In The Gambia, monsters don’t just live in children’s nightmares – they’re real.
Marching through the village, kankarangs “roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws” … and … clang their terrible machetes. Then, with the help of a posse of teenagers, the masquerade known as a kankarang snatches the little boys up and takes them out to the bush for circumcision.
In The Gambia, Simba is not a cute little lion cub who wants to be king. Simba is instead a lion-like masquerade that can only be described as horrifying yet somehow weirdly entertaining. Which come to think of it, is exactly how I felt about the Lion King as a kid.
