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And while that’s tomorrow, an exhibit with a unique perspective on the ancient maya forest is opening up tonight at The Mexican Cultural Institute. The curator is Dr. Anabel Ford.  Dr. Ford is a distinguished archaeologist who has spent her life decoding the ancient Maya landscape. She and community organizer Cynthia Ellis Topsey now present Chaya! Dinner With The Maya. We found out more about it.  

CHAYA! DINNER WITH THE MAYA, invites the public to explore solutions from the past and bridge indigenous and contemporary science for a sustainable future.

Annabel Ford - Archaeologist
"We are celebrating the Maya creation of the Maya forest, the Maya temples, the Maya garden and the Maya life which is just like ours really. We all have to store water, we all have to collect goods for feeding people, we all have to cook and we all have to drink and that’s what they did and so this is to try and make us think how the Maya did it and use our own imagination to understand the ancient Maya monuments like El Pilar that the actual forest is a Garden because all those plants are useful. How the Maya use the landscape it’s not slash and burn it’s select and grow. All the things are working towards a robust perennial forest that has all kinds of things that are good for us."

Chaya! Dinner with the Maya highlights Maya forest gardeners who continue to conserve and share the regional and traditional knowledge of their people.

Cynthia Ellis-Topsey - Maya Researcher
"It has been an exciting experience because it’s connecting the findings, the material things to the people who matter the most, so that’s absolutely part of our hope and encouragement that everybody has a gift to offer and we are welcoming all the gifts under fine dining, with the Maya, with the chaya."

And Ford says that the information about food and belongings being presented through the exhibit are designed to be extremely relatable.

Annabel Ford
"This is just the opening of a 90 day exhibit that we want to see children coming that are studying what is the history and prehistory of Belize and how they too can relate to it because we have contemporary place settings a saucepan, and a plate, and a fork and knife of a student, of someone from Belmopan, and from the governor general. And we know that the governor general has things we can’t get, a paper napkin anyone can get, a nicer saucepan, well some people want that don’t care but a thing with the crown on it that’s very sumptuous and. Then we have the things that are Maya that say the same thing."

The exhibition opened at 7:00 at the Mexican Cultural Institute and runs until January 31st, 2020.