As we pass Livingston, we are told about the upcoming Garifuna-festival, so why not, we think, let’s stay a bit. The atlantic shores of Guatemala were also settled by the Garinagu way back, which makes Livingston the only town in the country where every window plays reggae, the majority of the population is black and everyone is a musical talent. This became obvious at once when the small girl, busy frying potatoes in the street gave us such a improvisation of a well-known song that every non-local person turned around to look where does this voice come from.
This festival is the Garifuna Settlement Day here, a different day at every Garifuna village along the coast. The program is similar everywhere, a group of locals decorate some canoes and re-enact the flight, arrival and first years of life of their ancestors. (more…)

Black bodies glitter in the white foam, reggae fills the air, a huge local woman is busy working on her Saturday “chickin” barbecue; the waves push gently against the heaps of turf under the coconut palms, everything is still, only a few frigate birds sail in the air above the reef. On board the sailboat everyone is asleep, only one of us holds a fishing-rod lazily, we hardly make any way in the calm air as the graffiti of seagulls and pelicans follows us along bright-blue piers. (more…)

Although according to some the word Garifuna is not a word for the language itself, but a plural of Garinagu, the Garinagu themselves couldn’t care less.
- Yo man -, they nod from behind their dreadlocks, – Garinagu, yessss, Garifuna!
The Garifuna culture, tracing it’s routes back to only a couple of centuries, is the most prominent along the coast of Belize. (more…)