The Garifuna and the Drums of Belize

On the nineteenth of November, on the coast of Belize, something wonderful happens before the sun is properly up.

People stand on the beach in the grey early light and look out at the water. And then, out of the mist, come the boats: long dugout canoes, low in the water, packed with people waving palm leaves and cassava plants and drums.

As the boats touch the sand, the drumming starts, and it does not stop all day.

This is Garifuna Settlement Day, and what it remembers is an arrival.

The Garifuna began on a green island in the Caribbean called St Vincent, where African people and the Kalinago people of the island became one people together, with their own language, their own food and their own drums. Then, long ago, they were made to leave the island they loved, and they crossed the sea with almost nothing.

They landed on the coast of Central America. And there, on new beaches, in Belize and Honduras and Guatemala and Nicaragua, they built everything again.

Their drums are made from hollowed logs with skins stretched over them. There is a big deep one called the segunda, that goes boom, and a smaller high one called the primero, that dances all over the top of it. When they play together the sound arrives in your chest before it arrives in your ears.

Their language, and their music, and their dancing are so precious that the whole world agreed to protect them, and put them on a list of treasures that belong to everybody.

By the end of Settlement Day the drummers' hands are sore and the little ones have fallen asleep on shoulders, still holding their palm leaves.

The people who crossed the sea are home.

Goodnight, Belize. Sleep well.