A
few weeks ago, I was sitting at my host family's house in my village
playing cards with one of my brothers when out of nowhere, my little
sisters starts screaming in fear and running toward the house. We all
looked around panicking, had a scorpion stung her? Did a rabid dog
bite her? We had no idea what had sent my 6 year old sister fleeing
to hide in the house. My brother saw it before I did.
Looking
past the top of my head, he calmly got up and said “Zazie, you
should go inside.” Confused and slightly terrified at what I might
find behind me, I slowly turned my head and immediately I knocked the
chair down with how quickly I stood up.
A
dark green monster made of leaves was running full force towards us
in huge strides, waving an enormous branch in his hand, with an
obviously clear intent to smack whatever and whomever would get in
its way, with 6 younger boys chasing after it yelling
incomprehensibly and waving around branches of their own.
My
brain literally had no idea what I was seeing and I did the only
sensible thing I could think of at the time and I sat back down. My
brother just looked at me exasperatedly and stepped in front of me.
The leafy green monster finally stopped running maybe 2 feet in front
of where we were, me in my chair not knowing what else to do and my
brother, being the protector that he is, standing bravely in front of
me. The leafy monster did not speak a word, he peeked over my
brother's shoulder at me, looked back at my brother, shook his entire
leafy body so hard that leaves were flying out of everywhere off his
body, raised his branch to my brother's face (my brother did not
flinch at all), looked at me again and stomped off.
As
soon as the green monster saw some other innocent villagers walking
on the road next to our house, he immediately started running towards
them and shaking his branch the whole way there. These people ran
screaming into the nearest house.
Meanwhile,
as I sat there trying to comprehend what the heck had just happened,
my brother calmly sat back down and picked up his cards we had
knocked off the yellow water bidon we had been playing on, and
started laughing. “The mask was scared of you! Did you see it stop
in its tracks? Heehee...mask was not smacking anyone in our house
today!” He was clutching at his sides.
I
still had not found the words so I just stared at him for a few
seconds and finally shouted, “What the hell is THE MASK?!”.
A
little history lesson:
The
Bwa, or Bwaba, (the ethnic group in my village, they speak Bwamu)
believe that the world was created by a God, Dobweni, who abandoned
man and left the earth when he was wounded by a woman pounding millet
with her pestle. To act as his representative among man and as an
intermediary between man and the forces of nature, Dobweni sent his
son, Do.
Do
represents the bush and its life-giving force, for the Bwa still
depend on the bush for game and gathered food. He shows himself as
the source of plant life and the power that gives fruit to man's work
in the fields. Do is concerned with all ceremonies that insure the
renewal of life.
One
representation of Do is
with masks, bieni,
made exclusively of wild plants (stalks, grass, and leaves), because
they must not resemble the creations of man.
The
most typical leaf mask is
a mask that appears at the beginning of the performance season to
sweep all impurities from the community. Leaf masks representing the
initial and universal form of Dwo serve to integrate the individual
into human society and to link the community of man with the natural
world.
Leaf
masks are born in the bush, early in the morning, when young
initiates of the congregation gather vines and the leaves of the
karite tree, a symbol of fertility. The mask assistants (these are
the young boys that were accompanying my lovely green monster), who
do not perform, wrap the body of the performer in vines from head to
toe. The performer may no longer speak because speech is a human
skill.
The
major contexts in which leaf masks appear are initiations and village
purification or renewal ceremonies called loponu.The
performer becomes Do, and performs in rites that represent the
dependence of man on the forces of nature for life.
*
My family also mentioned that this green monster went around the
village smacking anyone who crossed their paths with his branch as
part of this purification, hence why my little sister and the others
ran terrified into the house.
 |
| This is the traditional leaf masks that you see, the one I saw was the exact same but missing the white feathers on his head. |
This
information and these pictures were taken from the University of Iowa
Museum of Art's website from a thorough study done by CHRISTOPHER
D. ROY:
http://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/topic-essays/show/39?start=8
