Garifunas Adding Color To The Bronx! by Isha Gutierrez-Sumner

Garifunas Adding Color To The Bronx!

by Isha Gutierrez-Sumner

Every Friday, I travel back to the coastal village of my youth in Honduras with our familiar native Garifuna language where pleasantries like “idabiña” or “gundatina narihinibu” (how are you? It’s good to see you) abound. San Juan Tela, located in the northern Caribbean coast, has always survived and flourished on the strength of its community, where we help and serve one another. In Garifuna, it’s called “Wideha,” translated as “We’re gonna help!”

These coastal journeys back home have none of the warm sand; the abundant and ripe coconut trees don’t sway from that familiar cool breeze; boats are not coming in with Garifuna fisherman hauling in their catch from the morning’s work; there are no sounds of women laughing and singing in tandem as they do chores like laundry or their communal cooking.

These weekly journeys take me close to the Bronx Zoo, off Southern Boulevard, to continue that tradition of looking out for one another as I partake in volunteering for Garifuna Community Services. GCS works with newly arrived immigrants,

The Garifuna Flag.

The flag of Honduras.

providing help in the form of legal information on immigration status, and health and housing services. In the cold months they come for donations of warm clothes, and year-round, they come for that familiar community and a hot, familiar meal. “Wideha” That’s how we make it happen in the BX.

In the current political and social climate in America, few places have the ability and willingness to service diverse immigrant communities like the Bronx. Since I arrived 30 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Garinagu have migrated from villages like mine in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, in search of a better quality of life, more stability, safety and community. The vast majority of my people have sought refuge in community of The Bronx.

Ours is a culture, rich in tradition, that finds expression in our language, music, dance, and most joyfully, in our cuisine. In my soon-to-be a self-published Garifuna cookbook, “Weiga, which means “Let’s Eat!” I talk about what I call our 4 Big Cs: Coconut, Cassava, Community and Continuity. I have learned great lessons in