Steem engagement challenge-S12/W6|"The grand festival in my country."

Steem greetings from the motherland-Cameroon to friends of the Incredible India community. It has been an amazing season 12 of the engagement challenge and I am happy to be part of it till the last week.

This week’s challenge focused on the topic “What is the grand festival in your country?”. Festive periods are those moments of showing love to one another, reuniting with family and friends and sharing a meal or drink together. December happened to be the month of most of these celebrations around the globe.

To further share ideas about the topic, I will base my arguments following the guiding questions below 👇 👇.

What is the grand festival in your country, and how do you celebrate that festival? (Mention some rituals if you follow).

There are several festivals celebrated in Cameroon based on different cultures and traditions. Each traditional setup has its own festival, some are celebrated at the end of year or after maybe 2 or 5 years to give ample time for the villagers to prepare for the festival.

In my village, we witnessed the end-of-year traditional festival in December whereby people travelled to the village and celebrated the end-of-year festival.

The festival is characterised by different activities like traditional groups' dance performances, the 9th and 8th kingmakers performances, and traditional races.

The day starts early in the morning with the king-makers performing some traditional rituals to appease the gods of the land. After the traditional rites, there is a match pass from the village square back to the palace.

The traditional celebration ground is now opened after the match passes. Different traditional dances are being displayed.

After the traditional dances, there is an eating competition. Those who had registered for the eating competition, are called forth to show their eating ability. The winner of the eating competition goes home with a cash prize donated by elites.

The day is crowned with lots of eating and drinking. Elites living in towns contributed some money and handed it to the fon, which he used to do the cooking and buying of drinks. Different traditional groups also prepared our traditional meal (achu) and the fon provided the soup and meat.

After the celebration, the date for the next celebration is announced by the 9 and 8 kingmakers to
The public. After the announcement, the day is declared over till the next celebration.

Would you love to go on a vacation during this festive period, or would you love to stay in your country and celebrate the festival with your family? Give the reason behind your choice.

As I earlier said, it is a good moment to reunite with family and friends whom you have stayed with for a long without seeing each other. It is always fun being around family and friends and sharing a common meal.

It is also fun, to participate in the traditional festival as we learn new traditional dance steps from those in the village. During this festival, we are opportune to witness new traditional dances and learn our culture.

The festival is also a moment of joy given the fact that you can associate freely in my mother tongue (language) because everyone communicates with the language. There is no barrier to communication.

Therefore, during the festive period, I will not hesitate to stay behind and celebrate with my family and friends.

Share with us if you have any memorable moments related to the festival.

One of the most memorable moments is the dancing of the traditional secret group which the don is part of it. During this traditional dance of the secret group, they perform odd dancing moves and no one is permitted to laugh no matter how funny it is.

We were told and cautioned that if you cannot control yourself, then you better stay back at home. If you laugh during the performance, you will be fined with 7 healthy goats, 7 containers of palm oil, 7 gallons of palm wine, and 7 bags of salt and then a ritual is performed on you before you can be free of the bad luck that awaits you.

During this performance, most people stay away especially women because they are not strong enough to withstand the funny dance moves. They dance to provoke someone to laugh and be fined with those items which they benefited from.

Also, you cannot record or snap the secret group. This is the most memorable moment for me as I always pay attention to the rules of the dance and make sure I’m not a victim of circumstances.

In a nutshell, festive periods are always fun because we reunite with family, and friends and share a common meal. This is the end of my presentation and I will invite @pelon53, @eliany, @saxopedia, @solaymann, @m-fdo and @majerius to share their entries to the challenge.