The Water Buffalo Nat Pwe Spirit Festival Part 2

From Pakokko and our clean and very reasonably priced ($35) and wonderfully wi-fi connected Royal Palace Hotel, we drive first to Myaing then on to Sin Sein village for the Water Buffalo nat pwe.

The village roads are difficult. Bullock carts leave their ironed out wheel tracks one each side of the road, but the middle is scuffed up and with no rain becomes like concrete which makes a scary scraping noise on the underside of Win San’s taxi. Other huge ruts in the middle must be negotiated with heart stopping slowness too. Hopefully, no rain today.

We go to the house where nagadaws are dressing in their sparkly sequined gowns and arresting make-up – and these are just the men.

Every year at this same village, the same man will carry the buffalo nat head. Nobody else is ever allowed to carry it or even touch it or they will die. (I accidentally touched it yesterday and today I have a cold, so you never know). The escorts with bowls collect money from each house and the money will go to repairing the Buffalo Nat house.

We arrive at the stage. All morning one local nagadaw at a time will dance. This afternoon, many nagadaws representing some of the pantheon of 37 nats will be dancing. The orchestra revs up. Nats Ko Myo Shin, Ko Gyi Kyaw and Ame Ye Shin all have their own music. The nagadaws will advise the orchestra which nat they are representing and the musicians will make the appropriate choices.

Cymbals crash nagadaws twist and twirl. The audience is becoming excited too: they tuck money into the nagadaws’ headdress. Oh, this is different, one nagadaw lights two cigarettes in her mouth at once. She puffs a couple of times and, thus blessed, they are given away in the audience. Each nagadaw takes swigs from bottles of Johnnie Walker (or similar). Some well-dressed matrons have taken to the floor, along with some decidedly squiffy looking men. I guess this beats peanut farming on a Sunday afternoon.

In the past, I had been led to believe, that the nagadaws drank and drank until they fell down in a trance and whatever emanated from their mouth were the wise words of the nat. Here I am reliably informed that no, the nagadaws are not talking large gulps of liquor they are inviting the audience to do so. They are not drunk and it is the words of the songs that are the words of the nat. Armed with this information I am sure I will better understand the goings on at the next nat pwe that I attend.