On Kamolangola and More Year Marks

On May 7th through the 11th, my village hosted the first of a now yearly weekend of wrestling in the village. This was a grand occasion full of the wonders of traditional wrestling, Seereer music and drumming. It was the third to last weekend in the big tournament of wrestling that encompases a bunch of villages and towns around me. Folks all come in from the area whenever there is a nearby tournament going on, and most villages have a wrestler or two to cheer for.

This date also coincides with a year from when we swore in as legit PCVs and nearly a year from when I installed at my site. With this combined reason for celebration I wanted to have over a bunch of PCV friends over to enjoy the tournament and see my village and all that.

The tournament was a four night affair and for some of it I had folks over. In fact for one night I had six guests, all sleeping in my little hut with me. Needless to say, it was a tight fit.

I had been to another wrestling night. Back in January i went with a bunch of people from my village over to the next village over. We were the "Delegation of Louly Ngogom" which was cool. We got there near about sunset, so at that time of year, maybe around 7, we had dinner at 10, it didnt all finish till after 1am. And a night time ride on a trotting horse cart with no lights of anykind, a little frightening. The horse can see better than we can i guess. I trust...

Anyway, this one in my village, as it was near the end of the whole tournament, had weeded out and whittled down the opponents to a more managable thirty or fourty. So each night did, in fact, not run on very long. The wrestling was pretty good and got better each night even. They even sold food there. There was, of course, the Seereer singers, but unfortunately they were not singing in our Seereer, it was some other dialect from the south and so we couldnt even understand it. They were not my favorite part of the whole deal, but then they only sang for part of each night so it was ok. There was also about a dozen griots druming. They were very cool. People constantly went up and danced out in front of them. The wrestling itself is interesting. i took some pictures and video, but the video is so dark it is not even worth putting up here but i will put the pictures up at some point.

The arena was set up as this large square of stick fence, about an area the size of a football field or so, with a ring of wooden benches all the way around. There was a VIP area with judges and announcers and such. The drumers and singers were set there too and they had a few mics connected to big speakers and a couple of weak spotlights. The wrestlers are all out in the middle nearly the whole time. They each had their own areas to the side, with faithful helpers standing watch over numerous tokens and bottles containing water, oils, other mysterious liquids. There is generally only one match going on at a time, sometimes two though, and the rest pace around, dance, and look cool for the rest of the time.

Its basically similar to a greco-roman style deal, but they are donw as soon as one touches his head or back to the ground. They do a lot of traditional rituals and all act in a certain manner and are also dressed sparingly and usually have a variety of traditional tokens, arm bands, leg bands, ones that wrap around your trunk. Each match may be very quick, I recorded one that was no more than fifteen seconds, or they can be long, lasting many rounds, length determined by the judge, though i dont find the long ones as entertaining. At the first wrestling event I had gone to actually, the finals match went on for a really long time. After several inconclusive rounds, it was well into the middle of the night and the wrestlers were even getting obviously frustrated with one another, the judges called it, had a little meeting and declared one of them the winner. There was one really long match durring my village's event, but luckily they did not need to break it off early.

Anyway, so the wrestling was really fun, I will put up pictures. It was also a time to be silly in the village with guests, we climbed baobab trees and played board games - very fun. It feels like I have been in the village for so much more than just a year. But then again, this year is flying by way way to fast. One more year!


NOTE: way backdated entry is up about fixing up my hut WITH pictures, i think its prolly on a different page, its from april.