Track 5 Settlement Day Morning, Dangriga 19 November 2009

After the Punta Rock, we went on to have more musical and culinary adventures. My favorite food I found was
banana tamales..mmmm..made by Wellington and his wife. Around 4am we decided to try to get a little sleep so
we could get up for the "Re-enactment" of Garifuna Settlement, at the river around dawn.



We had a fitful hour or so of sleep on top of the roof of Val's Hostel(there were no rooms to be found in all of Dangriga)


We got up just before dawn and proceeded back to the bridge where people were already gathering, waiting for the 
Re-enactment. There were many all night partiers-with that wide eyed gaze of new light shining on their night's adventures.
Others had managed a good night's sleep, and were bright and dressed in their festival best. 


There was a scary moment when a wild eyed man broke a bottle on the ground feet away from me, and raised his new weapon,
shouting a name and running into the crowd. Poeple scurried in every direction, grabbing young children to rescue them from the
scene. We didn't see what happened, but moments later we heard the sound of an ambulence, and moments after that, the tension
eased. 

In a way, this went along with the whole festival-not that I would support or desire violence of any kind, but it WAS a re-enactment
and there was plenty of violence suffered since 1635. see Garifuna background story- http://themoonship.com/bellyfullvolumeone.html

Something inside told me that this man had taken too many spirits inside him and this is how it came out-
We prayed for the safety of his body, and whomever he was shouting for



Just then, the first boat was spotted, and we saw what the "Re-Enactment" was all about. 2 small fishing boats, shaped like 
long canoe/rowboats pulled in to the river. On the boats, the Actors were draped with greenery and dressed in tattered 
clothing, representing the shipwrecked Africans who made their way to land. They rowed to the shore, where a group of drummers

pulled them from the boat, and surrounded them in a coccoon of bodies, drumming a deep heartbeat rhythm. The coccoon 

expanded as more and more people joined the mash and rocked slowly to the healing rhythms. Jason and I joined the group and
felt the heartbeat of Mother Earth so profoundly, it carried us in it's embrace to a very special place in our souls. We were one 
with these people-their joys our joys, their suffering our suffering. The "Big Stick" Jason refers to in this recording is not what you
are thinking, you naughty people-we were trying to document the moment, but we were deep in the coccoon-Jason was holding 

the video camera as far up as he could to try to catch the center of the circle-The "stick" is a tool for this purpose, which 
we HAD brought all the way from North America but had somehow managed NOT to bring to Dangriga, ayi.



This track is the sound from within the circle-Imagine, if you can, being carried in the arms of the great mother. I find this clip
soothing as though I am being rocked in a cradle of sound.