A good excuse for a party

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I’ve been to a good number of parties and celebrations in my life but never one celebrating something quite like this. The party that I went to was organised by a charity called GOAL and was to celebrate the fact that the Chiefdom we were in was ‘open defecation free’ – I think that’s a pretty good reason to have a party! The event was hosted by the Chiefdom Headquarter town and a lot of preparation had been done to get the town looking good and to build areas of shade for people to sit and watch the festivities.



When we arrived we parked up in the school field which was the main venue. We then walked down through the town along a road which had been lined by white painted stones. At the far end of the town a parade was starting, we could heat the rhythmic beat of drums and local shakers and the crowd of people gradually made its way towards us. A few people had painted their faces with white paint and tribal markings, there was also a crazy colourful costume bird which came over and ‘greeted’ us as soon as we joined the parade. The parade moved very slowly through the town, the leaders at the front kept encouraging people to go even slower so we were dancing along but not really moving anywhere. I had been invited along by another British girl who works for GOAL and they loved that we got involved and joined in, especially when we showed them that white girls can shake their ass just like them.



As the parade neared the school field another costume figure came towards the parade, this one looked like a giant bundle of straw with a face. From what I can gather this figure in some way represents the devil, he would run towards the children and they would scamper away shrieking. As we neared the event field the music got louder and we spread out in a long line and we drove the devil figure away (at least I think that’s what happened!).



After a long time dancing in the sun it was a relief to reach the shelters that had been set up and to get some shade. Everyone found somewhere to sit and then the band which had led the parade was joined by a lady singing in the local language. It was really lovely to hear the music and to feel the life in the community, there was a great atmosphere and the music really did lift everyone’s spirits. The singing was followed by food and speeches including some key messages about how the hard work isn’t over for the community, they have to make sure they maintain their loos!



The rest of the afternoon was then filled with a weird and wonderful array of cultural performances. It’s quite hard to describe what they were like in detail but hopefully the photos give some idea. The guys in the grass skirts were dancing and doing acrobatics, the black costume went around the circular crowd that had formed shaking all of it’s colourful tassels, the blue bird from the parade came back and danced around the circle running at different people in the crowd, and the masked figure made a show of pretending he was going to do a really high high-jump and then he just threw the mask over the stick instead.



The day was finished off with the unveiling of a sign by the road as you enter the town declaring that the Chiefdom is open defecation free for everyone to see. To get to the sign we all paraded again, this time even slower and it was really hot in the mid-afternoon sun. The party continued with more music and dancing late into the night but at this point we had to leave to get back to Kenema before night fall. It was a really fun and interesting day, I think the GOAL team did a great job running the event and it gave me a few ideas for the Roadshow that I’m organising for Gola Forest.

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Comments

[Sameh Farghaly]

Amazing
It's a great feeling to learn more about other's cultures, I really enjoyed reading the article.