Lisa Lopes by Nancy Krulik

Author:Nancy Krulik
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2009-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine Looking Ahead … and Making Peace with the Past.

Lisa entered a new phase of her life. She no longer wanted to be the crazy party girl who made headlines around the world with her antics. She was looking for something deeper—something more meaningful.

What Lisa craved most was not the spodight, the parries, or the never-ending attention that had been heaped upon her over the past decade. What she wanted—needed—was peace and quiet. She was looking a place where she could leave “Left Eye” behind for a while and just be Lisa again.

Lisa found her idyllic fantasyland in Sambo Creek, a tiny Caribbean village in the Central American country of Honduras.

Quiet and untouched by American commercialism, Sambo Creek is like a place out of time. Fishermen still launch wooden dugout boats in the sea each morning, in hopes of catching plenty of red snapper to sell. The warm Caribbean breezes spread the smells of the mango orchards throughout the village, and if you listen closely, you can hear the music coming from the cantinas as night falls.

Many of Sambo Creek’s citizens live in mud huts, where there are no TVs showing music videos or computers with MP3 hookups. So, much to her relief, when Lisa arrived in the village, most of the people in Sambo Creek had no idea who the small, beautiful woman with the large tattoos—and even larger smile—was. They hadn’t heard of TLC and were unaware of the media reports of Lisa’s former wild behavior.

Instead the folks of Sambo Creek simply knew Lisa as a woman from far away who danced in the moonlight along their beaches, shot pool at the one-room pool hall called Billares Yancsy, played Volleyball with boys on the beach, and invited everyone she met to celebrate life along with her.

Perhaps the anonymity of it all was part of what attracted Lisa to the seaside village. She loved everything about the simple life of Sambo Creek. She was especially fascinated by the local culture. Most of Sambo Creeks citizens are Garifunas, descendants of Africans who escaped from a slave ship that capsized in the Caribbean in 1635.

The Garifuna culture honors nature and a simple-yet-ritualistic existence. It was that belief in a less complicated life that appealed to Lisa’s search for inner peace. She was also attracted to their pride in their roots. The Garifuna people have never strayed far from their original African traditions. In fact while many Garifunas speak some English or Spanish, their native dialect is a combination of Yoruba, Swahili, and Bantu.

Traditional African music is also part of Garifuna culture. They have created a unique form of rhythmic music that is centered around a drumbeat. Often women will dance the punta to the beat. The punta is a Garifuna dance that is known for its gentle rocking of the hips,which is accented by the knee length, loose skirts the dancers wear.

The Garifuna’s belief in the power of nature is seen in their unique view of medicine. As in many

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