Garifuna Celebration

On April 12th, we went over to the northeast part of the island to see the Garifuna Festival.  

April 12th is the day the Garifuna people celebrate their arrival on Roatan back in 1797.

From what we know, the Garifuna descendants came from African slaves that were being transported and escaped when the ship wrecked on the reefs off the island of St. Vincent in the early 18th Century.  

Here's the parade they had in the morning....lots of hip shakin' dancing, drumming, and singing as they walked and rowed along the beach.....

During the whole English and French colonization at this time, these black slaves rebelled so the worst of them got exiled to Roatan.....about 5000 of them - but only half survived the journey.

The village of Punta Gorda (where this celebration is every year) was the first Garífuna village on the island and there is still so much culture and heritage here.


We loved how they decorated their canoes with banana and coconut leaves.....

After they paraded along the beach, they walked back on the streets of the village.

We just followed along enjoying the music, dancing and all of their colorful clothes

I had to crop the picture to get a close up of this little beauty.....

Dustin gettin' jiggy with the Garifunas....

Ethan is so proud.

Many of them put these dried leaves and grasses over their heads, necks, waist, and shoes....

(this guy wasn't very authentic with his cool shades and baseball cap but you get the idea)

                                                     Loved the taxis.....

So, this was a little disconcerting to have a scary, black, masked guy (with some kind of black motor oil smeared all over him) running full out towards us.... blowing a loud whistle as he came......

I managed to take a picture but then wouldn't be left alone unless we gave them some money.

Evidently, that's the game! 

There were 3 of these guys running around, blowing whistles trying to catch anyone who tried to take a picture of them

or....any innocent victims (namely cute girls)....they would act like they were going to hug them with this black oil all smeared over them if they didn't give them money.

If the victim had $ they'd leave them alone, but if they didn't have any, or as they frantically looked through their purse, he would come so close to hugging them and all the girls would scream and everyone would laugh.

We only saw a couple of people with black smears on their shirts.

It was a hoot to watch, and we laughed so hard as they teased the cute girls.

We tried to figure out if the better descriptive word for this activity was "Extortion...or Entertainment"?

Lots of drum thumping......

And booty shakin' going on here.....  A very fun day!