Day 14, Sunday, March 8, 2009: Blue Creek, Cultural Night

The last night of our stay at Blue Creek, our group walked down the rutted path to the house of a local Mayan, Geraldo. There we experienced true Mayan culture. We sat in a loose circle, our bare legs stretched out over the cold, sod floor. A washbasin was located in the corner of the home. Three pairs of large brown eyes peaked shyly around a wooden partition, waiting in anticipation for the music to commence. A large wooden mass draped in a tarp was set just off center in the simple room. The home was sparsely decorated, except for the essential items needed for living. Three men, including Ignasio—the local Shaman who we had met two nights before—walked over to the draped instrument, and pulled the tarp away from its shiny, unblemished surface. The wood was a reddish mahogany, the grains hardly visible in the low light conditions. People pulled digital cameras from their sweatshirt pockets, and snapped pictures of the enormous xylophone that lay before them. It stood about three feet off of the ground, supported by four thin mahogany legs. Conical shaped amplifiers dropped down from each wooden key to provide a loud, unfamiliar, yet pleasing sound. The three men began to play with their wooden sticks, the vibrations resonating from the polished wood. A man stepped from behind the wooden partition. In his hand, he held a tattered, navy bandanna. A woman soon followed, her floor length green skirt billowing with each step she took. He whirled the threadbare cloth above her head. The man called the woman to dance with a twirl of cloth, and in return, she complied by shuffling to the music. The dance was almost primal, like a call to mate, yet expressed through a series of shuffles and steps. They asked us to join them in their dance. It was relatively simple. We all participated in the awkward dance. The boys did not have any cloth to twirl, so they promptly removed their shirts to complete the picture. It was a hilarious sight, these American teenagers joining in the celebration of Mayan culture, flailing their arms awkwardly to the tropical music without a care in the world. The cameras flashed as well as the smiles. The bodies undulated to the music, packed tightly together in the stuffy room. The air was hot and sticky with the sweat of the dance. The Mayans intermingled with us until we didn’t know who was who. The bodies swayed disjointedly to the dance, and on that warm, dark night, I felt a sense of culmination. This was the perfect way to end our trip because the situation itself was imperfect. The imperfection was what made it beautiful: a mix of humorous dancing, and an old, stooped over Mayan man dancing crazily in the corner—largely due to the amount of cashew wine he had previously consumed. The eccentricity of that moment imprinted a memory in my mind that I shall never forget, and in that experience, I realized that our last night in Belize could not have gone better any other way.

- Devon L.