It’s the night of my first day in Saint Louis, but I feel like I’ve been here a week already. Maybe it’s because I’ve slipped in and out of consciousness so many times in the last 32 hours.
My arrival in Senegal coincides with the Islamic New Year. It is marked by flamboyant festivities in the street, turning my first evening in Saint Louis into a phantasmagorical swirl of sequins, wigs and shimmering make up.
The custom to cross-dress on Tamkharit has developed over generations of Senegalese children and this night does not disappoint. The streets are flocked with young girls with white chalk beards, boys in sparkly bustiers and men in full drag regalia, dancing and chanting in crowds that quickly swell and surge to the beat of bucket drums and disperse just as swiftly.
The carnival atmosphere can be liken to Mardi Gras or gay pride, however unfortunately despite homophobia being a recent import from western culture, it’s now throughly entrenched into Senegalese law. An interesting result of this persecution is that involvement in a homosexual relationship is practically unthinkable, allowing same sex friends freedom to show a great deal of affection for each other, without any questions about their sexuality being raised.
Swarming around me, boys in sparkling dresses dance chaotically with each other before exploding into giggles and run off down the street hand in hand.
I watch them disappear between the flickering street lights, as a rising chorus of beats and bellows signals another wave of revellers approaching. Swallowed by the jostling crowd, I’m carried with the current, before a towering man in costume breaks through the wall of people. Swathed in leafy cargo netting, dishevelled wig barely clinging to his head, his erratic movements split the crowd, scattering the onlookers as they giggle and trip to move out of the way of his wildly swinging limbs.
This ritualistic blurring of gender boundaries is a subject I’ve been fascinated by in my exploration for the liminal. The strange uncanny incarnations I’ve witnessed on the streets of Saint Louis this evening has been thrilling to behold and will no doubt influence my practice here.
First photograph by Kateljne Schiltz www.flickr.com/photos/dofrek
Second, Third and Forth by Raoul Ries, a fellow artist in residence at WAAW Centre for Art www.raoulries.com
