Fire of Life?

Q: Watch the video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZs4QMOsCEc] that gives a view of life in a small Rastafari village. Write in your blog about how this village participates in the system of symbols that we see reflected in our textbook. Don't give a laundry list of every kind of symbol, but pick out an element that you find striking. Interact also with what our textbook has to say about the symbol you have chosen. Is the symbol used in a surprising way or is it what you would expect from our book?

 Since I'm writing this blog rather late, I have the advantage of getting to see what others wrote.

There were a few symbols that got picked out and inspected quite well by others, I'll briefly summarize the main ones:

The turbans - these aren't mentioned in our book, but we do know that dreadlocks play an important role. It was interesting to see the dreadlocks covered up, and seemed to indicate that the tie to Ethiopia (represented by the turban "crown") is set higher than the rebellion against "Babylon", or western society (symbolized in the dreadlocks).

Another obvious case of symbolism is the scattered signs throughout the village. The editors of the movie chose to show three signs more specifically - probably to highlight a contrast they saw - one sign says "equality and justice for all", but the next sign has the word "black" written over the word "white", and as if to emphasize this, the last sign has a black "R for righteousness" (and maybe for Ratsafari?) over a white X which stands for wrong, or evil. I didn't see any other evidence, but the way this is presented implies the possibility of racism toward white people.

Thirdly, we saw a widespread use of the Ethiopian colors red, yellow and green. This was expected and is explained in our book, but the presence of the colors was almost overwhelming - even the houses were painted in them.

The symbol I would like to point out is the "fire of life". Apparently, these Boboshanti keep a fire lit at the top of the mountain at all times. This intrigues me, since it isn't a practice mentioned in a book, nor is it explained in this video. Wikipedia told me nothing about it, and google searches gave me two things: First, a book by Salman Rushdie titled "Luka and the Fire of Life", which has nothing to do with this, and second, a blog post by someone who took this class in 2008 (!).
I wonder how much work it is to keep this fire running, what symbolic purpose it serves (a fire on a mountain would be highly visible from a distance), and how it connects to other religions - like the continuously burning lamp in the ancient Jewish tabernacle and temple (“And you shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive-oil for the light, that a lamp may be set to burn continually”. Exodus 27:20). Catholics and Jews generally continue this tradition and have a permanently burning oil lamp, called the "sanctuary lamp" or "everlasting flame". Is there a connection?

Curious.