Monday, January 9, 2006

I wish I could write down everything that we talked about with Polo. We have had quite a few conversations with him over the past couple of days. He is fascinating. He’s been to New York, playing his music on Eastern Parkway and on 14th Street. He said Michael should do a story on immigrants in New York, how they cope with the winter. I had forgotten about winter. I was in a t-shirt and there were palm trees outside the window. I had completely forgotten that if I had not done something about it, I’d be shivering in a parka that that very moment.

He told us he couldn’t wait until the day when he could accuse every restaurant up and down the street of murder. He said there had been robbings of tourists at Siete Altares, a short distance away, and that it was assumed the blacks were behind them. So the tourist police had rounded up Garifuna at random and shot them as a lesson.

He was sitting in the shade across from Tilingo Lingo and we were standing in front of him in the street. He said he had it documented and he could list the names, and proceeded to do so. “Bernard died right there,” he said, pointing to a spot a few feet away. “Shot in the head.” It was our money that did it, according to Polo. Our money that funds the tourist police, anyway, which blacks are not allowed to be a part of.

He sat with us again while we ate, sometimes taking breaks to chat up some foreigners who were heading down to the beach. He’d come back talking about how much misinformation was out there.

Polo had told us that he used to be able to walk down to the end of the main street and fish right off the dock. That part of the water is now dirty, but we had hoped it would get better further down the beach, away from the main access point. After lunch we took a walk down there to find out.

After walking for an hour we had to conclude that the beach in Livingston is nasty, there are no two ways about it. It’s just wet, muddy sand that comes right up to the houses or fields, or whatever has been built at that edge of town. Mixed into the sand is assorted trash, with a heavy preference for soda bottles and diapers. And there was nowhere to sit – no clean dry sand or rocks or logs. The water is pretty, and there are some palm trees, but it’s not “beach” spot.

It was not a very nice walk, so on the way back we took a side road off the beach and walked back through the Garifuna community instead. Later Polo told us that we hadn’t seen the ORIGINAL community because if we had, we’d have said something specific. He wouldn’t tell us what we should have seen or what we would have said. Very mysterious.

 

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Kids.

Abandoned boat.

Livingston's beach.

More boats.

Another boat.