Eye for an eye (and a few teeth missing): Livingston, Guatemala

Our tour guide Alex is serious, looking like a Cuban revolutionary fighter in his green military hat and shades, and the story he is telling has the group gripped. 



For 10 years, he explains, a local Garifuna man had worked unpaid, helping to restore the hotel we are now looking at. Strangely, that man disappeared shortly after he had approached the Spanish proprietor of the hotel asking for the money owed to him. So one night, 20 years ago, a group of Garifunas gathered with torches and stormed the hotel, burning it down in a revenge attack. The Spanish man was never seen again.



Today, the black marks on the white walls of the burnt-out hotel are a constant reminder of the Garifuna principle: an eye for an eye. It is also a symbol of their resolute history, to overcome the brutality of European colonists. After being forcibly removed by the British from the Caribbean island of St Vincent, many Garifunas ended up here in the small Guatemalan town of Livingston, a crazy concourse of Maya, Indian, Ladino, and Jamaican people, situated at the eastern mouth of the Rio Dulce. 



We had arrived at the port of Livingston the day before, greeted by a Jamaican tout wearing a Dallas Cowboys football jersey. His skinny associate had led the way to the Casa de la Iguana hotel by shouting “Rastafa coming through”, and this is where we had met Alex over a few bottles of Salva Vida. 



Our tour is brightened up somewhat when we reach the Garifuna cemetery, of all places. It is a multi-coloured patchwork of rectangle tombs; pinks, purples, greens, reds and every other colour imaginable. Alex elaborates, explaining how Garifunas believe that the earlier you build your tomb - decorating it in your favourite colour of course - the longer you will live.



We venture deeper into the thickness of forestry, Alex hacking away at the bamboo leaves in sweeping strokes with a rusty machete until we come to an opening. Here, he introduces us to an old Garifuna man sitting by the open door of his tin home. He is carving patterns into a length of wood, and works away surrounded by dozens of broken chairs, and some more functional. Apparently he is 100 years old and has been making a living from designing chairs for the duration of his life. There is no time to waste, and he gives a smile and nod before bending his neck to inspect his work.

We continue deeper into the greenery, and it’s time for Alex’s party piece: ‘the call of the wild’. So expertly he takes a large bamboo leaf, halving it, folding it at one end to make the equivalent of a reed on a recorder, and begins wrapping to make a sort of pipe. It’s really a matter of rolling the card-like leaf in a spiral design while keeping it tight together. My hopes of making it as a true Garifuna are dashed when only a thin wheezing sound comes out, quite pathetic compared to the deep horn-cry Alex’s makes.

He uses his call of the wild, and from somewhere within the branches and overgrowth which forms the banks of the river – I say boat but in truth it is half a tree, hollowed out a little and turned upside down. All eight, plus our toothless captain, board with the carefulness of a thief in the night, because even the slightest movement and we will all be neck deep in lagoon water. We all take turns in rowing the boat with the single rotted oar, making stroking motions with such tenderness. Toothless man revels in our cautious gringo ways.

Half an hour later safe and dry, we are sipping on a half banana and pineapple cocktail with crushed ice. Hardly a Garifuna custom but the closest Livingston gets to being a resort town. Yes, it can be gritty, although the chief of police had informed me earlier that there hasn’t been a shooting in five years, since the Garifunas took it upon themselves to rid of the town’s drug problem. “Look out for the man with the one leg” he said, living proof of the last time anybody committed a major crime here.

Search deep enough though and you will find the true beauty of Livingston, an untouched lagoon cut off from all other existence. There is a waterfall, but at this time of year it isn‘t flowing, although in a way this only adds to the serenity of the place.

Everything is giant size, from the branches of the grove trees to the mossy stone pathway, so I feel even smaller as I start my running jump from the top of the thirsty waterfall, about 30ft high. I push off aggressively with my bare feet towards the dark green blanket of water below. It is a leap into the unknown. Is this how the Garifuna’s ancestors felt when there were forced from Africa to become part of the brutal slave-trade? Was this the feeling when they were removed from St Vincent by the British? Before I can answer there is a splash, and everything turns green.