Good Friday Kite flying in the Queen’s Park Savannah, Trinidad
A popular pastime in the Caribbean during the breezy dry season months is kite flying, and several territories hold kite flying festivals over the Easter Weekend. One of the most most famous of these takes place in Georgetown, Guyana, where hundreds gather along the Sea Wall on Easter Monday to fly their creations, many of them quite spectacular, unlike the plastic, “made in China” number I purchased from one one of the vendors on the highway the other day, and which Nikipedia, Jonathan and I took out for a spin today in the Queen’s Park Savannah after our failed attempt at finding a Good Friday bobolee (an effigy of Judas Iscariot which is traditionally hung in a public place and beaten on Good Friday).
For a TT$20 (US$3) kite I suppose mine didn’t fly too badly, but next to a whirring Mad Bull and a couple of home made chicki chongs it looked downright unimpressive, and then Nikipedia let the kite string spool off recklessly only to discover the string wasn’t tied to the spool itself. So my kite is now perched among the top branches of one of the poui trees along the western edge of the Savannah. Nikipedia suggested we find “an urchin” to climb the tree and get it back, but we reminded him that what might have been appropriate language in a Dickens novel didn’t necessarily wash in Trinidad and Tobago in 2006.
Finally we gave up on trying to retrieve the kite and bought ourselves sno-cones and coconut water and strolled around the Savannah a bit more, coming across what appeared to be a religious group singing a hymn to the accompaniment of tambourines, which inspired Nikipedia to tell a couple of Benny Hinn jokes. Then we made our way up to Jonathan’s, where we opened a bottle of Malbec and watched the sun set over Port of Spain while composing a version of “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic” substituting the word “bobolee” for “teddy bear”. The chorus went like this:
Picnic time for bobolees
The little bobolees are having a lovely time today
Watch them beat the effigies
Of *Mr. Manning and **Mr. Panday. . . .
A memorable Good Friday, I’d have to say.
* Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago
** Leader of the Opposition
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[...] Caribbean Free Radio took a less impressive ready-made kite to the Queen’s Park Savannah in Trinidad and also made a failed attempt to find a Good Friday bobolee, an effigy of Judas Iscariot which is traditionally hung in a public place and beaten. The bobolee is not, however, the weirdest Caribbean Easter tradition: that distinction would have to belong to the Good Friday prohibition against sea-bathing, which Barbadian Campfyah recalled in her Good Friday post: I vividly remember the no going to the Beach on Good Friday. Boy that was a definite for the villagers, don’t dare be caught near the beach. Also the breaking a fresh egg out in the sun at pricesly midday. whatever shape the eggs form is your destiny for the coming year. Eg. a ship or anything resembling a boat means you going away. [...]
Pingback by Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Don’t go near the sea on Good Friday, and other Caribbean Easter traditions 04.15.06 @ 12:37 pmFor the record, I didn’t join in the singing of “The Bobolees’ Picnic”.
Comment by Jonathan 04.15.06 @ 12:53 pmWhere can I get instructions on how to make a Trinidad Mad Bull kite? Thanks
Comment by Bert 01.23.08 @ 7:10 pmLeave a comment
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