Tonya spends a meaningful summer in Nicaragua.
	Living Language We learned a few Garifuna phrases to use with our new friends. Try them out on your friends! Garifuna/English Ma' buiga/Hello Buita binafi/Good morning Ida Bina?/How are you? Magadietina/I am well

Discovering a New Culture

By Tonya Leslie, staff writer

I got the summer blues. You know—the days were hot, the nights were hotter. I needed to get away. I wanted to do something fun and exciting, but meaningful as well. So I signed up with a group of educators and set off for Orinoco to meet the Garifuna.

Orinoco is a small village on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua in Central America. The Garifuna is one of six ethnic groups that live there.

A Strong History

The Garifuna have a really interesting story. They are the descendents of enslaved African people who were shipwrecked in St. Vincent. They were exiled to Central America and now live in Belize, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The Garifuna of Nicaragua live on the Atlantic Coast in Orinoco. Most of the Atlantic Caribbean Coast was operated under British rule for years. So the Garifuna speak English. But they also speak their own language, Garifuna.

Their language is a unique mix of African, Spanish, and other languages. Because they live in Orinoco, which is relatively isolated from the rest of Nicaragua, they retain a lot of their traditional ways.

Getting There

To get to Orinoco you have to travel in a small boat called a panga. Once there, we walked right into town to our friend's house. The first thing I noticed about Orinoco was how green and lush it was. There were children playing around in a large field filled with cows. The cows, horses, and other animals roam around freely. In the morning they go to feed in the lush grasses behind the village. In the late afternoon they return on their own interrupting basketball games and children's play. It's funny because no one calls them. They just come back on their own at the right time.

Orinoco is a small village of about 1,000 people. Some live in concrete houses, others live in traditional houses made of wood with thatched roofs. A lot of people came out to visit us.

Day and Night

We spent most of the day eating yummy fresh fruits like mangoes and pineapples and hanging out with the children of the village. We taught them some new games like double dutch. But in the afternoon it got really hot and everyone went home for a late afternoon nap.

In the early evening everyone came out again. The adults were going about their day cleaning house and doing laundry (by hand) while the children were playing. We helped out around the house that we stayed at, bringing up water from the well and looking for ripe pineapples to eat for dinner. See, the Garifuna's mostly live off everything they have in their village. They get their own water from wells, raise their own livestock, and plant their own trees.

That evening the village gathered by our house—one of the few with an electric generator in the town. But we walked away from the lights and walked out to the wharf where we could see lights we rarely get to see in New York City—the lights of the stars. It was absolutely beautiful.