Carib Indians

Today we went on our first field trip in Roseau, Dominica. There were enough people to fill up three buses of students and life long learners. The bus took us up the mountain several miles for at least an hour. Our first stop was at Emerald Pool. This is a clear pool of water at the bottom of a waterfall. We had to walk a short distance through the rainforest to get to this pool and most of the students jumped right in and enjoyed themselves. It was quite a hike to get back up the hill but I made it.

We then got back on the bus and rode to an area where the “Carib Indians” live. According to a book that I purchased from these people, they moved into the Windward Islands from the Orinoco region of South America. According to their book the men called themselves “Karifuna” and the women “Karina”. It was the Europeans who called them Caribs.

Through the centuries, the Caribs have had to adjust to a European way of life, losing in the process most of their traditional ways of life, their religions and languages.

These people invited us into their homes and showed us the way they live. The first house that we visited was a father, mother and five sons. The boys were afraid of us and four of them ran and hid under the bed. The fifth son was on a laptop computer in the corner of a very sparsely furnished room. There was also a small television set in the “living room”. There were two bedrooms and the five boys all sleep in the same bed.

They have a separate building for cooking and a shower is outside, as well as a grass covered hut used for basket weaving. The father is very resourceful and told us he is a jack of all trades, master of none. He showed us his yard that is full of plants and trees from where they get the majority of their food.

At the second home we visited there was a young girl who showed us how they prepare dinner over an open fire. She had grated a taro plant into a fine powder and poured it dry into a pan over the fire. She flipped it one time and when it was done cooking, she cut it up and served it to us with mango jelly. It was delicious.

At the third home, the father showed us how they squeeze the sugar cane to get a sweet drink. Actually I think they said they start water to boil in the morning for breakfast and add some of the cocoa plant and then the juice from the sugar cane to make it sweet.

When we returned to the area where the buses were, the whole community had prepared a meal for us. There were two kinds of taro (one that was boiled and one that was fried), a mixture of fish and some grains, some small bread rolls with maybe a cheese spread and coconut candy. We saw a mother cow that had a baby feeding from her, so we assume that they got milk from the cow and made the cheese themselves.

It was fun to watch the little kids who were watching us wide-eyed and afraid of us. But then we heard the ice cream truck and they all ran for that. It seems like they live so primitively, yet they have current technology like cell phones, computers and televisions.

It was a wonderful excursion.