The artistry of a dhalebanna thatched roof

By Lennox J Hernandez

It is generally accepted that the mainland of South America has been occupied by humans since 30,000 BCE, and that northern South America, including Guyana, has been occupied by indigenous peoples for more than 6,000 years.

In what is called pre-Columbian times (before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Europeans), the Arawak people, for example, inhabited the river basins of the Orinoco River and the northern Amazon, living in “thatched huts, made of bent branches, covered in leafy boughs.”

Over thousands of years, indigenous buildings would have evolved slowly, and a study of the contemporary building forms of the nine indigenous peoples in Guyana is now most desirable.

Indigenous buildings utilize materials readily available, and are a mixture of various types of thatched roof; walls of leaves, earth, saplings or, in more recent times, rough-sawn boards. The structure is usually of timber poles using the post-and-lintel structural system.

While the coastal and forest peoples would use timber materials mainly, the savannah peoples of the Rupununi make much use of earth as a wall material.

Contemporary

indigenous building

Indigenous buildings have their own aesthetics, especially the underside of the roof which, depending on the thatching used, display artistry comparable and sometimes better, than modern and western ceilings.

Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as leaves, reeds, etc., which are plaited, and laying the material so as to shed water away from the underside of the roof, and hence from the indoor space itself.

It is a roofing method traditionally passed down from generation to generation, and numerous types are known, depending on the materials available and the tradition of the community.

The major vegetation used by the indigenous peoples for roofing in Guyana includes the troolie palm, the cokerite palm and the dhalebanna leaf.

This article will look at the dhalebanna (Geonoma spp) type roofing, mainly from a study done by the writer at the Pakuri Lokono-Arawak Territory (St Cuthbert’s Mission, Mahaica River) some years ago. (See “Arawak Houses” in Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, edited by Paul Oliver and published by Cambridge University Press.)

Dhalebanna (or dhalibanna) is a low growing palm found in swamps, which when used for roofing gives a distinctive look both externally and internally. The roof frame is made of round poles, usually wallaba, larger ones for the horizontal tie-beams and smaller ones for the sloping rafters.

The dhalebanna leaves are sorted out and the best selected in preparation for plaiting into a number of what one may call a “roofing unit.” The roof is made up of a series of these dhalebanna “roofing units” placed, like roof tiles, in horizontal bands from the bottom (the eaves) up to the ridge, fixed to the rafters and overlapped adequately to ensure no rain penetration.

The dhalebanna “roofing units” are made on the ground while the leaves are still green, as dry leaves are difficult to work with. Three other elements are required to make the roofing unit: a runner for hanging the leaves, a thin lath to hold the leaves to the runner, and a vine for strapping the leaves to the runner and lath.

The runner is of stripped and quartered manicole (a palm) over which the dhalebanna leaves are folded, each leaf overlapping the previous. A thin strip (lath) of the turu (or tooroo) palm is then placed against the leaves, pressing them to the covered manicole runner, and the three strapped with vines of another palm called mukru.

These roofing units are then left to dry before they are fitted to the roof; this allows them to “fluff” out and give an impression of thickness. A roofing unit could be about 2 metres (6.5 ft.) or more, long.

The dhalebanna “roofing units” are placed on the roof with the turu lath visible on the underside of the roof, giving distinctive thread-like bands running horizontally across the leaves when viewed from inside the building.

This decorative outcome of a construction technique is even more impressive when viewed in a circular building as in the case of the Umana Yana which was destroyed by fire in 2014.

On the exterior of the roof the strips of the roofing units are not seen separately and the entire roof appears to be a single mass of dried leaves. Rectangular roofs may have separate roofs at the gable end forming a ventilation opening or the roofs may be neatly joined to form a hip roof; in the latter case the roof would have an opening at the ridge for ventilation.

As mentioned before, indigenous buildings would have evolved over thousands of years. The present high level of sophistication of these roofs meets decorative, environmental, and constructional requirements, making them ideal for our warm-wet climate even in contemporary times.