meeting Henri Dunster

Well, at the Hash I was also able to meet a lot of new people. One woman in particular, Phyllis, struck up conversation and became an integral part of the next couple of weeks. Phyllis is a former teacher, who now works at the University of Miami at Ohio. She was in Belize as a supervisor for a group of college students that are doing their student teaching at various schools in Belmopan.


After the Hash, I met up with Phyllis and her students to have dinner. It was wonderful getting to know how the students felt about their experiences and Belize in general. I saw myself and my reactions when I first arrived in their current perspectives. It’s amazing how time changes the way you look at things, or how you come to better understand your surroundings once you become local. That realization was worth more than anything. I’m not from Belize and have a long way to go before I fully understand all of the quirks of this culture and how its different from my own, but hearing them made me see that there is progress.

After the dinner, Phyllis dropped me at my house and invited me to go with her and her students to visit a British man that does drawings of local Mayan ruins, Henri Dunster. He originally travelled to Belize 30 years ago and returned about 7 years ago to live. He’s a slight man with hippie tendencies and a wonderful ability to both draw and capture the beautiful Mayan history that is still here in Belize. Some of his drawings of the steles from 30 years ago are now national archives because they no longer exist in the physical – rain and erosion has diminished the surfaces of these ancient structures.

Henri invited us to his studio and showed off his work, telling his personal story and his opinion on various archaeological works being done on various Mayan ruins in Belize currently. His most recent project has been to create a scale model of el Pilar – a ruin that is currently non-excavated. However, using GPS technology and an artist’s skill, he successfully has accomplished this. Pictures are below.

He has also come to a conclusion about how he thinks the ancient Mayan ball game was played. He’s created various parts of the outfit the Mayans wore based on a stele of the game that he drew some 30 years ago. He’s put together a book explaining his theory and is convinced that he’s unearthed this magnificent mystery that surrounds Puk-ta-Puk. It’s an interesting idea…but my jury is still out. :0)



Either way, this visit was wonderful and I completely loved learning something new about the local culture. I was enthralled the entire evening…yes, I suppose I’m a cultural anthropologist nerd at heart and there’s nothing I can do about it. There are worse things one can be!

To view Henri’s work or learn more about his life story, visit mayadrawings.com.