well ill tell you. ill start with last weekend, where we went down to the presidents village, Kanilai. It was hosting the 4th international cultural festival. It invites groups from mostly west africa but also as far as south africa to perform for the masses in a free 2 week festival. me, renee, baboucarr (our teacher/best friend in the gambia) tyler and iben. we took "public transportation", big old vans called gelli gellis that cram as many people as they can into em. It was about 2 hours to get there. It went from about 5 till 2am. When we got there around 4, the groups were entering the open field area where they would be performing. Groups from all over gambia, guinea-bissau, mali, senegal, sierra leone mauritania were there. the first few hours were just all the groups playin their own music styles, dancing and basically just performing for themselves. Some really crazy costumes, guys on stilts. As the night wore on, groups performed one at a time, while the president Jammeh, watched from his pimp giant leather couch.
The individual performances were the best. We saw people do some things that really question my lack of beliefs. Many people have a belief in JuJus, this little pouches mostly cover protection. The most popular is protection from knives. we watched a man, with a sword, slice a mango in two, then proceed to vigoursly attempt to slice himself all over his body, legs, arms, torso, even cheek. My favorite magical act was a man, he had a basin of water, emptied the basin on to the ground in front of us. Placed the empty basin in a bag that was clearly empty. said some stuff...did some stuff....pulled out the basin...all full of water again!
that to me, was the craziest
There was lots of very impressive acrobatics works. flips and semi-breakdancin stuff. all very impressive. the guys on stilts, they would kick up past their heads, with the stilts on. how they stayed on up is beyond me.
the festivities ended around 2am. from there, well we hadnt planned any sleepin arrangements, we figured we would just crash with some local performers. it took us maybe 30min, but we were able to find the group from our area. they were sleeping outside, but gave us some room on their mats and we laid down outside under the best stars ive seen since i arrived here and slept for a few hours.
in other news, my camera has been stolen from our house, so pictures will be a bit more sporadic.
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3 comments:
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