The Senior James Pouchie of Calabash Bight

The soft-spoken gentle man celebrates his birthday on December 29. He is the second of 13 children born to Mr. Yule Wendell Pouchie and Mrs. Sera Pouchie. Life has not been easy, but Mr. Pouchie talks of his journey through this world with a satisfied smile on his face. The way he sees it, life has been good to him. He remembers the path that he has had to follow on this journey with fondness and gratitude.

At a young age, while his younger siblings were going to school, he had to help his father on the family farm where they grew yucca root, bananas and coco which they sold around the island and in La Ceiba. If business was good on the mainland, his father would send for more produce. “I would load the paddling dory with the produce and take it to Capt. Ray’s boat on Pointed Cay, now Oak Ridge Point, to be shipped to La Ceiba,” he says.

As a teenager, Mr. Pouchie got the opportunity to travel and work as a sailor in the US but needed his father’s permission to get his passport. After Mr. Pouchie insisted that he needed to work to help with his younger sibling: six younger brothers and five younger sisters, his father reluctantly agreed for him to travel to the US. “Because there were no roads back then, I had to paddle to Coxen Hole to pick up my passport. I was very excited,” he recalls.

I like the independence of being my own boss.

Mr. Pouchie worked on the boat in Texas ‘heading’ shrimp, something he became an expert at doing. While most boat hands head one shrimp at a time, he was heading one in each hand. For a while back then, the white captains would only work with an all-white crew while the black captains would work with an all-black crew. You had the ‘white boats’ and the ‘black boats,’ said Mr. Pouchie abut the segregation in US fishing industry.

While working in the US, Mr. Pouchie earned $150 per month, most of which he would send most back to his family. One time a son of one of his captains tried to cheat him out of his wages by paying him 50% less than what he was supposed to earn. Not accepting the injustice, he refused to work until the boss agreed to pay him what he had rightfully earned. The captain was afraid of losing the one worker who could do the job of two men and, in the end, agreed to pay him.

A religious man, Mr. Pouchie was baptized in the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Calabash Bight where his father was once the leader, and where Mr. Pouchie also spent a stint as a preacher, something he loved doing.

James Wendell Pouchie is as healthy as many 20-year-olds. He does not take any kind of medications and his diet consists of mostly seafood. “I love fried bara [barracuda] and I eat a piece of meat every now and then,” he says. He has, however, suffered many accidents. At the age of 13 he accidentally split his left knee in two with a machete and later he busted a vein in his left arm while lifting a load on the farm. At the age of 40, while hunting deer, he stood up on a stump and the shot gun slipped out of his hands, hit the ground, discharged, and hit his left arm leading to an amputation from the joint down. After losing his arm, Mr. Pouchie had to abandon his profession as a seaman. He loves to tap dance and he says he talks to God every morning and evening. “If you always remember God, you would not worry with the world.”

Mr. Pouchie enjoys the simple life; he says that there is too much foolishness happening with technology, he had a cell phone, but gave it away. “I could live without a phone”, he says. “It’s too much torment and it’s hard handling it with one hand.”

Mrs. Jessie Cooper on her porch of her Oak Ridge home.

Mrs. Jessie Cooper Preserves the Collective Memory of Oak Ridge

While families and friends helped each other out, the only Hondurans she ever encountered were the teachers at the Francisco Morazan School in Oak Ridge. “I didn’t want to learn Spanish and I still don’t,” says Mrs. Cooper. Oak Ridge had no roads, there was no police, no tax men, no Honduran military. “My father’s family wouldn’t allow Spaniards to land here until the 1950s,” recalls Ms. Cooper.

“Every Wednesday we would do embroidery and every Saturday there would be a dance. There was music everywhere,” recalls Mrs. Cooper.”Music is what I miss the most.” When she was 16, Mr. Hugh Parry, from England gave her a Brownie camera. The young girl put the camera to good use documenting happenings on the Cay.

She remembers an American seaplane that landed in Oak Ridge in 1942 investigating reports of islanders selling fuel to German U-boats. “They came in very low, skimmed and landed in the mangroves. People pulled them out,” remembers Mrs. Cooper, “the boat was so heavy and stuck in the mangroves so deep it had to drop a bomb in the 4-5 feet of water for it to be freed.” A PT boat, torpedo-armed fast attack craft, from an American Naval base at Puerto Castilla soon came to help. Mrs. Cooper remembers a serviceman who then agreed to fly on top of the wing in order balance the plane. “He fell in the water as the plane was launching. He got bruised up,” says Mrs. Cooper who documented the entire episode with her camera. After that came the occasional, but memorable visits by American officers stationed in Puerto Castilla.

While there was no rationing, food supplies were short. “We used to make war cake: no eggs and no butter,” Mrs. Cooper remembers. Coopers owned land from Jonesville to Diamond Rock and people would bring her vegetables, fruits. “It was a sharecropping system.” There was very little money circulating back in these days. One coin that was in use was a metal “Cooper coin” that the family had to be redeemed at their stores. The Cooper’s farm produced many fruits, vegetables and had cows, pigs, chickens and deer.

Life on the island, away from urban areas and many advantages of technology and medicine brought hardships as well. “I was eight months pregnant and had to go to La Ceiba,” remembers Ms. Cooper. Coming on the Edith-Mac boat from Coxen Hole to the coast was an all night affair. The boat transported cattle, cargo and people. “I had to lie down on dock on two Coca-Cola cases,” remembers the Mrs. Cooper, reflecting on the arduous passage.

Married for 21 years to Mr. James Cooper she had three children: Larry, Walton and Alana. Today Mrs. Jessie is a happy nonagenarian who loves spending time with her daughter Alana. She is energetic, fit and full optimism.

Mrs. Jessie Cooper with younger sister in 1930’s.

Dona Lucia with her healing plants.

Doña Lucia Leads a Quiet Life Surrounded by Family and Plants

Lucia Avila-Garcia was born in Rio Esteban in 1936. She has made her living like her parents did: cultivating the soil and raising plants and animals. Her mother Guadalupe was a farmer and her father Santos was a carpenter and cayuco maker on the north coast.

She remembers summary execution of Garifuna community men in 1930s and 40s. “The soldiers would come. They asked you to put on your best clothes for a photograph. Then they would shoot you.” This took place during the presidency of Tiburcio Carias Andino from 1933 to 1949. Hundreds of Garifuna were massacred in that time and many left the country to save their lives. “I still was frightened of loud noises when I moved to Roatan,” remembers Doña Lucia.

In 1966 Doña Lucia boarded a cayuco that sailed towards the biggest of the Bay Islands. She moved to Punta Gorda when there were only a couple hundred people living there. “If you had something you shared it. If you made cassava bread, everybody helped out,” Doña Lucia remembers.

The soldiers would come. They asked you to put on your best clothes for a photograph. Then they would shoot you

Doña Izidria Mejilla, of Balfate took Lucia under her wing and taught her all about plants and healing. Doña Lucia has no books, no notes, nothing has been written of her knowledge of the island plants, herbs and trees. It is all word of mouth, a collective memory passed from one person to the next. A valerian root is fermenting in a aluminum pot next to her house. “It’s good for diabetes, strength. I’ve been fermenting it for a week,” says Doña Lucia. Her knowledge about plants and healing also came during visions she would get in her dreams where one of her ancestors, or deceased friends would suggest a use of a particular plant. “This is what we believe.”

Her humble Punta Gorda home is painted with a fading blue paint and surrounded by dozens of trees and plants. Each plant has a special, happy place with just the adequate moisture from the nearby creek and needed sunlight or shade.“I don’t feel strong in my knees, but in my heart and in my mind I feel useful,” says Doña Lucia.

The Garifuna healer gave birth to 10 children and one was given to her sister to be raised. “This is how you did it in those days,” says Doña Lucia, who has 30 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

As she walks behind her home, she picks up a handful of coconut threads and drops them into dozens of crab holes that dot her seaside property. While in most places on the island the blue crabs are hunted for food and sport, Doña Lucia sees their value and helps these creatures.

“You don’t see things like they used to be,” says Doña Lucia. “There was respect, humility. People lost all of this. There was money, but there was also love.”