Post by kaya on Jun 11, 2007 9:53:53 GMT -5
Article
Inside the temple of love
Published:Jun 11, 2007
DAILY DREAD: Gabra Uashua Christos is moved by the spirit. Many Rastafarians complain that misapprehension about their religion is deep-set Picture: RAYMOND PRESTON
Visiting a Rastafari community is a fascinating, mind-altering experience, writes Aspasia Karras
This is a Pan-African House. There are no borders. We open our gates. We see no pigment.
The beat of drums is overpowering. The thrum of chanting voices builds to a crescendo, and then ebbs away. Waves of Rastafarian hymn and ganja smoke break over the small congregation for the celebration of the Rastafarian Sabbath.
If it were not for the effects of the weed, you could transplant the incantatory scene to almost any venue of devout observation.
It is Saturday afternoon at the Rasta house in Yeoville.
The weed is both the incense and the holy sacrament in the tabernacle, and it is blissing everyone out.
On mats on the concrete floor children and one chanting woman are the morning’s supplicants.
The children are riveted by my presence. They sit on my lap, play with my earrings and my hair, and wrap themselves in the cloth I am using to cover my head and shoulders. Everyone is barefoot and pleasantly stoned.
The house has seen better days. The floors and doors were stripped many winters ago. Now the stoep is home to the altar — a simple table laid with fruit and a candelabra.
Around it be-turbaned rastas in flowing white robes clutch staffs and beat drums in unison.
They are adorned with the red, yellow and green colours of their creed and medallions of the Emperor Haile Selassie I, their God incarnate.
Timekeeping is not a fixed element of this ritual. Despite protestations that the service would be underway at 12, the reality is more fluid.
Even once the incantation and drumming officially begins, people continue to come and go.
The Yeoville Rastas are members of the Bobo Shanti tribe. Their turbans wound precipitously around their dreadlocks, and their idiosyncratic greeting style — fist to fist — are defining features of this subset of Rastafaris.
There are apparently 12 tribes in the faith, much like the 12 tribes of Judah, but for the uninitiated, Rastafarianism is hard to pin down. This is probably because, like many folk religions, its creed spontaneously evolves and there is no centralised hierarchy.
Habte Welde Selassie is a man of the cloth. He has the otherworldly demeanour of one who spends his days in spiritual contemplation.
He tells me that Haile Selassie was a direct descendant of David, king of the Israelites, a product of that fateful journey to Jerusalem made by the Queen of Sheba.
“The proof is in Kings 1, Chapter 10. Haile Selassie is the 225th descendant. We gather on the Sabbath, on the sixth day, to spiritually elevate each other.
“We are strictly vegetarian. We believe in karma.
“This is a Pan-African House. There are no borders. We open our gates — we see no pigment.”
The early Rastas were sustained by marijuana plantations. In Yeoville, the traditional trade still seems to be plied.
From my stoned vantage point — induced purely by secondary smoke — I watch a bakkie pull up and its unlikely visitors, clean-shaven white boys, score a little afternoon oblivion.
In the yard in front of the house a young acolyte named Sylvester is having his hair braided as a precursor to growing dreads. He explains that braids make the transition to dreads easier.
The girl braiding hair will not divulge her name. She says: “My grandmother would kill me if she knew I was here.”
It seems that misapprehension about the Rastas is deep-set. Habte Welde Selassie bemoans: “We Rastafarian people have always been faced with rejection.”
Dreadlocks originated when the burgeoning folk religion met with the practical liberation politics and aspirations of the 1950s in the form of the Kenyan liberation struggle.
Beards had been de rigueur up to that point in imitation of Selassie. But pictures of Mau Mau warriors with traditional dreadlocks fighting colonial oppression fired the imagination and hirsute fashions of Rastas and wannabe rastas for all time. It helped that Bob Marley and the Wailers sported full manes of rebellious dreads.
But to the Bobo Shanti, fashion dreads are anathema. Gabra Yashua Christos, a Bobo Shanti elder who arrived in South Africa from Jamaica eight years ago, explains: “You must always taste the spirit. You can’t just do it because of fashion.” He is a charismatic man whose Jamaican patois rolls lightly off the tongue. Everything he utters sounds mystical and laden with significance.
Feeling light-headed after my excursion to the trippy heart of Yeoville’s Rastafari tabernacle, I make farewells with Gabra Yashua Christos. He is surrounded by his progeny from his many different wives.
He laughs when questioned on the subject: “Polygamy? Women don’t believe in it. But we follow the principle of the strong family. They (the wives) are happy, but some of them complain, unfortunately.”
His final word: “There is enough love to spread love.”
SOURCE: The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
Inside the temple of love
Published:Jun 11, 2007
DAILY DREAD: Gabra Uashua Christos is moved by the spirit. Many Rastafarians complain that misapprehension about their religion is deep-set Picture: RAYMOND PRESTON
Visiting a Rastafari community is a fascinating, mind-altering experience, writes Aspasia Karras
This is a Pan-African House. There are no borders. We open our gates. We see no pigment.
The beat of drums is overpowering. The thrum of chanting voices builds to a crescendo, and then ebbs away. Waves of Rastafarian hymn and ganja smoke break over the small congregation for the celebration of the Rastafarian Sabbath.
If it were not for the effects of the weed, you could transplant the incantatory scene to almost any venue of devout observation.
It is Saturday afternoon at the Rasta house in Yeoville.
The weed is both the incense and the holy sacrament in the tabernacle, and it is blissing everyone out.
On mats on the concrete floor children and one chanting woman are the morning’s supplicants.
The children are riveted by my presence. They sit on my lap, play with my earrings and my hair, and wrap themselves in the cloth I am using to cover my head and shoulders. Everyone is barefoot and pleasantly stoned.
The house has seen better days. The floors and doors were stripped many winters ago. Now the stoep is home to the altar — a simple table laid with fruit and a candelabra.
Around it be-turbaned rastas in flowing white robes clutch staffs and beat drums in unison.
They are adorned with the red, yellow and green colours of their creed and medallions of the Emperor Haile Selassie I, their God incarnate.
Timekeeping is not a fixed element of this ritual. Despite protestations that the service would be underway at 12, the reality is more fluid.
Even once the incantation and drumming officially begins, people continue to come and go.
The Yeoville Rastas are members of the Bobo Shanti tribe. Their turbans wound precipitously around their dreadlocks, and their idiosyncratic greeting style — fist to fist — are defining features of this subset of Rastafaris.
There are apparently 12 tribes in the faith, much like the 12 tribes of Judah, but for the uninitiated, Rastafarianism is hard to pin down. This is probably because, like many folk religions, its creed spontaneously evolves and there is no centralised hierarchy.
Habte Welde Selassie is a man of the cloth. He has the otherworldly demeanour of one who spends his days in spiritual contemplation.
He tells me that Haile Selassie was a direct descendant of David, king of the Israelites, a product of that fateful journey to Jerusalem made by the Queen of Sheba.
“The proof is in Kings 1, Chapter 10. Haile Selassie is the 225th descendant. We gather on the Sabbath, on the sixth day, to spiritually elevate each other.
“We are strictly vegetarian. We believe in karma.
“This is a Pan-African House. There are no borders. We open our gates — we see no pigment.”
The early Rastas were sustained by marijuana plantations. In Yeoville, the traditional trade still seems to be plied.
From my stoned vantage point — induced purely by secondary smoke — I watch a bakkie pull up and its unlikely visitors, clean-shaven white boys, score a little afternoon oblivion.
In the yard in front of the house a young acolyte named Sylvester is having his hair braided as a precursor to growing dreads. He explains that braids make the transition to dreads easier.
The girl braiding hair will not divulge her name. She says: “My grandmother would kill me if she knew I was here.”
It seems that misapprehension about the Rastas is deep-set. Habte Welde Selassie bemoans: “We Rastafarian people have always been faced with rejection.”
Dreadlocks originated when the burgeoning folk religion met with the practical liberation politics and aspirations of the 1950s in the form of the Kenyan liberation struggle.
Beards had been de rigueur up to that point in imitation of Selassie. But pictures of Mau Mau warriors with traditional dreadlocks fighting colonial oppression fired the imagination and hirsute fashions of Rastas and wannabe rastas for all time. It helped that Bob Marley and the Wailers sported full manes of rebellious dreads.
But to the Bobo Shanti, fashion dreads are anathema. Gabra Yashua Christos, a Bobo Shanti elder who arrived in South Africa from Jamaica eight years ago, explains: “You must always taste the spirit. You can’t just do it because of fashion.” He is a charismatic man whose Jamaican patois rolls lightly off the tongue. Everything he utters sounds mystical and laden with significance.
Feeling light-headed after my excursion to the trippy heart of Yeoville’s Rastafari tabernacle, I make farewells with Gabra Yashua Christos. He is surrounded by his progeny from his many different wives.
He laughs when questioned on the subject: “Polygamy? Women don’t believe in it. But we follow the principle of the strong family. They (the wives) are happy, but some of them complain, unfortunately.”
His final word: “There is enough love to spread love.”
SOURCE: The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times