On ship days, as soon as we set up our seaside booths I get
to watch the troupe of three Moko jumbies ‘assemble’ themselves on the wall by
Fort Frederick.
These young & lanky guys sit atop the
wall & start the transformation process by using rag strips to bind the
stilts to their legs.
Then they go
through the detailed ritual of covering all portions of their bodies with their
costumes, piece by piece.
When they are
finished, the only parts remaining uncovered are their eyes. When they rise to
full height & lope past my tent, all I can see is the bottoms of their
stilts & legs, with the rest carried high above the sightline.
If they know I’m in the tent, one will dip
down & wave a gloved hand at me.
Moko Jumbies are the elaborately costumed stilt walkers
you’ll see in Frederiksted when the ships are in.
Remarkably agile & well-schooled in their art, they represent
vestiges from the West African traditions fused with our usual Caribbean twist.
The lore behind them says they are protectors of the village, scaring
off evil as it comes. We could all use a
little more of that. I’ve been watching
these marvelous performers for twenty years now, & it wasn’t until a few
years ago that they started affecting me oddly.
They are remarkable dancers, maneuvering on stilts in ways I
couldn’t dream of on shoes. They are
silent as they perform, swaying & balancing to the DJ’s tunes, &
drawing in visitors as audience or even to dance with them. One of the best days was the perfect example
of the cultural ‘mash up’ (Island speak for
the collision of objects or ideas) that keeps me falling for this place over
& over. The lead Jumbie was line
dancing to Electric Slide (we are a society trapped in amber, & I’ve yet to
finish an event or party here without a finale’ involving line dancing). One by one, ship passengers joined the party,
until there was a sea of people at the base of his stilts, all going through
the practiced moves & to a person, beaming.
Finally there were 50 or 60 people dancing with him, filling the clock
tower park & drawing ‘paparazzi,’ or at least other visitors snapping great
shots with their cameras & phones.
It wasn’t planned or staged, just a spontaneous thing (unlike our
attempts at flash mobs. We haven’t got
the hang of that yet, & tend to announce them a couple of times before we
‘spontaneously’ break out in…whatever).
On another ship day a ‘chain gang’ (all linked together,
hand to hand) of local kindergarten students, all wearing slightly oversized
red t shirts, flowed past my booth.
Just
to my right the Jumbies loped over, & the looks on the tiny kids’ faces
were fantastic.
Visitors dropped to the
grass on their stomachs to get perspective photos of the kids staring at the
towering stilt-walkers, awed & thrilled into a stunned silence, as quiet as
the performers.
Most of the students
recovered themselves enough to dance a little with the guys, but some were
still standing stock still, mouths open as the performers made their way down
the street.
They must have wondered at
the enormity of all they saw that day, from the willowy Jumbies to the giant
ship in port.
Jumbies aren’t just born, they’re taught. Some days when I pass the Education Complex
on my way home from my other job, I see the Moko Jumbie class alongside the
main road. Smaller kids start with
shorter stilts & bring up the rear.
More experienced students on full-height stilts lead the way with
descending ages between them. These are
plain-clothes jumbies, just getting the hang of stilts without the added challenge
of costumes. It is an after-school
commitment, so the students don’t have to wear their usual school
uniforms. The older boys wear their
baggy jeans. You haven’t lived until
you’ve seen a fourteen year old boy, propped against a flag pole & trying
to be cool while strapped to a pair of stilts.
Somehow the fourteen year old girl, still in her plaid uniform &
walking past him at street level managed to look unimpressed.
The Jumbies have very special flashy costumes for certain
occasions, & they break out their best for our annual St. Croix
Agricultural & Food Festival, President’s day weekend every year. This is the biggest fair in the Caribbean, & I’m proud to participate & show my
work there every year. The event spans
three days, but every year local bands and carnival troupes participate in the
opening day parade. And as with all the St. Croix parades (of which there are many), the troupe
of Jumbies is front & center. As the
parade wends around the display booths & stage & finally comes to a
halt in the center field, they play the National Anthem, followed by the Virgin
Islands Anthem, and then there is quiet…followed by a sea of voices reciting
the Pledge of Allegiance. We are all at
attention, & high above the crowd, the Jumbies place their gloved hands
over their hearts & break their silence to recite. By the end, they’re just a blur to me as I
rifle through my bags to find a paper towel for my silly face. It always affects me the same way.
I think the evils Jumbies ward off for me are of being
complacent & jaded to the unique place that surrounds us, to the traditions
before, & to the promise of the future entrusted to us.
And they’re so tall because we’re not supposed to miss all
that. At least that’s my theory!
