Belize

With such an abundance of food-producing plants here in the Toledo district, there is always a new food experience to be had. Gomier is an old friend from previous visits, and the proprietor and chef at his small restaurant by the sea (here's a nice piece about him from the Esperanza Project). He prepares vegetarian and fish-based dishes, and is often credited with providing some of the best meals available in Punta Gorda.

Jillian and I were lucky to get together with Gomier for a lesson in preparing cashews. It's a fairly simple process, but unique and fun in its own way. Best of all is at the end you have cashews to munch on!

These are the raw cashews in their shell. Raw cashews contain a toxin related to poison ivy which can be removed by fire...

With the help from a fire below, the cashews slowly catch on fire and blacken. Beware of the smoke ~ as I learned over the next few weeks, the toxin is burned off and present in the smoke. An unpleasant rash, very similar to poison ivy, results ~ for me the rashes lasted for about two weeks.

This is Gomier handling the burning cashews. Here, he is removing them from the fire, as they are now burning on their own.

Here in southern Belize, where I'm slowly working on dissertation research, it's hard to miss the influence of the Church on the local populations. There are a variety of churches trying to position themselves as the faith of choice here in Punta Gorda and in the villages of Toledo. Roman Catholics seem to be the most rooted here in the region, as evidenced by the many RC schools scattered throughout the district. However, Protestants continue to make inroads, and are quickly becoming a force in religious lives of many.

The Garinagu (singular and adjective - Garifuna) are an afro-indigenous ethnic group living primarily along the Caribbean coast of Central America.  The Garinagu are descended from West Africans brought to the Americas to be enslaved.  They escaped a shipwreck in the Caribbean and intermarried with an already mixed Amerindian group, the Carib-Arawak people, living on the island of St. Vincent.  These Amerindian people were comprised of Arawak women and Carib men, from two distinct indigenous groups originating in South America, who migrated independently to the Caribbean.  The people resulting from the intermarriage of West African, Arawak, and Carib, were the Garinagu.  Europeans distinguised the Black Caribs from the Red or Yellow Caribs, who were not descendents of intermarriages with West Africans.  In 1797, the British permanently exiled the Black Caribs to the island of Roatan, off the coast of Honduras, and from there they spread to mainland Central America.