Sights and sounds of Mnarja

Unfamiliar with rural life, many Maltese become tourists in their own country as they visit Buskett for the Mnarja festival, increasingly becoming a once-a-year showcase of a way of life that is arguably fading away.

By any account, however, yesterday's fair was an amusing sight for the young (and not so young) especially those who have mostly seen goats on picture books, or perhaps only listened to a cock's crow on a toy piano synthesizer.

Surrounded by a cacophony of sounds produced by chickens and turkeys in cages lined next to each other beneath a large tent, a selection of colourful fruit and vegetables, herbs and live rabbits, visitors walked around the stalls amid the smell of imqaret, hamburgers, sweat and animal dung.

While parents took photos of their children stretching their arms out towards a few pensive-looking goats seemingly awed by their noisy surroundings, older men and women sat down on low parapet walls tired of walking around on a hot day. A breeze brushing through the thin pine leaves and slowly turning a windmill made the afternoon slightly more bearable.

At about 11 a.m. the orderly confusion turned into a brief moment of mayhem as a Maltese ox unleashed itself and ran through the crowd, putting down an iron gate and injuring his owner in the process.

At that time, Rita Willis, a British woman who has taken part in Mnarja regularly for the past 15 years, had been busy spinning wool on a traditional machine brought over from New Zealand.

Explaining how wool, cotton and silk is spun using different processes, Ms Willis said she formed part of a London guild of spinners.

Before wool started being spun industrially, women were experts in the job, Ms Willis said. In Scotland, she explained, men in search of a wife used to wander around the streets looking out for the best spinners.

The heat had kicked in even more by the time the organisers prepared for the prize-giving ceremony at noon, and people had started to return homes. Some made plans to go to the beach, and only the very keen went to Saqqajja to watch the traditional horse races in the afternoon.