Black Magic Woman

It all began at around 8 o'clock on a Tuesday night. After spending the day on the beach, we were looking for something to do that evening (it's low season, so entertainment options are fairly limited), when Chandana came into our beach side cabana.

"Last day of festival in Ounamatouna tonight. We go?" he asked.
"We go."

Armed with flip flops and bus fare, we boarded a rickety old vehicle heading eastbound on Galle Road (the one road that spans the entire coastline of Sri Lanka. Makes getting around really easy when there's only a single street!).

I had no idea what to expect at this 'festival', but was anticipating that we would likely sit somewhere and have some drinks, maybe go see a parade and then dance (the one piece of information I had been given by my Sri Lankan homeboys is that there would be dancing). Easy, predictable, quiet Tuesday night party, right?

Wrong.

I was so far from prepared for what I witnessed that evening.

Black magic or Buddhism, I don't know, but either way it was intense.

We began by visiting the temple to make offerings. Ditching our shoes at the entrance, we bought sticks of incense and climbed a winding staircase, surrounded by hundreds of locals dressed in the colours of their country and religion: the yellows, reds and whites that define Sri Lanak's Buddhists.

There is nothing quite like going to a solemn religious function with a bunch of beach boys who spend their days carving waves and playing in the surf. Watching my friends shed their lifestyle for ten minutes of solemn worship was quite a trip.

And then, the real festival began.

We walked through narrow winding streets overflowing with thousands of men, women and children and all the paraphenalia that makes a festival - toy vendors, food stands, lights, and prayers being chanted on loud speaker - to arrive finally at a large open fire.

About thirty or fourty people dressed in yellow and red were dancing around the flames to the beating of drums. Their bodies flailed and gyrated, arms waving in the air, eyes closed and faces lifted to the skies as they moved in a trance-like state around the fire. Occassionally, one of the group would collapse in a heap or go tearing wildly into the crowd.

"Sometime they go crazy. Is normal. Then we give coconut and go to temple and is fine" Nalinda explained to me.

"Do you really think they go crazy?" I asked.

"Of course!" he replied, his voice rising, incredulous that I might be doubting the power of God over these people.

Coming from a rasta-surfer-playboy, it was a surprising response. But not as suprising as what he told me next.

"I do also" he said with pride.

Turns out a similar Devil festival is held in towns all over the country at this time of year, and Nalina participated in one a few weeks ago, dancing around the fire, running over burning hot coals and making a blood offering (I'll get to that part of the night in a minute). He had the scars on his arms to prove he wasn't making it up.

It's just what people do here.
"it is our culture", Nalinda explained.

The rest of the festival was as intense as the introductory dancing (a far cry from the kind of 'dancing' I had expected; not exactly a bar room dancefloor situation).

We wandered back to the temple in time to see a man in his mid-thirties, dressed in white robes and a red sash, walk into a small room and close the door behind him. He was carrying a sword.

A few moments later, he emerged from the room with his arms lifted high above his head, eyes rolled back in his head, face lifted to the sky. Blood ran down his arms and stained his robes, and the crowd parted to let him through. As he exited the temple gates people surged back together and poured down the street in pursuit of the man. eE joined the crowd streaming down the road towards the fire pit, where I watched in open-mouthed astonishment as this 'possessed' man (for lack of a better term) and dozens of others ran bare-foot over burning hot coals.

Drums beating, prayers screaming over the loudspeakers, women wailing and men singing, small children staring wide-eyed at the sights around them, fire and blood, incense and the sweat of a thousand bodies crushed together.

Festival.

We ain't in Kansas anymore, Toto.