Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Poor Haile!


From the Wikipedia article on the Rastafari movement:

Haile Selassie visited Jamaica on April 21, 1966. Somewhere between one and two hundred thousand Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Kingston airport having heard that the man whom they considered to be God was coming to visit them. They waited at the airport smoking a great amount of cannabis and playing drums. ... Bob Marley's wife, converted to the Rastafari faith after seeing Haile Selassie; she has stated that she saw stigmata appear on his person, and was instantly convinced of his divinity. It must be said also that Jamaica had been suffering a serious drought at the time, that was suddenly punctuated by rain upon Selassie's arrival; this must also have done much to spread the Rastafarian message.


Can you imagine the only respected African leader, being thronged by all these wacky pot-smoking hippies? He looks like a guy with no sense of humor. Jeez. Seriously, though. Reading through Selassie's Wikipedia page, he seemed to like the Jamaican Rastafaris' interest in African rights and anticolonialism, but ... very little is said about how he viewed the cult that happened around him. I'm imagining Monty Python's Life of Brian ... Oddd.

No comments: