The Burning Man of Gambia

Recently I went to a Jola circumcision ceremony. I know what doesn’t really sound like a good time but imagine a brisk in which your whole village celebrates for a week. This “program” only happens every 25 years or so, so if you miss a Jola village’s program, you have to wait basically a generation for the next one.

Here is how it goes down but I missed the first day of the party so I will only briefly report on that.

Guys ranging in ages from little kids to 25 year old men sit with their mom and they kill a chicken. The guys later eat the chicken while they are in the bush. After the chicken-cide the boys are led to the bush and they will stay there for a week. I think we all knows what physically goes on while there, it’s in the title, but this is also a time of forming unity with the other men of your village and being part of your culture.

While the guys are in the bush the village become like a Gambian Burning Man. There aren’t naked people (well...) like the dessert party of my home state is known for but there are a couple similarities.

1.There are make shift houses built for all the visiting people. Each compound bought woven fences and used then to build little row houses for the mass of family and friends arriving. Like the dessert in NV it goes from spares to flourishing with human activity.

2. Sense of sharing. This is a Gambian thing in general but I literally ate 7 lunch/dinners one day. I didn’t pay or anything, I just sat around talking and someone put a delicious bowl of food in front of me.

3. Crazy things to see. Though this wasn’t an art show in any way I think by looking at my pictures you can tell that there were some weird things to see there. Man on stilts, men in groups trying to cut themselves with knifes and failing, giant pant wearing men basically thrash dancing with machetes, and dance parties galore.

There are more but I want to get into more detail about some topics mentioned. The first being the men trying to cut themselves. The party has groups of men trying to cut themselves and why are they just trying to cut themselves instead of achieving it? Jujus. If you look at the clothes they are covered in little squares which are see all over the Gambia called Jujus. People get there for love, money, protection, ect. The men are supposedly not able to cut themselves even if they try. The cutting attempts included machete at teh stomach, razor blade against the scalp, and knife on the chest.

The food at this thing was AMAZING. There wasn’t a lot of food to be found in the morning but around 4pm you suddenly find yourself presented with bowls of Jola food I had never tried before and the normal Domada and Benechin.

At night there would be different dance parties. Normally when the sun goes down I am at my compound but for this week it was expected that you roam around going to different dance parties. I love dancing and this Jola dancing was my thing. There was also a smaller tribe semi related to the Jolas that was there and I really enjoyed their dance circle. There was a guitar and singer that were really chill but then there was this fast clapping of bamboo sticks for a rhythm so people could dance.

The music never stopped. We would wake up at 7am and there would be a party going on somewhere. It was literally a week of partying.

I missed the end but the day after I left the boys came out of the bush. They had their own dance party and everyone celebrated the healthy return of all the guys. The village slowly fell back into its normal state of sleepy town with another 25 years to wait till its next big party.

Blow are pictures of the biggest ram I have ever seen and a rice drink that may or may not have been slightly alcoholic. Men were drinking this by the mouthful.