La Lutte

La lutte in progress

This weekend I got to experience the national sport of Senegal, called la lutte in French, firsthand. La lutte is basically a violent form of wrestling. The men (only men can be lutteurs) wear little itsy bitsy bottoms and nothing else. To start the evening off, all the fighters spent some time warming up in the ring (which is really just a big circle of people watching the lutte- which takes place on dirt). They strut their stuff and get pumped up for the match, warming up their bodies and their egos. I still don't really have a conception of how the matches are chosen, but when one starts two lutteurs enter the ring and start posturing. I was sort of falling asleep for a lot of it (it took place between ten and midnight!), but from what I saw of a few matches it seemed like they oftentimes threw a bit of sand at each other and started pawing at each other like cats or something. From the impressions I have seen of the lutte, I think that this is pretty typical. So they slowly close in on each other and start grabbing for the other lutteur's arms. Once they get ahold of each other they grapple and struggle around the ring, trying to knock the opponent down. The whole point is to get your opponent on the ground (like most wrestling I suppose), but the means of doing so are fairly jarring. Since the lutteurs engage and grapple with each other, a lot of the matches ended with one of the fighters getting thrown onto the ground HARD. And there aren't mats on the ground, just packed dirt. You could feel the ground shake when some men hit the dirt. Sometimes the battles were intense, with one of the competitors resting just inches off the ground for a painfully long time before managing to make a comeback and continuing the battle. It takes a lot of strength, no doubt, and I have been told that the entire point of the lutte is basically just to say “HEY WORLD! I AM REALLY STRONG!” Alright, you've made your point.

Also, the lutte seems to be more about ego than anything else. Some of the lutteurs straight up threw fits when they lost, convulsing on the ground and getting toted off and held back by their posses. It is totally possible that I am misinterpreting what was happening when they had these little fits, but at a superficial level it struck me as being anguish about having lost. Sort of silly, but also quite dramatic and fun to watch. I think usually lutte matches are more dramatic than the one we saw, which was orchestrated for our enjoyment, but even still, this one was pretty intense. There was drumming and singing the entire time and the whole town turned out to watch (that was also different- I guess usually kids don't really get to go because matches can actually get dangerous).

Senegal's lutte champion: Yekini

The lutte happens throughout Senegal, but during the summer months a national contest gets held. It is a big, televised event and the winner is celebrated like a national hero.

You can buy notebooks, folders, and trinkets of all kinds with the lutte champion's face on them. Very silly indeed. But everyone loves it. The men all go to the beach to work out and practice here in Dakar, and I think that the process is probably similar in the villages. Watching it sort of cracked me up because I was not really sure what to expect and the men really looked like fighting ponies or cats or something, but I shouldn't laugh because it's not like I could ever win any lutte contest.