Mijts Blog

After the dawn arrival of the boats to open the mask festival, the activities moved to the local football oval. On the Wednesday afternoon I took the wife of Nick’s boss up there as the program said that the mud-men were performing at 1pm and I was keen to see them. It was an interesting afternoon – my companion, who is visiting from Japan for a few weeks, only spoke Japanese so we communicated mostly in sign language. It was hot, windy and dusty and no performers in sight!

We sat under a Coca Cola ‘tent’ for an hour and were rewarded for our patience – although not by the mudmen as they were a no show that day. However, from 2pm onwards there were several performances by Tolai Tubuan groups – from six different villages.

After our long wait, some men and boys assembled by the ‘sacred men’s area’ (no females allowed in there) wearing red laplaps and carrying their traditional ‘man bags.’

They then sat together on the oval, chanting, singing, playing drums and clacking sticks ‘calling’ the performers and accompanying their dances. They sat in the hot sun doing this for a couple of hours!

There were a few Duk-Duk dances.

But most of the groups featured the ‘female’ Tubuan mask.

Whilst all similar, there was some variety in appearance across the groups.

They danced in pairs and there was great variety in the dance style of the different groups.

One group featured an action where they dropped to the ground and rolled. They were very flexible and agile and despite their masks and costumes were able to quickly get up and continue dancing again.

We really enjoyed these dances and I took HEAPS of photos – thank goodness for digital cameras!
Nick and I returned to the festival on Saturday morning and much to my joy we saw the mud-men – more about this in Part 3!