I love watching the wrestling competitions in Oussouye. It is crazy chaos, community, dirt, weapons, yelling, screaming, and all kinds of mess. We went early to watch the kids wrestle. It is a dirty swarm of unsupervised kids fighting each other. A regular emt's nightmare. Today was the first day I saw someone cry. There was actually a two year old child chasing another two year old throwing dirt at him and throwing him in the sand. The girls did not wrestle today which is a shame, that's some good time girl fightin! The village begins to show up and eventually the show begins. The dancers from each village come out hootin and hollarin, slamming their knives and swords together showing the force of their village. Then the luters begin walking across the terrain and picking their fights.
Jerome and I just had a really interesting conversation about how much the Jola's respect courage and he used a ton of wrestling references. "You must put fear under you." As in when you are wrestling, you win when you are on top of the other guy. You also must walk across and pick a fight. If you are not courageous enough to do that, everyone sees you and knows. You cannot pretend to have courage here and never show it. No one believes you.
I find the Lute super facinating. The young boys start putting these bracelets on their arms and they bang them together to show their force. There is a lot of mysticsm involved in the lute, making sacrifices, wearing gree gree etc. It's also a community sport that people are brought up doing since childhood, everyone comes and watches and enjoys.
Ouossouye lost the lute today 3 to 13 Niamblang.
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