LIFE's video: Unique Sri Lankan kaffir life

Dancing "kaffir" style in Sri Lanka. African Sri Lankans, mainly the Sri Lanka Kaffirs, are a very small Ethnic group in Sri Lanka who are descendants of slaves that were brought into the island by Portuguese colonists in the 17th century. There are currently around 1000 African Sri Lankans. They live in pockets of communities along the island's coastal regions of Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Negambo. The Portuguese colonists used them to fight the Ceylonese Kings. The main African Sri Lankans are known as Kaffirs. This term is not used as a racial pejorative as in other parts of the world. They were originally Muslims but many have now converted to Catholicism and Buddhism. They speak a lyrical creole language with a mix of native Sinhalese and Tamil. In Sri Lanka, the ethnic group known as the country’s “kaffirs”, or Sri Lankan-Africans, speak a unique language – but they are losing knowledge of it. The Sri Lankan Kaffirs (cafrinhas in Portuguese, kapiriyo in Sinhala, and kapili in Tamil) are an ethnic group in Sri Lanka who are partially descended from 16th century Portuguese traders and the African slaves who were brought by them to work as labourers and soldiers to fight against the Sri Lankan kings. They are very similar to the African populations in Iraq, Iran and Kuwait, and are known in Pakistan as Sheedis and India as Siddis. The Kaffirs spoke a distinctive creole based on Portuguese, the Sri Lanka Kaffir language, now extinct. Their cultural heritage includes the dance styles Kaffringna and Manja and their popular form of dance music Baila. The Sri Lankan-Africans are descended from the Africans first brought to the island nation as slaves, servants and soldiers by Portuguese traders in the 1500s, and most likely from Mozambique. After the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed in the British Parliament in 1807, the process of putting an end to slavery began in British controlled colonies. Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of Sri Lanka (1806-1819), urged for the gradual abolition of domestic slavery in Sri Lanka and it was eventually agreed that all children born of slaves after 1806 would be freed, thus beginning the end of three-centuries of slavery.