People from crawfish rock builds a palapa.

Thatched Roof Construction Business is Booming

On the Jackson-Marbella road hundreds of cohoon palms are within an easy reach of the palapa builders. The younger harvested palms are around 25-30 years old, some are 50 feet tall and as old at a century. They were planted at the height of the Standard Fruit Company’s boom days in Honduras.

Around 150 palms from roughly a dozen cohoon palms are needed to build two large palapas. In order to get this quantity of palms a crew of four men works hand in hand. One man uses a ladder to climb the cohoon palm tree, and then with the machete he cuts the palm leaf off. Another helper breaks the fall of the cohoon so it doesn’t get damaged on impact. “There are many people building palapas, but Ramon [Armijo] is the best,” says Lucas Javier Martinez, a local helping Ramon load the palms onto a truck.

The crew brought a 12-year-old boy to help with work. “If you don’t teach the kids how to work they become thieves and robbers,” says Martinez. Once harvested, the cohoon fronds are then split into two down the length of the stem and dried for a week or more.

The palms are then attached with string to the wood structure of the palapa: rafters, ridges and posts. There are one-pole palapas, two-pole palapas and large multi-pole palapas. While Ramon Armijo was preparing to build a large 12 foot by 14 foot palapa, another experienced palapa builder from Crawfish Rock was building one over the dining area of a house deck. “You’ve got to do everything on full moon. You got to get the posts on full moon. Everything has to be done of full moon,” says Celso Connor. A palapa, if well maintained, can last well over a decade. The secret of a long lasting palapa is to quickly replace worn pieces of thatch.

There is a science and an art to building a perfect Roatan palapa. The palm leaves can be picked year round, but when picked during the full moon, they are said to be sturdier and last longer. “If you pick it right it will last six years, if you pick it wrong it won’t last six months,” says Armijo. “I didn’t used to believe it, but now I do.”

Scientific studies confirm this. “Palm leaves harvested during the full moon had higher total C, hemicellulose, complex C and lower Ca concentrations. These chemical changes should make palm leaves less susceptible to herbivory and more durable when harvested,” writes Kristiina A. Vogt in a Federal Food Safety report. These correlations between plants and animals based on lunar cycle has been known by natives for millennia.

Mrs. Daya holds the tools of her midwife’s a pincer, two paits of scissors, from a toll box donated by UNICEF.

A Roatanian who helped deliver 147 babies

Before Roatan Hospital opened its doors, every baby on the island was born with the aide of a midwife, usually at home. Prior to 1989 a hardy core of caring, knowledgeable midwives helped to bring many generations of Roatanians into this world. In French Harbour there was Elle Hydes, in Oak Ridge there was Truby Puchie. Coxen Hole had Bernadina Palmer, Grace Pryce, Estella Dilbert and Lizzy Lindo.

Genevra ‘Daya’ Brooks, 93, is one such special person. She was born on June 23, 1924 in Flowers Bay on an island that was completely different  than today. “We slaughtered a cow on Friday and we ate it on Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. People would take their sacks of copra and a few coconuts and paddled to the ship to trade for beans and rice,” Mrs. Daya remembers.

Mrs. Genevra has never met her father Peter Brooks who moved to Tela before she was born. She and her four older brothers were brought up by her mother Virginia Allen who was also a local midwife. “We were raised by God’s help, hard labor and help of family,” says Mrs. Daya who completed six grades at the local Juan Brooks school.

I delivered some by the foot. We say that ‘they stepped out of their mother’s womb

At 25, Mrs. Daya married and moved out of her mother’s house. She supported her family by cooking, baking and raised five children: “I was like a spider. When a spider is born it begins to work.”

Mrs. Daya also took care of several ailing family members. For 30 years she assisted a disabled brother, and for 31 years she took care of her son who was paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair. When Daya’s mother began losing her sight, Mrs. Daya took her in and for 25 years tended to her every need until her mother Virginia passed at 102 years old. “I have no regrets, I am happy,” Mrs. Daya says.

It was her mother who taught her daughter how to deliver babies. Mrs. Daya delivered her first baby when she was in her late 30-ies. Her very first baby was Dr. Jackie Woods, a local girl who became a doctor. All-in-all Mrs. Daya has delivered 147 babies.

After each birth Mrs. Daya would massage the mother’s belly and push the stretched skin upward and then tightly wrap the stomach with “brown cotton.” This procedure would help in quickly tightening the skin. “You skin stretches. It takes nine months for baby to come out and it takes nine months for the skin to go in. That is the secret of the belly,” Mrs. Daya says.

Her wisdom comes not form medical books but from experience. “The best time to have a baby is in the first quarter of the moon. Everything is loose then. On the full moon everything is tight: hips, skin. We relate to the moon cycles,” Mrs. Daya explains.

Mrs. Daya would charge 45 Lempiras for delivering a baby and with the earnings she built a beautiful wooden house just across the street from the Church of God school in Coxen Hole. Today that house is full of visiting friends, neighbors, family and an occasional grateful child she helped into this world. “Jesus had no doctor. He was born in the manger ” says Mrs. Daya. “I am proud to be 93 years old and be able to take care of myself; proud of delivering all these babies.”

Even though she retired, in her late seventies Mrs. Daya delivered her last baby. “’Ms. Daya you stopped working, but for God’s sake help us out,’” she recalls a neighbor at her door asking for help. Ms. Daya rushed to the house and cut the umbilical cord. “I could still deliver babies today, if I had to,” she says opening her aluminum toolbox that contained all her tools needed in deliveries.