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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRO
THE GEOGRAPHY

LOCATION

MAP

STATES, CAPITALS, & LINKS

LAND & CLIMATE

RIVERS

TOWNS & CITIES
PATRIOTIC STUFF

FLAG

COAT OF ARMS

NATIONAL ANTHEM

NATIONAL PLEDGE

MOTTO
PEOPLES

POPULATION

RELIGION
     -CHRISTIANITY
     -ISLAM
     -TRADITIONAL
     -INFLUENCE

ETHNIC GROUPS
     -YORUBA
     -IBO (or IGBO)
     -HAUSA (& FULANI)
     -OTHERS
CULTURES & CUSTOMS
LANGUAGES & INTRO

LANGUAGES
     -YORUBA ALPHABET
        & LANGUAGE
     -IBO ALPHABET & LANGUAGE
     -HAUSA ALPHABET
        & LANGUAGE
     -LINKS TO OTHERS

LANGUAGE RESOURCES
     -GENERAL RESOURCES
     -YORUBA RESOURCES
     -IBO RESOURCES
     -HAUSA RESOURCES
     -OTHERS
MORE ON LANGUAGES
     -NUMBERS
     -PEOPLE
     -BODY PARTS
     -HOUSE PARTS
     -PLACES
     -OTHER WORDS
ADDITIONAL LANGUAGES
NAMES & ORIGINS

YORUBA NAMES
     -THE NAMING CEREMONY
     -COMMON PARTS
     -CIRCUMSTANTIAL NAMES

IGBO NAMES

HAUSA NAMES

LINKS ON NAMES
MARRIAGE & FAMILY

THE WEDDING

MARRIAGE TIDBITS

FAMILY TIDBITS

OTHER SOURCES
FOODS AND DRINKS

INTRO

SOME MEALS

SOME DRINKS
RECIPES

RECIPES

LINKS
FOOD: BUYING & DINING

BUYING (ingredients and food)

DINING (restaurants)
HEALTHCARE

TRADITIONAL HEALTH

CURRENT HEALTH POLICY

INFO FOR TRAVELERS

LIST OF FESTIVALS ON THIS PAGE

Egungun Festival
New Yam Festival

Email me if you can add to this list.
Also, you can see some pictures at Pictures: Attractions.

Egungun Festival

Compliments of Kunle

Egungun, The Return of the Ancestor in Masquerade Form Among the Yorubas.

The Importance of Lineage in Yoruba Religious Belief:

Egungun is a presentational religious art which imagines the collective spirits of the ancestors and builds them out of overlapping or stitched segments of cloth. At times of commemoration of the dead--yearly festivals and successive funeral rites-these remarkable assemblages "come out" to dance, to astound the viewer, correct if need be, and offer blessings from the spiritual world they normally inhabit. Although Egungun have individual names, often those of individuals prominent in the past, the energy they embody is corporate and diachronic: that of the lineage recycling itself through time.

Among the Yoruba, immortality is not personal and perpetual, but rather communal and recurring. Every person is presumed to have at least two souls: an individual and transient soul represented by "breath of life" (emi) and an ancestral guardian soul (iponri), which at death (if the person had led a morally responsible life) returns to something like a pool of spiritual essences in order to reincarnate again. It is the soul of a recent ancestor that comes back to life as iponri with a newly-chosen destiny to live out, but this in turn is part of the soul of a more remote ancestor whose essence is thus shared among a host of descendants.

The gods (orisha) of Yorubaland are similarly connected to lineage. On the psycho-biological level, the iponri is presumed to be fashioned of an elemental admixture shared with one of the gods, whom the newly-born is thus predisposed and eventually (were it not for modern interference of Islamic and Christian spiritual forces) obligated to worship. Thus, if one's essential, ancestral self contains a certain combination of fire, water, and wind, one should come to maturity serving the goddess Oya.

Furthermore, although some Yoruba and their interpreters speak of Orisha as once-powerful personalities who became gods, another reasonable way of speaking of their genesis on earth is to suppose that Orisha are ancestors who managed to tap and control certain natural energies with which they henceforth became associated. The ancestor who mastered fire and the mystery of metallurgic transformation became "Ogun." A rain-maker became "Shango." A woman who could control the River Niger's flood and direct the force of tornados became "Oya."

Egungun's origin among the Oyo Yoruba in historical time European abstraction is conceptually foreign to Africa. What's interesting about it, including the spirits inhabiting its various deeps and rapids, is local with relation to the human community it affects. Similarly, what we think of as Yorubaland in south-western Nigeria was originally a complex of towns (like Greek city states) ruled by kings, to which smaller communities ruled by chiefs paid tribute in order to avoid trouble. The word "Yoruba", which reportedly means "cunning", was originally applied to those within the Oyo orbit by their Hausa neighbors (themselves great traders). Missionaries risked offending various other groups like the Ife, Egba, and Ekiti, for example, by calling the language such peoples spoke and into which they hoped to translate the Bible "Yoruba". To confuse the cultural contributions of Oyo subgroup with those of the "Yoruba" as a whole would be untrue to the way things are. But in speaking of Egungun, or of Shango, or of Oya, or of the lesser known Orisha Bayanni, one legitimately involves the Oyo-Yoruba as original stage-managers of these magnificent productions, which are inter-related. Bata drums play for all of them, and traditionally for no others. At Shango or Oya festivals Egunguns are required to "come out." And conversely, one cannot speak of Egungun on the mythological level nor on the tonsorial level without reference to Oya, Shango.

Egungun developed as an institution patently to strengthen and consolidate the kingship, the foundering state and its people by theatrically evoking ancestral sanctions and by lending supernatural authority to the suppression of disloyal, even dissident voices. The use of masquerades as political whips and purgatives (which is often the case and the interesting part during the festivities) of ill-intentioned elements within communities was borrowed from heads-of-family defecting from the Nupe enemy or from Nupeized Yoruba living along the Niger River. The ancestral dimension stemmed from Oyo-Yoruba tradition itself in the transcendent personof Shango, a legendary early king of Oyo, divinized as Orisha. (To this day Oyo kings reign as earthly surrogates of Shango.)

Egungun ritual was established to appease the anger of a neglected dead father of the Ologbin lineage of bardic entertainers to the King of Oyo. The deceased's corpse had been simply abandoned in an ant hill. Among the Oyo-Yoruba (who trace their political power back to Shango) the senior Elder Egungun masquerade is always Egungun Oya--the goddess in the form of cloth-segments.

Egungun is (almost exclusively, except for a few titled women) a male cult. Women are not allowed to come out during the ceremonies when Egunguns such as 'Oro' comes out to perform. It is believed that if a woman sees the masquerade, she would die very soon.

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New Yam Festival

Compliments of Chi

New Yam Festival (a.k.a. Iri-ji ) - One of the biggest festivals celebrated by the Igbos. It is celebrated in the month August of each year. The individual Igbo communities each have their days for this august occasion. This day symbolizes the conclusion of a work cycle and the beginning of another. Invitation to the new yam festival is usually open to everyone. What this means, is that there is abundant food for not just the harvesters but also for friends and well-wishers. A variety of festivities mark the eating of new yam. These festivities include cultural dances.

On the last night before the festival, yams of the old year are gotten rid of by those who still have them. This is because it is believed that the New Year must begin with tasty, fresh yams instead of the old dried-up crops of the previous year.

Before the festival starts, the yams are offered to gods and ancestors first before distributing them to the villagers. The ritual is performed either by the oldest man in the community or by the king. They eat the first yam because it is believed that their position gives them the privilege of being intermediaries between their communities and the gods of the land. The rituals involved in the new yam eating are meant to express the community's appreciation to the gods for making the harvest of their yams possible.

At the new yam festival, only dishes of yam are served since the festival is symbolic of the abundance of the produce. So much of it is cooked that, no matter how heavily the family eats or how many friends and relatives they invite, there is always a so much food left over at the end of the day.

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LIST OF FESTIVALS ON THIS PAGE

Other links to festivals

Egungun Festival

New Yam Festival