Author: admin

In Hindu mythology, the power-grabbing demon Narakasura and Lord Krishna came together in fierce combat. When the demon was finally vanquished, Krishna’s hard victory brought light to the world, marking the festival of Diwali.

Across the Indian state of Goa, teams of boys compete to bring Narakasura back to life, if briefly, by constructing giant, menacing effigies. Each team has a vision, and after gathering available material–newspaper, beach sand, rebar, cardboard and auto paint– labor for days to bring them to life.

In the days before Diwali, I navigated Goa’s capital Panaji, past sidewalk stores with demon masks and holiday lanterns in copious array.

But unseasonal cyclonic downpours had forced the teams under tarps. Escorted by gangs of street dogs, I zigzagged the wet back-alley encampments, with their pounding tunes and klieg lights, to follow their progress.

The way was lit by swinging, glowing lanterns, hung on doorways. Human-scale family-made effigies stood guard in yards.

Well into the night, despite rain and winds, the demons were complete and ready for judgement. Across Goa, some were paraded on moving platforms, or encircled by battle recreations and marching bands. Each town’s winning team was awarded prize money.

Just before dawn, all were set ablaze. Toxic black smoke filled the streets, only dissipating with sunrise. As was told, Diwali was sunny and peaceful.

We clambered into the truck, gunned the engine and headed up the dusty red road, followed by two hungry racing cheetahs. Bloody strips of donkey meat were dangled out the back, and after a good run, tossed to the ground for the cats to retrieve. It’s both exercise time, and feeding time, at Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia.

After hearing Dr. Laurie Marker’s impassioned talks about the plight of the cheetah, I was determined to see for myself. While all big cats are in trouble, cheetahs face multiple perils; shot by farmers as threats to livestock, kidnapped for the Middle Eastern pet trade, hemmed by shrinking habitat, and more.

At the edge of Namibia’s Waterburg plateau, CCF is many things; education center, sanctuary for non-releasable cats, working farm with happy goats and lush greenhouses, breeding center for livestock guard dogs, and a fun and enriching place to stay.

During my sojourn I meandered the grounds freely, noted the meshing of locals and visiting veterinary interns. While Laurie and senior ecologist Matti Nghikembua were talking compost, visitors watched a blur of black dots on gold; a cheetah being run for exercise.

I moved on to the canine compound, only to be enthusiastically attacked by a troop of puppies. Their future would be with farmers, to guard their livestock, and allay any fatal cheetah encounter. But for now, their main focus was my shoelaces.

I flew with a group to the Mt. Hagen fairgrounds in Papua New Guinea: a tiny blip of a plane, lowered through the clouds onto lush bumpy green hills. And now, free to wander, I watched tribes of visiting performers spill out of trucks, bags in hand, to set up their open-air dressing rooms.

I am sad that, even now, I don’t really know what I witnessed at Mt. Hagen. The Sing Sing began in 1964 as a way to mitigate Papua New Guinea’s incessant tribal rivalries and violence. It continues to this day. Has it worked?

What I did witness was a riotous show of color, imagination, and storytelling.

Wandering the grounds with little knowledge of tok pisin, the unifying language of PNG, conversation was hand gestures and nods. I winced at the chunks of brilliant feathers from endangered birds, but admired the repurposing of grasses, straw and shells.

Guitarists sang in circles, their percussion; piles of plastic water pipes. Children scampered about while their parents applied face and body paint in intricate patterns. As the show began, tourists and local big wigs sheltered on a massive viewing platform.

The field is an orgy of movement and hue. Over the years, some groups, like the Asaro Mudmen, Huli Wigmen, and Chimbu skeleton men, have become the face of Sing Sing. The skeleton men (and boys) chased and caught an earth-clad, bear-like monster who must have been dying in the heat.

If time allowed, I would return to find out what happened next.

The satin-clad over-the-top spectacle that thunders down Philadelphia’s Broad Street on New Years’ Day traces back to a ritual far less embellished, loud, or commercial.

Mummers were and are as old as time; homemade street theater, masked in repurposed laundry or creations of straw, parading through neighborhoods, performing by permission.

To quote Quaker City String Band, “From 1790 to 1800, Philadelphia served at the nation’s temporary capital, while the Federal City was under construction. Washington lived in the President’s House right on 6th and Market Street and is credited with calling upon the Mummers New Year’s Day to celebrate the holiday for all 7 years he lived in Philadelphia. Groups of people would go door to door to recite poems, tell jokes, and friendly impersonations of Washington. In exchange, they received cakes and alcohol.”

Rooted in Philly’s working class immigrant families, the Mummers Parade has evolved to street theater in the extreme, weathering social evolution, political correctness, financial woes, and winter. Established groups; the Comics, Fancies, Fancy Brigades and String Bands, have their fans and followers. Non-traditional performing groups have had a tough time becoming established.

I stay non-political, if only to appreciate the scenery. Massive painted backdrops, wheeled in sections over blocks of rough pavement, rotate to come together with a click, just in time for the show.

If your home was a small alpine village a hundred years ago, you might have known the Innkeeper, the Woodsman, the local baker, that proper smiling bourgeois couple, perhaps the town drunkard. And what about the Basket man and Scabby Guy?

I met them all and more in Cerkno, Slovenia. On a winter bus journey, I hopped off and made it home for a few days, to join their ancient Carnival rite, Laufarija, or The Run.

It’s classic old-world, pre-Lenten ritual. All things rotten; human foibles, bad crop yields, and harsh winters, are contained in Pust, a lumbering, mossy green horned devil. Spring can’t begin till the devil is tried, judged by a town tribunal, and dispatched.

In Laufarija headquarters, costumes of straw, leaves, moss, burlap, and skins, meticulously hand-sewn, align on hooks and hangers like some feral boutique. The mask maker explains his art. Maskers zip about the warren of rooms in various stages of dress. Theres a dog or two and yes, beer.

As Cerkno’s twisting streets fill with visitors; order must be maintained. So the Flaxmen, with their goofy, oddly sinister masks, race about, shaggy threads flying, clearing paths with whips fashioned from hazelnut branches. (Hence The Run)

“Pa zacnma” –Let’s Start!

Poor Pust; bowed before the magistrate, weighed down by heavy wet greenery and his ceremonial tree; I feel pity. As do the tribunal of judges, carrying legal tracts, somber in their wigs, robes, and joke-store beards. After hours of recitation, he is found guilty, to be executed “by mallet”— a conk on the head from the Woodsman.

With Pust and winter dispatched, Laufarijans will dance and rejoice. Since I kind of have a thing for the guy, maybe it’s just as well that I’m headed out of town. Besides, I wouldn’t want to do anything to hold up spring.

Natasha, Eddie, Kalema, Nagoti, Billi; because of Jane Goodall, every chimpanzee has a name. Here on Ngamba Island, their stories of rescue; from chained captivity, wildlife traffickers, bushmeat hunters, and wanton cruelty, are posted on placards along raised walkways.

Over 50 chimps call Ngamba home. Uganda’s Lake Victoria, which is known to flood, laps at its shores. Its 100 acres hold an information center, visitor facilities, and hospital. Volunteers arrive by boat from Entebbe, stay in comfy tent cabins, and help resident staff with chimp care. Visiting scientists add to the mix.

During my stay, I rose with the sun, to navigate among slivering five-foot monitor lizards and breakfasting shorebirds, to the operations area. With the chimps off to the forest, I joined the team, scouring the chimps’ sleeping cages with poop brooms and hoses, removing soiled straw. In the kitchen, we chopped and chopped today’s menu of fruits and veggies, filling feeding pails to the brim.

Twice daily the chimps emerge from the forest to play outfield, intercepting pineapple projectiles, cabbage wedges, and more, hurled over the electrified fence. They fight and chase, their physical power intimidates.

We row to Myende, a neighboring island, where fishing families displaced by the chimps long ago re-established village life. School’s out; children dart about with a homemade soccer ball. At night, lilting music travels from here across the lake; the chimps return from the forest for their soy porridge and fresh straw beds.

After some days of chopping and cleaning, I am rewarded with a forest walk with some (non-aggressive) chimps. Billi stretches her long arms towards my neck to be carried; she’s already too heavy. We traipse along the path; soon we’re supine on the leafy ground, forming a circle with other chimps. I stroke her head and fondle her ears; she runs her leathery black fingers through my hair, and into my pockets. Her silky fur smells clean and earthy; her amber eyes meet mine. But I’m out of peanuts, and lose her interest. Besides, she’s got trees to climb.

Cradling mugs of ale and wearing goofy grins, the citizenry of Rottweil, Germany hoot like crazed owls. In the icy air, they form a spirited throng, weaving about, planting kisses, and crowing “Hu-hu-hu! Hu-hu-hu!” in a cartoon falsetto. I’m hoarse from all this hu-huing, but it’s better than my lousy German.

I’ve come for Narrensprung, or Fools Jump. Here at the edge of the Black Forest, the Swabian rituals of Carnival have changed little in hundreds of years – it’s a world apart from the spectacles of Cologne, or Basel.

Founded by the Romans in 73 A.D. as a military outpost and trading center, Rottweil’s heritage shows in its tidy prosperity, ruins of temples and baths, and famous export and namesake, the rottweiller. This sturdy canine descends from herding dogs bred by Roman cattle farmers. As the settlement evolved, so too did the role of rottweillers, becoming draft animals and butchers’shop companions.

“Ich bin ein rottweiller” is the bumpersticker of choice. Garlands in the official town colors, yellow and black, hang from windows and across doors, while rottweiller effigies, plastic and plush, guard doorways and stare from store windows.

Rooted in pagan practices and augmented by Catholic pre-Lenten fervor, winter must be expelled. After a formal declaration, the icy cobbled streets fill with celebrants to witness the last grand procession of “fools” in carved masks and kaleidoscopically colored costumes.

Each narren does his part: the bennerrössle prance astride hobbyhorses; the gschell , draped in clanking bells the size of bocce balls, provide rhythm and toss candy. The guller, a lone strutting rooster, is fertility.

Clutching a cup of steamy, sweet glüwein, I dodge revelers disguised as rabbits and frogs. Suddenly, a mess of stinky sweet horsehair is being dangled across my face. A federahannes, grunting lecherously, is dusting winter away with a long tufted pole. Just as suddenly, he’s vaulting above us all, balanced on that pole, feathered cape flying.

Harar, Ethiopia, has always been a caravan city, both holy and pragmatic, culturally rich and economically fragile. It’s Old Town, or Jugol, dates from the 16th Century. With over eighty mosques and shrines, it links Christian Ethiopia with the Muslim and Arab world. Five entry gates anchor its curving fortress-like walls. Markets fill its maze of passageways with produce and provisions; mattresses, plasticwear, breads, smuggled cellphones. At the butchery, black kites swoop down to snatch discarded shreds of camel meat.

There’s a robust commerce in qat, the obsessively chewed, leafy narcotic herb. Its sheathed green bundles, transported by truck and pack animals, are traded with animated fervor.

At night, just outside city walls, Abbas Mumey’s tall frame is illuminated by car headlights. Facing the surrounding rocky terrain, he beckons softly, “… Koti, Jalla, Botay..” After some minutes, pairs of green orbs catch the headlights’ glow; wild hyenas descend from the hinterland.

Abbas stabs into a black metal pot for scraps of meat, and holds them aloft. The first hyena approaches, circles, then lunges and snaps.

More hyenas appear – maybe there’s twelve. Abbas, like his father Yusef, knows them all, and shoves the greedier ones to give the shyer ones a chance. As they yip, snap, chatter and snarl, I recognize this sound from under our hotel window.

Though in decline and demonized throughout much of Africa, wild hyenas loom large in Harari folklore; as a bridge to, and protection from, the unseen spirit world. Emerging from dens in the bush, they travel in packs to forage at the local dump, or slip through dedicated openings in the fortress wall, to compete with dogs for street spoils.

Before this visit ends, I join Abbas in his efforts. As they lunge and grab at the dangling shreds of flesh, I feel the pull and snap of their jaws, smell their breath, note their wounds, count their spots. They seem both dogish and catish, their coats more bristly than soft.

I can only hope these, and the rest of their species, thrive.

The drummers form a semicircle and settle into their chairs; the rhythm thunders to life. Street dogs scatter like bullets. A dancer jumps at the drummers like a mad strutting bird; jackhammers the ground with his feet. His tall, feathered headdress spins with his turns; his white shirt goes translucent with sweat, cowrie shell knee bands rattle and shake. His mask is pink wire mesh, red-lipped, with a pencil mustache and doll eyes.

I’m in Dangriga, Belize, for Jonkonnu, a masquerade celebrated in parts of the English-speaking Caribbean during the Christmas season. Unlike Carnival, its roots are secular; the formal cross- ribboned shirts, European-featured masks, feathered headdress and frenzied marching steps evoke and mock an old nemesis, the English military.

In the 17th century, shipwrecked West Africans and aboriginal Arawaks found one another on St. Vincent and intermarried; the Garinagu genesis. Although Spain was the ruler of record, the British arrived with ambitions to farm cotton and sugar, with the unconsenting labor of island inhabitants.

The Garinagu (known by their language, Garifuna) fought off the British until 1797, when they were forced into exile; set adrift with loss of thousands of lives. The survivors landed first on Becquia and Roatán and, in 1823, migrated to the mainland, settling in pockets of Honduras, Guatemala and the southern coast of Belize. In 2001, UNESCO declared the Garifuna language, music and dance invaluable contributions to the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. There’s both joy and catharsis, as the diaspora returns to Dangriga, Hopkins, Seine Bight and Punta Gorda, to celebrate.

During my stay, I visited the local drumming school, mask maker, and museum and cultural center. When Jonkonnu began, I attached myself to the drummers as they moved from station to station.

Then, following different sounds, I discover a grassy common, where two strapping, cross-dressed gents gyrated in a sensuous do-si-do. Cow-horned, cardboard-faced creatures, with rumpled overcoats, pillow-padded posteriors, and a sinister limping gate, charged the crowd with canes.

“It’s Two-Foot Cow!”

I’d found Charikinari, another seasonal ritual, whose characters can be traced to West Africa.