NEW YAM FESTIVAL IN AFIKPO (IKEJI OR IRIJI)
The yam festival marks the end of an abundant food-producing harvest and also marks the beginning of the traditional New Calendar Year. African people have always had festivals at the time of the harvest. In Afikpo the Yam Festival (Ikeji or Iriji) lasts three days. The festival begins with a cleansing ceremony to honor family members who have d!ed. Farmers give thanks to the gods of the land that brought about the abundant and good harvest.
This festival is held once every year, usually in August or rarely September, just as the rainy season is coming to an end, and crops are ripe and ready to harvest. There is plenty of maize (corn) as well as other vegetables, such as okra, beans, cassava, and yams.
Yams are usually the first fruits of the harvest, the staple food of many peoples of western Africa. The yam is a large tuberous root related to the sweet potato, but not exactly the same. American sweet potatoes are usually orange, but African yams can be white, yellow, or orange inside (but they still taste sweet) and come in many shapes and sizes: some can be up to a few feet long.
Yams are very versatile and can be cooked in many ways: roasted, boiled, added to soups and stews, fried, mashed, or dried and pounded into flour. The traditional dish is called UTARA JI. This is boiled, mashed yams, with a little butter or palm oil, often still eaten in the traditional way—with the hands.
At the New Yam Feast, the Afikpo people serve yams with fish, beef or chicken or with vegetables. Most homes prepare yam with the famous Igbo white soup with moulded melon (ohe sarara ya ahu akpuruakpu) with palm wine or beer.
On the eve of the New yam festival day, there is a cultural practice involve more like a r!tual called ICHU AHU (the chasing away of the old year) here the men light fires across each street, each community, each villages, asking the old year to go with it's misfortune as the new year comes with a better and promising future. New yam festival is not just a festival it is also a new year calender in Afikpo.
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