Entry 9: Seasons greetings: Easter comes
to Ketsbaia
Seasons
greetings to you all! Due to time zones, we celebrate Easter here exactly
one week and nineteen seconds after the rest of the world.
Today we celebrated Easter. Here in Ketsbaia, Easter is one of the biggest
holidays. The festivities of Easter run for a fortnight, during which time
everyone gets whammed on fermented coconut oil
which has been heated in a saucepan and then left in the sun for two days.
Once it solidifies, what is left is a kind of edible whisky. This year, we
are again celebrating in the traditional island way, passed down to us by a
fleeting traveller.
It was about a decade ago that we had a visiting
monk who had apparently abandoned a passing ship and was washed
up on our shores. When I first feasted my eyes upon him and the “welcoming
party” I noticed that he was being goaded on account of his bizarre looking
monk’s cloak, which looked like batman’s cape. He also wore a mask which
looked like batman’s mask.
Once he’d dried himself off next to an electric heater, he started chanting
something about the Ten Commandments,
and how he was a missionary spreading to word of the good book. He spoke in
a strange dialect that no one could understand until some passing kids
stumbled upon our
motorcade.
It turns out the monk was speaking “street,” dictating ancient passages
updated for the MTV generation. Most of the Commandments related to the
perils of “pimping” people’s “rides” and avoiding at all costs the deadly
“dinner whores”.
The one commandment we all adhere to though is
Commandment IV. The old commandment of “Remember the Sabbath and
keep it holy” (or – yes! - in some interpretations, “Honour your parents”)
is updated to “Thou shalt not forget to gorgest
thou of sacred eggs of chocolast on thou Sabbath”. So every year
we make sure we don’t forget but unfortunately that makes us all very sick
indeed!
To this very day the marauding holy batman chap
visits us on each Easter Sunday to get wreaked on coconut whisky and enforce
his almighty righteous street commands till we can eat no more.