UCB celebrates Garifuna Settlement Day

Today students at the University College of Belize took a little time off from class to join in the Garifuna Settlement Day Celebrations, The students held a cultural day to learn more about the Garifuna language, food and clothing. The activity was planned by UCB’s Southern Students Association.

Gertrude Joseph

“Is to bring the Garifuna culture to UCB and Belize City itself, because we find that a lot of people aren’t really aware of what the Garifuna culture is suppose to be about like last week Thursday, we were wearing our cultural outfits and people were asking questions like are you coming to do a dance or is this your costume or you know people are not really aware of what this outfit is suppose to mean and why we put it on and other stuff like our food. Many people do not know many of the food. People are used to the Hodut but we have many other cultural foods you know so basically that is what we want to do to do to bring the Garifuna culture here to UCB.”

“There is an exhibition and that exhibition we have utensils used by the Garinagu, we have some of the clothes they use to wear and what we found out is that many of the clothes that they had we have now just in fancier styles and we have some to the foods and some of them are on display and some of them are for sale.”

Punta Rebels and Ugundani dance group performed at the Cultural Day.