Living, breathing, singing, dancing colour ....... And then there is the rhythmic, hypnotic drumming that goes along with it and allows the troupe to slowly gather its followers like the 'pied-piper of Hamlyn' ......... Slowly the whole lot winds its way through the streets of town for hours on end ............... The show does not stop till the last troupe drops from exhaustion and that's normally about 5.00AM ........ All night long you hear the drums .... The "African" drums ...... Which by 0400 hours become those "Friggin drums" ....... But Oh, what a spectacle of creative workmanship ...... What a spectacle of sensuous design and what a outburst of 'hidden passions' ....... Mixed of course, with a great deal of licentious and outrageous 'overkill' ....... All in good fun ......
Just look at the 'petite mademoiselle' on the right, with a costume made entirely from peanuts including the head-dress ..... No wonder someone gave her the sash ....
Anyone you know, 'N'est pas?' .......... Of course today is the 'DIABLO' red day ....
And it is not always easy to tell the males from the females, as you will see further down ........ Here's some good training ..... Female is on the left, male on the right .....
Ok,......... You may think that the female is the one with the white purse around her neck and all the rest are beautiful blokes 'doing a little parading to get your attention' ..... But the purse lady is also a 'he' with a day's growth and an Adam's apple ........
And these are all females, also trying to get your attention ........... No dispute about that, I would think .........
And these are some serious cocoa trees ready for harvesting with beautiful yellow pods and some succulant slimy cocoa beans inside them ...... They may still need a little fermenting and drying but there is some sweet chocolate here in the making ........ Pure and fresh cocoa .....
And you don't have to have African roots to be part of the festivities but you do have to be outrageous to enjoy it to the full ......... I mean, we did ..... And so did those below, kids and all ....... Even McDonalds came to the party with more than just the big 'M' ...... They sponsored a huge sound truck ...........
How would you like to be gutted by this Mademoiselle 'Captain Hook', who has all the hallmarks of the Colonial Era, unlike this husband and wife, who we watched in McDonalds polishing off a 'Big Mac' and then 'he' applied lipstick to himself with such finesse that we burst out laughing so much so, that Laurie asked if we could take their photo ....... 'Mais qui, certainment" ..........
But nothing is as titillating as a 'snippet of colourful history' ........ There is this bronze plaque at the bottom of this marble headless statue in one of the parks in Fort de France, MARTINIQUE ......(Do a double-click on it to enlarge it) Headless now, and dripping with red blood, for the once famous JOSEPHINE is famous no more ........ She was born in Martinique, the daughter of a slave-owning planter where she married an army officer only to catch the eye of another young officer some time later, by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte ........ Despite having two children by her previous marriage, Napoleon married her, but acrimoniously divorced her six years later when JOSEPHINE, now Empress Josephine, failed to give him an heir to the Emperor's throne ........ Back in Martinique, the population beheaded her statue mostly because she failed to emancipate her slaves, unlike many other planters .... 'Beheading' is a wonderful French tradition and seems to have been carried out even on those depicted in the bronze sculpture, which if the rust stains are truly rust, may not have been bronze either ........ Ah, 'C'est la vie' ........
Sometimes people just get beheaded by mistake ........... I mean, stuff like that happens, right? .... That guillotine comes down so fast, and almost as fast as public opinion ...... In this case it wasn't the end of the World ........... You simply take the head and put it back again ........ No big deal really ........
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