Paget's Belize Journal
The Preliminary Trip-
It Begins The Actual Stay-
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Dec 28, 1999 A Variety of Headwear-- I started this report sometime ago, to use when I was too busy to write. And this week is it. Although Belize has a heavy Caribbean influence, dreadlocks are not popular among the Garifuna, the middle class of which is quite traditionalist and conservative. They appear to believe that all men with dreads are cocaine addicts, so we don't see much of them in this part of the country. There are some fine heads of dreads in San Pedro and Belize City, however, and I'm sure they're not all coke heads. Here, stylish hairdos on men and women, boys and girls are mostly many intricate braid variations, which are called corn rows in the states. They are so beautiful, though, I'm sure they have much more lyrical names here but I don't know what they are. The most common patterns are of course, the traditional, parallel rows across the scalp from forehead to nape of the neck or from ear to ear. Sometimes they are tiny little rows of braided hair, sometimes wider braids and sometimes just rolls and twists. The smaller the braid, the longer it takes to do a headfull, of course and the more impressive. Some of the patterns are astounding--chevrons, basket weaves, spirals, swirls, keyhole. I sat behind a woman on the bus once who had the most intricate abstract twisted and braided pattern, it was like a jungle scene with a waterfall and trees and vines suggested. I have no idea if this is what she (her mother, sister, hairdresser) intended, but she certainly was the kind of young woman who could carry it off. I haven't seen that approach again though. One of my favorites is found most often on younger children whose hair isn't very long yet. In this technique, the braids come both up from the nape and back from the forehead and end in a sort of short, stand-up fanned ruff running from ear to ear up over the crown of the head. Sort of like Queen Victoria. On even younger children, there's not enough hair to make braids in rows, so each little patch of hair is braided into a braid that just sticks straight out. Makes them look like adorable little hedgehogs. Of course, the little Mayan babies have such straight, coarse hair, they look like little hedgehogs with no help at all. The Mayan babies have it better, too, because they don't have to sit through the braiding, which is pretty painful. Makes for a pretty tough head by the time you're two. Some of the younger girls (young adults) have elaborate extensions that are then looped up into intricate buns and swirls. There are some pretty bad extensions running around, too and it is a matter of some social debate whether extensions are culturally pure. Aside from being artificial, I think they are. J.C.'s girlfriend came in one day with her own hair just separated into strands and then twisted into the real thing what extensions are supposed to look like, which I had never seen before and it was beautiful. She says it's a pain though, because it takes a long time to do it and it doesn't last very well through sleeping. The braids, of course, last for along time. Which is good because some of the hairdos take 8 or more hours to create. Another major use of extensions is by women who are very poor and don't do anything to their hair except cut it very short. Many of them have a hat or turban and extensions combination that they wear when they're going to church or some other special affair. Many of the better-off middle-aged women have their hair straightened and smoothed into very sleek 'dos and most of the middle-aged and older men just wear very short hair. The more well-to-do women who don't do braids all have straw hats that they wear to church. There are lots of locally woven hats around, but these are just for tourists, farmers and fishermen. The women's Sunday hats are manufactured, mostly white, black or natural with colored ribbons or flowers. And I've seen a few yellow, one blue, two red and a lavender. I have no idea where they get them because it's certainly not at any store I've been to here. I always try to be sitting on my balcony on Sunday morning when church gets out because it's such a nice fashion parade from above, sort of like bouquets of flowers strolling down the street. This is mostly about the middle class, of course, professionals and shopkeepers. The blue collar folks are more likely just to have short hair. Partly because they carry things around on their heads, both men and women. Well, maybe not men. I've never seen an adult male do it, just teenagers. They coil up a cloth into a circlet around the head at the very top to make a base for the load. They can carry things that look very unwieldy and very heavy. I haven't had a chance to observe how you get those big loads balanced initially, though and it's not very common. Often it's just a load of laundry or some groceries. The one person I see frequently with big loads is our neighborhood bag lady (no such thing as a shopping cart in Dangriga). She can carry elaborate loads on her head and move along at a very good clip in her flip-flops, singing and gesturing expansively. Once I saw her striding along carrying a trunk full of stuff on her head and bags of more stuff on each arm! And once a big box, about 3 ft. long that she had vertically on her head. That one, she balanced with a hand, though. She tells me her job is finding things. She does this by coming around every morning about 6:00 and looking in all the yards to see if anyone left anything valuable out the night before. She gives fair warning by making a lot of noise. Usually she's pretty happy and it's some kind of morning song with lots of trilling and then sea chantey kind of rhythms. On the days when she's mad, though, everyone stays out of her way. Then, the major diatribe is against Americans, whites, Hispanics, rich people, men and dogs in that order. And since in her mind I fit 3 out of 6 categories, I make sure she's well down the block before I go out on the balcony for morning coffee. I do have some more Christmas adventures to report on, I hope
to get to them this week yet. Hope you're all ready for the New
Year! |
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