the church whose façade is painted in bright colours. The chapel of Saint Simon in that village is less known but Catalina knows where to find it. Saint Simon lives next to the shop that sells candles which have to be lit before the figure. There is a bed in the chapel as well because Saint Simon sits in his armchair only during the day, at night he goes to bed. There is also an extra figure of him in a palanquin – on the day of st. Simon, the 18^th of November, it is taken to the streets in a procession.

Catalina leads me to the chapel of Saint Simon. There are two Indians ther performing some rituals, or rather the older one is performing them, the younger one is a passive participant. They talk not in Spanish but in a language I don't understand; I am told this is Quiche. The younger Indian tells me that they will make a burnt offering in the yard. I ask if I can be present, he says there is no problem. The older one – a shaman, I presume – arranges the offerings: candles of various colours, aromatic resin called copal, a few eggs, some big fat cigars. Then he puts light to it all reciting some formulas. He himself lights a big fat cigar as well. He puffs it saying some formulas, some of them in Spanish. I have the impression that he speaks Spanish so we could understand as well (Catalina comes from a different region and doesn't understand Quiche). At one point he exclaims:

“Why don't you take pictures? Look at this fire, it is fantastic!”

 Maya altar with crosses.

The flame is high indeed, it is a good sign, says the shaman. He puffs clouds of smoke from his cigar. Clouds of smoke raise from the fire as well.

“They are in contact” he says. “Its a good sign, Saint Simon is with us.”

At one point an egg explodes loudly.

“Very good sign. Evil forces are blown away.”The offering is a prayer for the protection of someone who recently went to the States. The way the fire behaves gives some information about the future. At the end of the ceremony the shaman takes a sip from a little bottle he has but doesn't swallow it, but sprays every person present with the liquid.

“What is the meaning of this last gesture?

“What do you mean? It is a blessing!”

Of course! Obvious, isn't it? Haw could I be so stupid!

San Francisco del Alto is a town inhabited almost exclusively by Indians. It's famous for its weekly fair, a very colourful affair. Catalina takes me there, we visit the market but afterwards she leads me outside the town to a precipice over a deep gorge. This is a special place, shamans call it “an axis” and claim that prayers there are especially effective. There is a few of them tending their fires, with families standing around. I start talking to one who has just finished his ceremony. He tells me that there are books which describe all the rituals but they are accessible for shamans only, lay persons cannot buy them. One has to study a lot before one can understand these books. I am told that a bright person can learn a bare minimum within two years, but as said – this is just a bare minimum. Of course this is not a course in some school, it is a long apprenticeship with an older shaman.

“And what do the priests say? Aren't the Maya people Catholic?”

“The priests have nothing against it. Our rituals aren't a different religion. We pray to the same God. The Catholic priests have nothing against it, only the Protestants fight us. They say if something is not written in the Bible, it must be the work of the Devil.”

Christian prayers are certainly said during the offerings. The participants cross themselves, they say “Our Father” and the ceremony itself is often celebrated at the foot of a cross.

For an outsider these two traditions may look quite similar. For a non-Catholic “a mass for somebody” is also a sequence of incomprehensible movements and spoken formulas performed by a priest, who has to study for years to be able to perform it correctly. A non-Catholic may have problems understanding what effect these movements and formulas may have on – say – somebody's health.

Laguna Chicabal

The shamans say that in some places the ceremony will have a better chance of success. The Catholics also have their holy places where a prayer has a better chance of being heard. They make pilgrimages to Lourdes, Compostela, or to Esquipulas in Guatemala, where pope John Paul went twice. The Maya accepted the Catholic faith without discarding the old tradition but for the shamans the holy places are in nature, not in churches. For example over the precipice in San Francisco del Alto. Or on the top of Volcano Chicabal.

I went to Chicabal with Catalina and her husband Pedro. The Volcano forms a perfect cone rising above the Altiplano. It is not active any more and in the middle of the crater there is a perfectly round lake – Laguna de Chicabal. It is a sacred place, there are alters for burnt offerings in several places around the lake. Some of those altars have crosses decorated with water lilies that grow on the shore. The inner slopes of the crater are covered in dense tropical cloud forest. Every so often the clouds break over the rim and descend towards the lake. They flow between the trees and sometimes completely cover the lake. The lake behaves like a living being playing hide and seek. Perhaps it has a secret to hide?

Maybe Saint Simon is also present here, invisibly?

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".

How many languages can a rabbit speak ?

Interpreters before the Parliament.

             Globetrotters have to be linguists. They have to know languages. How else could they communicate in all those countries they visit ? And back home they could use those linguistic skills to earn a few bob. Better than washing up in a pub. Or cleaning, for that matter. If you have visited a few countries and can get by in their languages – you could get a job as a multilingual court interpreter in a U.K. based company. You think you don't know those languages enough? Don't worry, it's simple, even a rabbit can do it.

The company, named Applied Language Solutions (ALS), has already secured the government contract to supply interpreters for courts. Until the 1^st of January 2012 the courts had to use translators accepted by National Register of Public Services Interpreters (NRPSI), which is not an agency but a register of interpreters who have qualifications sufficient for court assignments. It is not easy to get onto this register. One has to pass a tough exam, such as Diploma in Public Services Interpreting (DPSI). I can tell you, this exam is a wringer. It is not enough to know two languages absolutely fluently, with all the legal jargon as well as all the swears and prison slang, one has to know some other skills as well, like taking quick notes (what was the third figure in that long telephone number?) or interpreting simultaneously while the speaker speaks without stops (a frequent occurrence in the courts). I can tell you, it is a wringer, I myself once tried and failed. But I can understand it, after all it is not only difficult but also responsible job, a slight misunderstanding may result in somebody ending up in the wrong place for a long time. Until recently it was recognised as such by the authorities and was appropriately remunerated. I myself a year and a few hundred quid later tried that wringer exam again and passed it. Since then interpreting for courts has fed my globetrottering addiction. One can say that I have lived off crime, as all the court interpreters do.

Andy Slaughter MP at the demo

However, the British Government has decided to put a stop to this practice. Not because they think it's wrong to live off crime – after all the police, prosecutors and all the criminal lawyers live off crime just as well. No, the government decided that the interpreters earn too much. Who are they, anyway? Most of them are immigrants. They don't need all that dosh, they don't need to feed their globetrottering and other habits. Let's slash their pay, teach them a lesson. If they are not happy, we can employ other people. Cleaners for example. They are immigrants as well, aren't they? They know the lingos. They won't demand all that appropriate remuneration. 

What happened next is this: the Government decided to subcontract all court interpreting to one company called ALS. Its owner, Gavin Wheeldon, is a young man who started his company a few years ago from his bedroom. He likes to brag in the media about the Ferraris he drives but his company is the cheapest on the market, which is why it was chosen by the MoJ. It is the cheapest for a very simple reason: they pay less than a third of what the court interpreters received thus far. Not surprisingly, the NRPSI interpreters don't want to work for them. As a result this agency doesn't have enough qualified interpreters and either they don't send anybody to the assignments or on the contrary – they send just about anybody. If you are an immigrant cleaner – you can sign up with them and be sent to courts to interpret. Results would be funny if they weren't serious. I myself know of cases where the defendant left the courtroom not knowing what the sentence was, even though he had an ALS interpreter at his side.

Can you imagine the Ministry of Health deciding that the medical doctors are too expensive? Why not ask the hospital cleaners to look after the patients. They have worked in the hospital for years, they know the job,  don't they? 

One may think this is a local British problem not interesting to readers from elsewhere. Well, not quite so. It could be actually interesting to foreign governments, especially their sports ministers, as we are told that ALS has also the contract to interpret at the London Olympics!

Jajo Kralicek at the demo

Of course the professional interpreters haven't just given in. There are a few spontaneous actions, apart of boycotting the said agency. One of those actions is observing those ALS interpreters who actually turn up at courts. The NRPSI interpreters don't have much work these days but they do have time. They can go to courts and just sit there and watch. What do they see? Not surprisingly all too often lack of competence on the part of the ALS interpreters. A perfect example was observed by my friend Irena Falcone (a Polish interpreter like myself). She was watching the proceedings where the defendant had an ALS interpreter but after they left the courtroom the defendant asked Irena (he knew she was Polish as he heard her talking on the phone): “What actually was the sentence?” This demonstrates perfectly that ALS would send just about anybody. One Czech interpreter decided to prove that point and registered her pet rabbit with the agency. The rabbit, named Jajo Kralicek, was not only duly registered but actually received some assignments at courts!

On the 15^th of March the interpreters took to the streets of London. Only two: Petty France (where the MoJ has its offices) and Abingdon Street (in fron of the Parliament). A few hundred showed up, a surprisingly high number considering the nature of the profession (interpreters normally work alone and seldom meet their colleagues). It was the demo against the contract with ALS but the biggest star was actually one of the ALS interpreters. You know who? Of course Jajo the Rabbit!

Where will the next Bob Marley come from ?

A house in Dangriga

In Belize I visited black Indians.

Black Indians? Who are they? It sounds like some sort of a legend. But it is true – there is a tribe of people with black skin and Negroid features who speak an American Indian language. This language belongs to the Caribbean family of languages. Where do these people live? On the shores of the Caribbean, where else? In fact the sea derives its name from the tribe that lives on its shore.

These people used to live on the archipelago of Lesser Antilles which they colonised by paddling ina dugouts from South America. Before Columbus there was communication between North and South America, clearly the Indians considered the dugouts seaworthy. The Indians of the archipelago were the first to encounter the white people and the first to be exposed to diseases for which they had no resistance and as a result the majority of them died out. Not all, though. On the island of St. Vincent there was a tribe that stayed healthy and until the end of 18^th century successfully resisted the British. The British claimed this was their island but the Indians had a different opinion in that matter. They stayed healthy because of a coincidence – ships from Africa passed by this island and sometimes it happened that a ship full of black slaves ran aground. Some black slaves escaped and eventually they joined the tribe. Their descendants had better resistance to the new diseases and better chances to survive the epidemics. These descendants looked like Africans but spoke the language of their mothers, which was an Indian dialect belonging to the Caribbean family. The dialect called Garifuna.

A Grifuna temple in Dangriga

At the end of 18^th century the British finally pacified the island. The chief Joseph Chatoyer resisted the British until 1795, but in the end the Garifunas were beaten. The British didn't want Indians that looked like Africans on an island where black slaves were to work on sugar plantations, therefore the Garifuna were loaded onto ships and taken to Honduras, Spanish at the time. The authorities there let the Garifuna settle on the shores of the Caribbean. Later some Garifuna moved to settle in Belize, British at the time.

Before going to Belize I didn't know much about the Garifuna. I knew that they existed, that they lived in several villages in Belize and that one of those villages was called Dangriga. I hoped I would find some literature on them in Belize City. I knew there were some books published in Belize, I saw the titles on the internet but could not buy them in any internet bookshop. Where else could I find them if not in Belize city? Where indeed! When I start looking for a bookshop, nobody can tell me where to find one. Is there no bookshop in the biggest city in the country? The Anglican lady priest tells me that I should look for books in the supermarket, there is a bookshelf there. I go there and indeed I find a bookshelf with some fifteen titles on it. And some of those titles are about Belize,and some even about the Garifuna. Good.

In the afternoon I get on the bus and go to Dangriga and stop in a little hostel just next to the beach. In the morning heavy clouds come from the sea, it rains, so dangling in a hammock on the verandah I read the newly purchased books. In one of them I read that every Garifuna village has a temple in which rituals to honour the dead ancestors are held. I ask my landlady if there is such a temple in Dangriga.

Inside the Garifuna temple

“Yes, of course, on the other side of the river, by the sea. It looks like a big shed, you'll find it easily. I have never been there. I am a Garifuna myself but I am a Methodist and don't believe in the spirits of ancestors who have to be fed. But the Catholics go there. Most people in Dangriga are Catholics.”

The rain stops, so I go to that place and find the shed. One window is open. I look in. Suddenly somebody runs out of the house next door and asks in an unfriendly tone:

“What are you up to? Who opened that window?”

Not me. I ask if I could see the temple.

“If the buye lets you, but he is not here.”

It seems that I am not welcome here. Later that day I have lunch in a cafe by the river. There is a map of the village by the wall, I can see the temple I have just visited but also another temple at the other side of the village. I have to visit that place as well, then.

In Belize there are many houses on tall posts, they look as if they had the ground floor missing. Sometimes that missing ground floor serves as a yard. Somewhere near the other temple I see a group of people under the house. A woman calls me:

“What are you up to. Man?”

I say there should be a temple here somewhere.

“Come with me, I'll show you. My name is Monica.”

She leads me to a very different house next door. A house of very thin walls and covered with a huge thatched roof. The floor is just hard earth covered with fresh sand. I am told this used to be the traditional Garifuna way of building but in Dangriga there are no mire houses like that. Monica introduces me to a relatively young man named Kelvin.

“Kelvin is the buye here. A buye is the highest priest. If you want to know anything, ask him, he'll know.”

The merry Garifuna drummers

Kelvin shows me around. The interior of the temple is divided into three rooms. One is big, with a fireplace in the middle and a pot hanging over that. The second room is much smaller, the sacred drums are kept there. The third room is the smallest, it is the sanctuary with an altar and a hammock in which the buye lies when the ancestors speak to him. There are three sticks leaning against the alter, one represents the present buye, one his grandfather and the third stands for his distant ancestor, the first buye in history. There are figurines on the alter, all perfectly Catholic saints. The biggest of them sint Michael with some kind of a reptile under his foot.

“Could I make a picture?”

“I don't know. I have to ask my ancestors. You must leave for a minute, though.”

A minute later the buye emerges from the sanctuary saying that the ancestors agree. He splashes some water on the threshold.

Monica says I should listen to some of their music. She leads me to a club where there is going to be some drumming this evening. If I buy a drink for the boys they may even play now. The club opens just because I am there, they roll the drums out. They don't use drumsticks, just the palms of their hands, like in Africa. They sing in the Indian language, though. It sounds good but after a while another bottle appears and the boys get very merry, start talking nonsense. I am beginning to think that they may not be able to play in the evening.

Some people in the village suggest that I should visit the gallery of Pen Cayetano. I came across this name when I was looking for information about the Garifuna. I read that he was a musician born in Dangriga but now lives in Germany. It turned out not to be true, he lived in Germany for some time but now is back in Dangriga together with his German wife. He has a gallery here because he is also a painter. His paintings are somewhat expressionist in style but his subject is life of the Garifuna. He has some CDs, too. He plays some of them. First a group of traditional punta drummers, later his own music based on traditional rhythms but arranged for modern audience.

“Punta rock. Don't you know it? This is Garifuna music.”

I don't know it. His equipment is not the best but the music is. Rhythms of mixed African-Indian origin, Caribbean language. Pen has lots of CDs. It seems that there has been an explosion of music in this part of the world.

Maybe the next Bob Marley will come from somewhere here?

Pen Cayetano with the author

Where are all the Maya gone?

Balam Na

Aren't the ancient Maya ruins awesome? The pyramids of Tikal rising higher than the tallest trees of the jungle, the underground corridors of Palenque leading to royal tombs, the millennia-old paintings in the temples of Bonampak hidden deep in the rain forest. Tourists with cameras dangling on their bellies walk among those ruins, now and again they look into their little books they hold in their hands or stop and listen to the flow of words of a guide talking about the aMayzing ancient Maya. But you won't find any Maya people among those ruins. Where are they all gone? Have they died out?

Felipe Carillo Puerto, a small town in the middle of Mexican state of Quintana Roo, is not awesome. It appears to be sleepy and provincial. A church of very thick stone walls stands next to the central square. The inhabitants of the town are small, have darkish skin and talk in some incomprehensible language. They do speak Spanish to a visitor, though.

“What is the language you speak?” I ask a driver at a minibus stand.

“It's Maya” he answers. “”Everybody speaks it here.”

The Maya didn't die out like some other Indian tribes. Their sustenance was not game found in the forests but maize which they cultivated since times immemorial. Cultivated several varieties in four colours: yellow, red, black and white. Maize was and still is a sacred plant for them, a gift of gods, itself a god. Maize gives life, thanks to it the Maya survived. The conquistadores conquered the country but they had no intention of killing all the inhabitants. They wanted to be lords and one needs peasants to be a lord. Maya could be perfect peasants. The old intellectual elite died out, at least all those who knew the ancient script and could read the ancient books. The pagan books were burned anyway, but the Maya peasant survived. They were there and worked the land.

The Maya ladies

Then independence came. For the Maya it meant nothing, independence was declared by the descendants of Spaniards. After several generations in America the descendants did not identify themselves with Spain any more. Yucatan was not Mexico either. The Spanish speaking inhabitants of the peninsula declared independence as the Republic of Yucatan. When Mexico (also only recently independent) did not accept this decision and sent an army to pacify the rebels – the government of Yucatan decided to fight. The Mexican army was much bigger, therefore the Yucatan government decided to enlist their peasants. The Indian peasants were trained and sent to the front, the Mexican army was defeated and then the Indians were sent home. The white inhabitants of Yucatan probably thought that everything was going to be as before.

The Indians hoped something might actually change. Before was serfdom and the Indians did not like that too much. Manuel Antonio Ay, a Maya leader, stated the concerns of the Indians and as a result was executed on the market square in Valladolid. The execution took place on 26 Jul 1847. Other Maya leaders – the most prominent of whom were Cecilio Chi and Jacinto Pat – weren't going to wait for the execution. The Indians were freshly trained in the modern ways of warfare, quickly organised themselves into an army and were seizing towns of Yucatan one after another. The Maya wanted to get rid of the white invaders. The did not need peasants, they weren't taking prisoners, all whites who didn't manage to escape were executed. The whites panicked. There was even a plan to evacuate the peninsula altogether, but in the end the Mexican army was called for help and the Maya were pushed back more or less to the present border of Quintana Roo. Beyond that line the Maya had an independent state that existed until the early 20^th century. The British in Belize were neutral and traded with anybody who held power north of the Rio Hondo border. The capital of the Maya state was a town named Chan Santa Cruz, today called Felipe Carillo Puerto. This is where the Speaking Cross was kept. In 1850 an Indian named Juan de la Cruz had a vision – he heard a cross talking to him, passing the message from God: the Indians were not to give up for God was going to help them. Nobody else heard this voice but it didn't matter, a church was build to house the cross and to make sure everybody knew this was a sanctuary of the Speaking Cross – a special room was added behind the altar for someone who could play the voice of the cross. The Indians had as much reverence for the Speaking Cross as for any miracle-performing figure. They dressed it in embroidered shirts and looked after it in every possible way. Of course the ceremonies were very much like those of the ancient Maya religion. The church of the Speaking Cross was called Balam Na - this is the thick-walled church in Carillo Puerto. Erected around 1850, it is the last great temple built by the Maya.

The Maya storyteller

The gunpowder bought in Belize was of course crucial for the defence of Chan Santa Cruz, but there was another factor – the swampy forests that surrounded the town. Every few years an army was sent from Merida to sort out these “savages”, after the march through the jungle that lasted some weeks the army would reach Chan Santa Cruz, find the town deserted and enter claiming victory – only to discover that the Indians were in the forest and the army was besieged in a town in which there was no food. Some time later starving remnants would return ho me. Only in 1901, when the Mexican army built a railway through the jungle and used machine guns – was the resistance of the Maya broken. Mexico finally took control of this part of the country. The Maya, however, have not disappeared. They are there and cultivate maize as they had always done. The cult of the Speaking Cross has not disappeared either, its sanctuary still stands in Felipe Carillo Puerto. I have been there.

Felipe Carillo Puerto gives an impression of a sleepy provincial town but this is Chan Santa Cruz – the capital of the last independent Maya state. The temple of Balam Na has been taken over by the Catholic Church but the temple of the Speaking Cross stands only four streets away. There is a notice by the door informing that entry in a hat or in shoes is forbidden. The interior looks very much like a church, a presbytery is behind a low wall in the middle of which there is a passage for priests. There is an arch above the alter made with the same stone as the Balam Na church. The altar is full of figures of perfectly Catholic saints. I was shown all this by Jorge, a young Indian active in Xiaat community.

Sanctuary of the Speaking Cross

There are no famous tourist attractions in Carillo Puerto. There are hardly any tourists there, I guess only those who are interested in the living Indian culture. The Xiaat community exists especially for this purpose – to facilitate a meeting with the living culture. It is not a rich organisation, it doesn't even have any office in the town, one contact them in the internet cafe called Balam Na computation. It really is just a few young men from a nearby Maya village. In that village, called Senor, everybody speaks Maya and some people don't even know Spanish. Women wear traditional huipils – white brightly embroidered shifts. Most of the houses in the village is in the traditional Maya style, with thatched roof and the interior undivided into rooms.

The coordinator of Xiaat is Marcus. I talk to him over the phone from Balam Na Computation and visit him in Senor the next day. He shows me around the village. We meet an old man who talks about the war with Mexico. He is very very old but still not old enough to remember the war, he tells us what his father told him. He can't speak Spanish, Marcus has to translate the story. The story is very different from the one I read before coming there, which was based on written Spanish sources. The story of the old Indian is full of miracles where God fights on the side of the Maya. I ask Marcus later if they have recorded this story as the man is very very old, he says they haven't. He leads me later to a lady who knows all the medicinal plants in the forest. One of these plants is really interesting, it heals you if a snake bites your shadow. There are snakes in these parts that bite you shadow and then you fall ill. The don't bite your body, just a shadow when you walk by moonlight is enough. But don't worry, you have to visit the wise woman who knows all herbs in the forest and she will find you a cure. The lady does not speak Spanish either and Marcus has to translate. All that knowledge will be of little use for me, the herbs of the jungle don't grow in England We don't have those shadow-biting snakes either. Till later Marcus sends Jorge with me to the Sanctuary of the Speaking Cross in Carillo Puerto. I am told there are ceremonies there every morning, at 4:00 AM. I ask if I could be present at a ceremony.

“I don't think there should be a problem,” says Jorge, “but I think you should rather go to the sanctuary of Tixcacal Guardia. It is only 5 km from Senor.

Sanctuary w X-Cacal Guardia

Considering that I am staying in senor – it makes sense. I go to Tixcacal Guardia with Marcus the next day. The temple is much simpler than the Cruz Parlante in Carillo Puerto. It actually looks like an ordinary Maya house with thatched roof, only the walls are more solid and whitewashed. It is closed, they open it only for the ceremonies at 4:00 am. The priests live in the next house, also thatched. They nap in their hammocks. They are ordinary peasants who come to serve in the temple for a week at a time. One of them we met earlier in the village, normally he rides a rickshaw. The priests have no objections – I can come tomorrow morning.

We arrive the next morning. The chief priests and some other men sit in front of the temple, now open. They bring out more chairs for us, we chat. I mean Marcus talks to them in Maya as they hardly speak any Spanish. We can hear some chants inside the temple. Marcus says they are in some ancient Maya dialect and he doesn't understand everything. At one point they usher us in. One of the priests brings a steaming basket from the presbytery – it is freshly boiled corn on the cob. Another brings a container with steaming soup. Everybody gets a bowl of that soup and one corn on a cob. The grins of the maize are as white as snow.

You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".