You will often see them upfront, possibly so upfront that you think it is a mirage; a figment of your imagination. The lanky figures up to 15 feet high, carefully and fluidly make their way through a packed crowd. The weather has to be right for the Moko Jumbies to step out. Too much wind and these majestic beings can topple in the most dramatic and violent of ways. But when that wind is just right, and the sun is setting, they are a sight to behold.

4 August 2024

Moko Jumbies: Lessons in Liberation from a Beloved Protector

I am a lover of my Caribbean culture and my Caribbean people. I am a lover of blackness and the black diaspora. I am a lover of stories, drip-fed down 7 generations from the mouths of griots, and the hand of artists and musicians. 

I am a lover of herstories. 

A lover of resistance.

A lover of the mess and complexities of feelings. 

A lover of the movements started and sustained by those very bodies that the mainstream seeks to wipe out.

I am a lover of festivities—one in particular. Even within my rage at certain aspects of it, I celebrate the multiplicity of meanings wrapped up in one word…CARNIVAL.

 

Carnival is colour, energy, tension, and politics. But let’s take a closer look. If you pay careful attention, within the revelry, beads, bikinis and feathers, and the politics, you will find the traditional mas(querade) characters. The ones who have stomped through carnivals for centuries…

The Dame Lorraines, the Baby Dolls, the Midnight Robbers, Fancy Sailors, and the Moko Jumbies. 

While I have a soft spot for each of the carnival characters, my spirit will always be with the Moko Jumbies, or Mokos. 

You will often see them upfront, possibly so upfront that you think it is a mirage; a figment of your imagination. The lanky figures up to 15 feet high, carefully and fluidly make their way through a packed crowd. The weather has to be right for the Moko Jumbies to step out. Too much wind and these majestic beings can topple in the most dramatic and violent of ways. But when that wind is just right, and the sun is setting, they are a sight to behold.

 

Before I even knew what they represented, I felt it. There was something mystical and magical about them. I saw them as otherworldly orbs. So far, yet so entwined in my heart, and I would later discover my history and future. I often wondered if they felt lonely up there on their …stilts.

It came as no surprise when I started looking into these mythical figures that their background is just as magical as I’d hoped it would be.

 

The story of the Moko Jumbies begins in Central Africa, where the word ‘Moko’ means healer. ‘Jumbie’ is the word used in the Caribbean to describe a spirit. A god who would watch over the village. With her height, she would see danger far in advance of the villagers. Legend has it that when enslaved Africans were stolen from their land and made the treacherous journey across the Atlantic Ocean, the Moko Jumbies marched alongside them. Always watching over. Always protecting.

 

The Moko Jumbie comes from the past, sits with and holds us in the present, and can see far into the future. What an entity!

 

For African people, translocated to the Caribbean, and often once again forcibly and violently relocated to other violent spaces, the moko has always been there to bear witness, and to be and to be an intimidating presence for oppressors. But what if we were to lean a little more into dreaming up how this ancestor, this entity can guide us with care to liberation? What if those of us for whom the work is centred in collective liberation used the moko as a blueprint?

 

Lessons from a Moko:

  1. The Moko Jumbies being high up means they get a helicopter view of the whole scene before wading through it. They see how the different parts fit together, and then forge a safe path through what is often a chaotic scene.
  2. Moko Jumbies remind us that we must bear witness, always…Even when we feel helpless. While the Mokos were unable to stop the brutality of chattel slavery, they were there to witness it, able to tell of what happened.
  3. Look to the future
  4. While the mission of the Mokos is the same (to protect), no two mokos approach the dance in the same way.
  5. A holistic approach, slow approach. That the moko jumbie has travelled with those they serve. From their past to their present, they have seen all parts of them. They have taken years to learn them. They know intimately the traumas, environmental conditions, family histories, hopes and dreams and fears of those they guard. They also know their rhythms and ways of working, and how these ways of being interact with the ways of being of others in the community
  6. Be a shapeshifter
  7. Years of practise - small stilts to taller stilts. Their classroom is the outdoors, their …
  8. Afrofuturist timetravellers, the moko jumbies have been to, or at the very least seen the future. They are the promise and the embodiment of the term, ‘there are black people in the future. They have come back to guide their community forward
  9. They are defiant in who they are. They are gender, species, and body part fluid. They walk proudly in whatever form they take. Are those arms or wings, are those legs or a wooden stick? Those with a walking stick, far from being pitied, are revered. Is that a human being? The multitude of questions from those viewing these transcendent beings soon dissipate as it is clear that those questions are not important
  10. Rest is crucial to survive and thrive. Walk along a carnival route and you will see moko jumbies sitting on top of high walls, on pavement curbs, legs akimbo, or laying back with the palms of their hands shielding their eyes from the brutal midday sun. One thing Mokos know how to do is rest and refuel.

 

This piece is obviously and unapologetically all at once a love letter to a childhood friend, and an invitation for others to look more deeply into the rituals, practices and characters within their own stories. 

What blueprints will you discover when you stop to consider that which is within your skin, heart and DNA?

Where are the lessons and the warnings within your locales? What are the stories within your families, your locales, and the nature around you?

Who or what are the radical shapeshifters laying dormant, waiting to be invoked?

The work is hard and has been hard, and it can be easy for those of us deep in the work and/or deep in the trauma of being marginalised bodies to forget that we are covered and that we are not alone. Take a look up every once in a while. If you’re lucky, you might just catch a glimpse of one of the shapeshifting, badass, afro-futurist beings that watch over you eternally.