ABSTRACT
This chapter presents young children's responses to adult masquerades as well as the boys' own masquerades. It is written in the context of changing conditions in masquerade performance in various Kalabari communities in coastal southeastern Nigeria. A child from the Kalabari seaport of Abonnema is masquerading, with a wooden face mask that probably once was a major mask of the adult Ekine society, which would have been worn facing skyward, not forward as this one does. Whether ignored or encouraged, Kalabari children are allowed by adults to touch abandoned objects, archaic objects of their society's culture. Masquerade dancing in Kalabari disassociates from the centralizing tendency of the past and toward pure performance. Coming to a second form of child's masquerade, it is well known that Opobo combines two distinct masquerade traditions, that from the riverine and that from the hinterland. This reflects historical events, with a population of both inland Igbo and coastal Ijo settlers.
