(Many of the fairs, festivals, and other wonderful food events that usually fill my calendar each spring have been postponed or cancelled. This post is based on celebrations in previous years.)
Judutu has two chief components; at this church event, it also entails a sharp division of labor along gender lines.
Judutu — sometimes spelled hudutu, as it's pronounced, and also called machuca — features a wad of pounded plantain and a bowl of coconut-based soup. For this event the kitchen prepared two versions, one golden and more coconutty, the other in the guise of a thin brown gravy. My bowl of the latter was bolstered by shrimp, conch, bluefish, and, ultimately, the plantain. At this church gathering, everyone I observed ate with a spoon, but reportedly judutu is also eaten by hand, much like the African plantain-cassava paste called fufu. For that you'd want a wad that wasn't so chunky.
The Garifuna people, also known as the Garinagu, have their own personal connection to Africa. In a series of tribulations, their ancestors were abducted into slavery, shipwrecked in the Caribbean, maltreated by the Caribs, and — after generations of intermarriage between Africans and the local population — exiled, in 1797, to coastal Central America. Most of the attendees at this gathering seemed to be from Honduras, as suggested by the church's mural of the diaspora.
At this and a previous event, judutu was the only savory dish, but one table was entirely dedicated to sweets, some labeled in both Garifuna and Spanish. Shown below: banana cake, being sliced; dabuledu, a coconut-ginger crisp; beteta (pan de camote), a sweet potato cake also touched with ginger; bimekakule (arroz dulce); and bownú (pan dulce).
At bottom, from my first visit: a percussion-heavy lineup of musicians that began to play as the food service wound down, in early afternoon. They were accompanied by a single wind instrument — a king helmet, held to the lips by the man standing at center left — and by a keyboardist and two female singers. The repetitive-sounding vocals, not that I understood a word, seemed very familiar to most of the audience; several ladies standing up front sang along while slowly turning 'round, one hand raised, eyes closed.
Garifuna Day
Evangelical Garifuna Council of Churches, 344 Brook Ave. (141st-142nd Sts.), Mott Haven, Bronx
www.Facebook.com/Evangelical-Garifuna-Council-Of-Churches-208176919254368
(The 2020 celebration has been cancelled)
