With two of these 5-gallon buckets brimming with soiled clothing, Everista, who is barely taller than two buckets stacked, balances the clothes with a tub full of bright orange and blue soap balls, a weathered scrubbing brush and powder detergent. Careful not to drop anything, she walks briskly toward the creek, her bare feet bending over pebbles and rocks along the way.

“When my mom get baby,” says Everista, who’s been doing the family’s laundry every day since she was 10, “I stay and help.”

Helping means taking over the many chores her older sister Teresa Oh, 28, left behind when she started her own family. The sisters meet at the creek, a small ravine in the village of Santa Rosa, Belize, to wash.

Teresa, in a white-lace bra and tummy-control spandex shorts, sits waist deep in murky creek water. She cleans a chicken on one of the cement slabs used for washing clothes.

While her two youngest sons splash and swim in the current of the creek, Teresa cuts her chicken with precision.       

She lifts it up, throws it on the slab with a smack.

Cuts off a leg.

Lifts it up and throws it down again. Smack.

Cuts off a wing.

Smack.

Smack.

A neat pile of chicken parts—breast, thighs and wings—rest on the slab, while leftover pieces of skin and fat float down the river.  Sardines smack at the surface attempting to catch pieces before the two pot-bellied boys grab the chicken parts and throw them farther down the creek to awaiting dogs.

The girls chatter in Mopan Mayan while they work. Their words, a deep growl, roll off their tongues like spit. Teresa moves onto cleaning her boys with the same precision. The boys giggle, wriggle and laugh as their mother runs wrinkled fingers and waxy soap all over their mahogany skin. They squint and flash toothy smiles past soap-bubble beards.

Everista scrubs a pair of her father’s pants with a plastic bristled brush so ferociously her gold hoop earrings swing with the rhythm. Each garment is scrubbed, rubbed clean on her coarse slab, rinsed in the creek and then snapped back into her buckets.

Everista and Teresa, modern Mayans in Belize, have learned how to do laundry, clean chickens, wash children and function in society from their mother. She learned everything from her mother. The Mayans, untouched by the modern world, have mirrored thier ancestors for years. But Everista, her family and their village in Santa Rosa have no idea they come from greatness.

 Sketching the Past

Around the world, the ancient Mayans have been hailed as creators of one of mankind’s greatest civilizations. While textbooks vary, most agree that the Mayans flourished for 2,000 years from about 400 B.C. to 1524 A.D. before their mysterious decline. The Mayans inhabited varied regions in Mesoamerica—the entire Yucatan peninsula, parts of Mexico, the southern mountains of Guatamala, Honduras, Belize and El Salvador.

During this time, millions of Mayans were supported by an array of rich crops and bountiful rainforests. Some lived in small villages. Others lived in large cities marked by roadways, plazas, markets, elaborate temples, monuments and palaces. These cities rose up from the rainforest that surrounded them. To this day, remnants of these cities continue to intrigue archeologists because of their sophistication.

Archeologists are also intrigued by the Mayans’ unprecendented advancements. At the time, Mayans were the only people in the Americas to develop a writing system—one so intricate that scholars still struggle to decipher it today. Their mathematical notation systems were far more sophisticated than European contemporaries. They also built cities of pyramids, made decorative pottery, paintings, carved statues and created skillfully wove textiles. While the Mayans domesticated coco beans, chile peppers and corn, they were also busy recording the movements of the planet Venus, predicting eclipses of the sun and the moon, creating an elaborate religion and inventing a complex calendar adopted by other Mesoamerican nations such as the Aztecs.

Sometimes this rich history creeps into the Oh household. Everista and her younger sister Eudesia, 14, drag out a raggedy red paper folder filled with sketches from their mother’s room. They plop down on Eudesia’s wood-plank bed and leaf through the drawings of ancient Mayan gods and figures from the old calendar. The sketches are a peek into the Mayans’ rich past. Wilfride Oh, mother to Everista and 10 others, says she traced the figures from a book she found. 

“I saw the book in Toledo,” she says. “I asked to borrow it to make sketches.”

She didn’t know what the images were, she says, but she had a reason for sketching them. When her kids aren’t looking through the folder, Wilfride uses the sketches to make embroidery and other “authentic” Mayan crafts. To make a little extra money for her family, Wilfride sells her crafts to a store about 30 minutes away in a town called Maya Centre.

“It’s a tourist shop,” she says with a grin.

At the Maya Centre Women’s Group, where Wilfride sells her homemade goods, wood shelves hold Mayan masks, wooden plaques with ancient figures carved onto them, trinkets, bead necklaces, woven baskets and other Mayan textiles. Many of these goods are akin to ancient crafts. Like their ancestors, modern Mayans embroider, weave, create baskets, stone carvings, wood carvings and pottery. Now instead of these items being used for personal or household use, for worship or trade, they’re sold door to door by Mayan women or at shops like the one in Maya Centre.

Eretilda Bolon, 21, watches the shop’s counter. She says that today’s Mayans still keep a few passed-down traditions alive like their language, their dress and even their food. But Eretilda confesses, the Mayans of the Stann Creek District lost the stories and the history of their culture a long time ago.

“If you asked about ancient Mayans [here], I don’t think they would have a clue,” she says.

 Learning the Deer Dance

In June 2005, the villagers of San Roman, only a five-minute walk from Santa Rosa, ran a fundraiser. Charitina Tush, whose husband owns the village’s only store, says the town had seen other villages hold traditional Mayan deer dances to raise money. Leading from others’ example, like San Antonio in the Toledo district, San Roman began preparing for the dance. Unfortunately, no one in the village knew how to perform it.

“Our parents and grandparents just don’t teach us those things,” Charitina says. “We don’t really have a history [of it] or where it all came from.”

The performance, although Christianized throughout the years, derives from a traditional nine-day dance depicting the relationship between humanity and nature. The dance shows a traditional Mayan hunt and was originally intended to bring success to hunters. Dancers, representing hunters, dogs, deer, monkeys and other animals, are recognizable through different wooden masks and costumes. Today the dance serves as a tourist attraction and money maker for poor villages like San Roman.

To learn the dance San Roman enlisted the help of Mayans in Guatemala who still practice traditional dances. These Mayans taught the villagers the dance and loaned all the masks and costumes they needed. The deer dance, which hadn’t been performed in the area for more than 10 years, took about three months to learn.

At the event, hundreds of Mayans and residents from surrounding areas came to observe the dance but many were confused.

“I personally don’t understand a lot of it [the dance],” Charitina says. “I’ve heard it’s a reenactment of ancient Mayan life.”

Repercussions of Christianity

Every Wednesday and Sunday at least one member of the Oh family ventures to church. Every Wednesday, Everista, Teresa and Wilfride walk to the Baptist church only one house away.

When they enter the small one-room, cement-walled building with paper mache Christmas decorations adorning the walls, they sit on frayed wood benches. A young man, looking no older than 16, steps forward from a sign made with scraps of cloth that reads “Sufferers of Christ.” He begins the service in a wary high-pitched voice.

The men on the left and the women on the right follow his instructions. With the rest of the congregants, Teresa and Wilfride walk to a small wood podium used as an altar. They breast feed their babies with one hand, kneel down and cover their shut eyes with the other. They all begin to chant in Mopan, oblivious to the others reciting at different paces around them. The people get louder and their voices — overwhelmed with emotion — twinge with desperation as they continue. About three minutes pass. The chanter’s words trail off. They slowly stand up. Wilfride shuffles her way back to her seat, as she struggles to hold her baby and wipe the tears from her red, waterlogged eyes.

It’s hard to deny religion’s role in the lives of modern Mayans. In the Oh household, “I love Jesus” stickers cover the walls. Framed photos of Jesus adorn the doors, Ramon carries his keys on a lanyard that says, “I love Jesus” and the kids sing from Christian CDs after school. Ramon has a certificate from the World Bible School recognizing him for his studies in the Bible hanging in the main room of his hut.

 “We have Mayan Bibles now, and people started to educate themselves in the Bible,” Ramon says. “They believe the word of God is true.”

In Santa Rosa, 57 percent of the population is Catholic, according to the “Maya Atlas.” Only 9 percent of the Mayans in this region are non-denominational and 34 percent are some other form of Christianity. The Oh’s became Baptists 15-years ago when missionaries set up a new church in the village. Before they were Catholics just like their parents.

Ramon believes that the word of God has helped him raise 11 children. He says religion teaches his kids right from wrong. But Ramon also believes Christianity has played a role in the decline of traditional Mayan practices.

In Elizabeth Benson’s book, “The Maya World,” ancient Mayan religion was an intricate system directly correlating to the Mayans’ sacred calendar. According to Benson, ancient Mayans believed in 13 heavens with 13 sky deities presiding over each heaven. Nine underworlds also existed and were ruled by nine lords of the night. While it’s difficult to determine what all Mayans believed, most gods and goddesses related to forces of nature. These gods controlled the harvest and controlled when the people should cut and burn their fields and then plant. 

Because Gods could be malicious or benevolent, ancient Mayans held many ceremonies and rituals to appease them. At ceremonies ritual dances and prayers were performed. And there were offerings of food, precious stones, feathers and sacrificed animals.

Benson writes that when prayers were made for good crops, hunting or fishing the priests and the people would draw blood, “from their ears, lips or tongues as an offering to strengthen the prayers.” On occasion human sacrifice was required, but only in times of calamity — drought, famine or extreme illness.

Mayan religion is not completely understood by those who study it. Researchers only have ancient artifacts to guide them in the right direction. Modern Mayans have never known the ancient Mayan religion. Since Mr. Oh was a child, missionaries have been in and out of his life, instructing him how to live appropriately.

“Preachers are coming in and [saying] this is what you do,” he says. “It’s against God now to worship idols.”

Ramon says the preachers tell them the deer dance is a sin, as well as other traditional practices. Because the Oh family believes in the Christian God, they appease the preachers’ requests.

Down the road in San Roman at the Ministries of the Son of God Church, the town’s only school, the principal also recognizes the influence Christian religion has had on the Mayans.

Principal Gene Thomas says that denominations are taking root in every Mayan village. Most churches that come to these areas don’t offer the Mayans information about their culture, instead they strip them of it, he says.

“They’re not even conscious that it’s happening,” Gene says. “They’re moving to religion more than to their culture. They start to look down on their culture.”

 Educating the Mayans

The two-building school in San Roman, with a drab resemblance to a cheap motel, houses 436 students from San Roman and neighboring villages like Santa Rosa. Rooms are divided up into at least two classrooms by rolling chalk boards. The teachers scream to be heard over the other classrooms. Some don’t even get a room in the building. Eudesia Oh’s classroom is underneath a thatched roof outside.

The government provides no funding to the school, Principal Gene Thomas says. Their only contribution was the initial two buildings.

Under these circumstances educating Mayans about basics takes precedent over teaching them their ancient culture. Looking through the children’s books one will find instructions on proper hygiene, an atlas of Belize, math sets, number systems and the science of boiling water. In all the Oh children’s school books — ranging from the first years of primary school to the final year — only one book mentions ancient Mayans. It’s a caption labeling a picture of the ancient Mayan pyramid Chichen Itza in Yucatan, Mexico.

The school, which has only one Mayan teacher, is mainly comprised of Garifuna teachers — another culture of people in Belize. However, about 60 percent of the students at the school are Mayan. The school forces children to learn English as soon as they enter, causing barriers at the beginning.

School is attended from ages 5 to 14, but most children drop out before they reach 13. While the teachers have a hard time getting parents to care about education, they have an even harder time getting them to buy their children’s school books.

The Oh’s 16-year-old son is the only person in the family to have finished his schooling. Gene says the Mayan home life has a lot to do with why children drop out before they graduate from primary school.

“They don’t look at them as children anymore, so they take them out of school and start getting them ready for marriage,” he says.

Most Mayan children don’t take school seriously either. By the time they’re 10, they’re taking over more household responsibilities and helping their parents with newborns. Gene says it’s been hard to get Mayan children to participate in school.

He says, “Our biggest problems are motivating them to work.”

 Moving On

The reasons for the decline of the ancient Mayan empire are still largely contested. Some believe disease wiped out the great cities. Others believe a peasant revolt or a natural disaster was to blame. Whether an earthquake or deadly disease caused the fall of the ancient empire, thousands of Mayans survived and to this day continue to live in agricultural societies throughout South America.

However, according to Lieve Verbeeck, in her book “Linguistic Acculturation in Mopan Maya,” many Mayans fled their culturally rich lands in Guatemala, because of harsh rule, and escaped to Belize. Belizean Mayans are only fourth generation immigrants, struggling with minority status in the multi-cultural society.

Within Belize, Mayans migrate regularly. In the Stann Creek District Mayans came for land and jobs, Ramon Oh says. Many still come. Santa Rosa is populated by shrimp, fish and crop farms — great places for Mayans to work. Placencia, a tourist mecca 23 miles away, offers even more jobs. Ramon says many young kids move to Placencia to get jobs in the tourist industry, make money and then return home.

 Santa Rosa, founded in just 1972, houses 157 people. All of its 53 families hail from other parts of Belize. Wilfride was born in Toledo, Ramon in Punta Gorda and even Charitina is from San Antonio.

In the move from their more culturally rich homes, these Mayans have lost a lot. They’ve lost their cultural centers. In Toledo, the Toledo Maya Cultural Council insures modern Mayans are protected, are recognized by the government and remain educated about their great ancestry. Not even in Maya Centre does something like this exist in the Stann Creek region.

 Day to Day

Every day resembles the previous one for the Ohs. Wilfride minds her children, sweeps the house and helps prepare all the family’s meals. Eudesia cooks tortillas over a fire for breakfast and heads to school. Everista does the dishes outside with buckets of rain water and heads to the creek to do the family’s laundry. Ramon works on his farm of mangoes, citrus, rice, corn and beans. When he’s tired, he rests in a hammock slung across the kitchen. The younger boys play with marbles outside, blocking their shots from intruding turkeys and chickens. The baby is usually attached to her mother’s breast or slung from the ceiling in a sheet. And when someone has to use the bathroom, they go to the outhouse behind the kitchen. And when they want to get clean, they go back to the creek and wash themselves. The family has functioned this way for years.

The Ohs and other Mayans in this area have entered the year 2005 almost unscathed by modernity. And only within the past five years have there been instances where the modern world has infiltrated their lives.

“We just got electricity five years ago and this road was paved only two to three years ago,” Ramon says. “Before it was very dark...it’s changed people’s lifestyle.”

Now Ramon’s kids can stay up and study, and the churches can hold later services. Having electricity also means they can have a T.V., although it only gets one channel. Wilfride also has a small oven with four burners to help with cooking, although she prefers to cook over the hearth. The kids can listen to music on CD players, and Ramon and his wife can listen to the news on the radio without having to worry about batteries.

The newly paved road makes driving to Dangriga for supplies much easier and shorter. It also helps when there are medical emergencies. When Everista was tiny she fell on a nail. It went into her elbow and broke into two pieces. Ramon had to drive Everista to the nearest hospital, in Dangriga, more than two hours away. Now about an hour is shaved off that trip.

Despite these few conveniences, the Mayans of Stann Creek appear to be operating more like their ancient counterparts. Their reliance on the land mirrors that of their ancestors. The food they eat, how they do their chores and their social structure is almost an exact replica of ancient life with a few modern alterations.

Ramon says, “The only tradition we have is we live the same life.”

The irony of living like her ancestors, but knowing nothing about them is not lost on Charitina.

There are problems with not knowing your roots, she says. In school the children are asked to share things about their cultures. Charitina says they go to their parents for help, but their parents don’t know and can’t help them. There are also personal identity issues each Mayan struggles with, she says. Charitina has had her own struggles.

“It’s embarrassing sometimes when people find out you’re Mayan. They want to know about your history,” she says. “I just don’t know it.”