Lelo 2010

lelo 2010 - pjr

My buddy Robinzon, a taxi driver and recovering lelo participant, says that you can't understand what lelo is until you see it with your own eyes. But even then it's hard to believe.

Lelo is an Easter Sunday ritual that occurs only in one village in the western Georgian region of Guria and involves drinking, struggling over a 35lb. ball, more drinking, eating and then commemorating the dead at the cemetery the next day by eating and drinking toasts to everyone you remember.

This year's story by Justyna and I can be found here, at Eurasianet.

Here's a clip of a tradition inaugurated this year - drinking wine from the ball before it's full. Father Saba demonstrates before dropping the ball in the middle of the highway where the melee begins: