Bobolee: Beat Your Stress And More This Good Friday
The bobolee is a special and somewhat bizarre sign of the Easter season that anyone with stress will love.
Making time for bobolee
So, remember in my post about Jamaican Easter Bun? In it, I mentioned that we planned to share many of the other wonderful Easter traditions celebrated throughout the Caribbean ahead of the actual holiday? Yeah, umm, I guess we got distracted. After all, there were sexy sailors, an extremely buff MMA fighter, and a really great beer, among other things…
To make up for it, though, we went above and beyond to replicate one of the most uncommon Caribbean Easter traditions that I know of here at my home in Fort Lauderdale.
What is a bobolee?
Essentially, a bobolee is a stuffed caricature of a controversial person; someone who is the subject of scorn causes stress or brings shame to the community. The bobolee tradition comes from Trinidad & Tobago where it has been observed for generations.
Just ahead of Good Friday, Bobolees start appearing all over Trinidad & Tobago propped up on fences, trees, light posts, etc. They’re always in conspicuous locations so everyone can see them… and when Good Friday arrives, enact revenge!
What is a bobolee for?
On Good Friday, people attack the Bobolees with sticks, bats, and anything else they can get their hands on, beating their antagonists in effigy to a pulp.
As my Dad explained to me when I was in Tobago for Easter one year, the tradition stems from Christian anger with Judas over ratting Jesus out to the Romans, eventually resulting in his crucifixion.
Judas may be the inspiration for the original Bobolee, but these days you’re more apt to see local TnT politicians taking a mock beating in the streets.
One year, hilarious video footage of former Trinidad Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, led the nightly local newscasts. Less than two months later, Kamla Persad-Bissessar was sworn in as the nation’s first-ever female P.M. after soundly defeating Manning in a general election.
If you were there on Good Friday and saw what the locals did to the Manning Bobolees, you could see his defeat coming a mile away.
Our bobolee
As for our South Florida bobolee, we decided to have him represent the biggest current scourge in our neighborhood – thieves. Indeed, the persistently struggling economy has bred an increase in break-ins around our area. We haven’t been hit (yet), but like most of our neighbors, we’re a bit stressed about it. So, it was a wonderfully cathartic experience for my kids, my wife, and I to take a baseball bat and a large stick to this shady character.
Sure, we got a lot of strange looks from passing cars, but it was well worth it to bring a bit of this Trini tradition home.
If anything’s stressing you this Easter Weekend, I highly recommend it!
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