What is "hosay"

Hosay or Tadjah is a West Indian commemoration, in which multi-colored model mausoleums are paraded, then ritually offered up to the sea, or any body of water. Some contemporary writers equate the multi-colored mausoleums with " mosques." In British Guiana, now Guyana, and Suriname, the festival was called Taziya or creolized into Tadjah in reference to these floats, the most visible and decorative element of this festival. In nineteenth-century Trinidad newspapers as well as government reports called Hosay the "Coolie Carnival."