Food

On a recent trip to Guatemala, I journeyed from the central Mayan highlands to the Caribbean coast to find the minority population of Garifuna people. Descendants of escaped African slaves who once lived in the hills of the island of St. Vincent, the Garifuna were exiled to the Caribbean coast of Central America two hundred years ago. Here they maintain their African traditions transformed slightly by their years on St. Vincent among the Arawak and Carib Indians, and by their new hosts: Honduras, Belize (formerly British Honduras) and Guatemala. The Garifuna were in the news recently when accounts of the automobile accident that killed hip-hop diva Lisa Lopes mentioned she’d been vacationing in a Garifuna village in Honduras.

I’d come to Livingston, the center of Garifuna life in Guatemala, mostly for the music, which I’d found vibrant, soulful and very African. Hearing the Garinagu riff on the street, in clubs and at ceremonies was a joy, but not unexpected. (Strictly speaking, Garinagu is the name for their nation, Garifuna the language, but Garifuna is generally accepted for both.) What was a surprise, though, was the food, just as zesty as the music, globally tropical, locally Caribbean, and painstakingly prepared.

With large numbers engaged in fishing, Garinagu cuisine is trademarked by fresh fish and seafood, enhanced by the nutty sweet flavor of coconut. Tapado, a favorite in Livingston, is a rich fish-and-seafood stew with green and ripe plantains, yams, tomato and herbs, simmered in coconut milk. I became a tapado junkie, sampling it wherever I could, insinuating my way into kitchens and talking tapado to anyone who’d want to share its secrets with me.

Back home, I determined to pursue the search for scrumptious Garifuna fare. I guess the mark of the Garinagu’s talent over a fire and their love of cooking at home  is that there is only one restaurant, Yoli’s, for the 50,000-plus Garifuna in the New York area, and it opened shop only months ago.

I arranged to meet the brother of a friend from Livingston at Yoli’s, in the South Bronx. Titiman brought the posse with him: Hondurans and Guatemalans curious about a journalist curious about them. With punta rock, the top of the Garifuna pops blaring, we talked of Livingston, the music and the food. Yoli’s hadn’t been able yet to include tapado on the menu, but I had another tasty fish and coconut dish, hudutu (or judutu).

Later on, I mentioned that I had a to-die-for dulce de coco (shredded coconut cooked until golden in caramelized raw sugar) sold to me on the street by a just-as-dulce village elder woman. That woman, Titiman told me, is Yoli’s mother. My appetite just whetted, I began to ask around where I might find more Garifuna food, perhaps home-cooked. Belize-born James Lovell, a traditional Garifuna musician, was more than obliging. He told me that he and his friends often got together to prepare a big hudutu, or tapado or tikini (another fish specialty, this one sans coconut). After dinner, they’d break out the drums, guitars, claves and maracas and jam well into the night.

“Can I come to the next one?” I asked, like a child whose friends were setting out for the circus. Better than have me tag along, James suggested we organize a joint event, with his friends and mine. We agreed to gather one afternoon at my friend Mike’s large apartment. The plan was to eat, then repair to the park across the street and play until the cows came home.

Things started late on the appointed glorious spring afternoon. It was hard finding the right fish that day, and some of the Garinagu were coming from a funeral service that ended later than expected. The plan to eat first, make music later, and spare the neighbors, was instantly trashed. The Garifuna hadn’t yet unwrapped their drums—traditional squat wooden ones, with deerskin heads—before they began to play. Before long, the sun-filled apartment was shimmering in song. Except for a break to help with the task of pounding plantains, and to eat, they drummed and sang, and we danced until, many hours later, family and other obligations called them home.

As traditional as the drums were, equally archetypal were the cooking implements they’d brought, like a grater devised for “gratering” coconut only (the Belizean Garifuna use the English Caribbean neologism, “to grater”), made of a slab of wood shaped gently into a figure eight and embedded with small, sharp pebbles. They also brought a giant wooden mortar and pestle, the mortar almost a foot and a half tall, the pestle almost as tall as I am. Upon sighting the mortar, Pierre, my Senegalese chef friend, stopped short, then beamed and began to chant and clap out a rhythm he remembered the women of his town in Casamance effecting each morning as they pounded millet in a mortar much like the Garifunas. Much of the afternoon was spent with Pierre, here for many years but with a good part of his heart still home, communing with the Garinagu over similarities between the culture of West Africa and the lost homeland of a people who know only that their ancestors originated somewhere in the West.

When it came time to cook, James and his cousin Alex commandeered the kitchen, wresting from me the hammer with which I was struggling to crack open a coconut, relegating me to the sink as they turned out two major culinary opuses in just as many short hours. They made hudutu, actually a paste made of boiled green and ripe plantains, but which lends its name to any dish it accompanies, and the aforementioned tikini, fish and shrimp cooked in a flour-based stock and a variety of vegetables.

As we all gathered in the cramped kitchen, Pierre stood between Alex and James, pen and paper in hand, writing down the steps in the preparation of the dishes, while James and Alex commented on the recipes and history of their people. We all took a hand in gratering the coconut, but not as successfully as the Garifuna, the only ones managing to keep the skin on their knuckles intact.

When the time came to pound the boiled ripe and green plantains into a paste for the traditional hudutu, a group of us brought mortar and plantain, salt and a little water outside into the courtyard. The dull thud of wood on wood cushioned by the yielding flesh of the plantain echoed musically within the closed-in space, while from two floors above could be heard the crisp commanding rhythm of the drums. Fortuitously, none of the neighbors complained.

When Alex announced that the hudutu and tikini were ready, we all lined up outside the kitchen, mess-hall style, bowl in hand. At the table, on the couch, or over their drum, some broke off large chunks of the hudutu with spoons and placed them first in the bowl to soak up the fish-flavored coconut broth; others separated off one spoonful of hudutu at a time for a quick dip. James explained that it was customary to eat the hudutu with the fingers, it tasted better that way, but that he’d deferred, thinking we’d all be scandalized. Quite the contrary.

One of the drummers had warned us: After hudutu, you just want to sleep. Not this bunch. No sooner were the plates in the sink than it was back to the drum and dance. Until the cows came home.

Food is also central to the dugu, the Garifuna’s most important religious ceremony, which draws Garinagu from all over the diaspora. This tribute to the ancestors lasts for weeks, with preparations rivaling the hours and extravagance spent for Trinidadian carnival.  Spirits were so high that May day in Brooklyn that we all pledged to reconvene in Honduras for the major dugu that will take place there this month. I, for one, have no intention of breaking my promise.