Hello beloved steemian, it's so wonderful to be participating in this week's engagement challenge which specifically talks about our different cultural attire and I'm so glad to share with everyone my cultural attire.

We all know that culture is an integral part of all humans as it tells so much about our heritage, personality, environment especially here in Africa. I am an indigene of Akwa Ibom State located in the South South of my beloved country Nigeria. Nigeria is home to many indigenous traditions and culture, and my culture is not excluded from this list of eloquent and awe inspiring cultural magnificence.

Akwa Ibom is home to many ethnic groups such as the Annangs, Ibibios, Eket, Oron and the Efiks. Even with these diversity we do share some similarities in our cultural attire but the stories that they tell are different. I am proudly an Efik woman by birth and any time I put on my cultural outfit I feel this sense of pride that comes with the attire.

My culture has diverse attires that we put on for different occasions, to list a few, we have;

1. Black, silver, and golden onyonyo
   2.Straight-fitted Onyonyo
   3.Straight fitted gown with gele
   4.Maiden Ankara outfit

My favorite is the Straight fitted green lace gown with gele, and it's sown with a cotton linen with a silver bead to make it more beautiful, though I don't really wear this attire like that because is very costly, I use it occasionally and the last time I wore it was during my twin brother traditional marriage and that was last year October.

You can see it the group pictures that even my sister wore our traditional attire but in different colors, even the groom and the bride wore theirs too. To show you how our traditional attire comes out in different styles.

I use my favorite cultural attire; on Sunday service, Weddings and Naming ceremony's. Like I earlier said that I sew it because of my twins brother marriage and we were asked to put on a green attire so I had come up with this.

Yes! I believe my cultural attire is super unique because of the sense of purpose that I feel when I put it on, it tells alot about my cultural heritage without me saying a word. I feel wonderful whenever I put on my cultural attire especially when I get compliments from different people both from the people that I know and those that I don't.

This attire cost me a lot, starting from my head to my toes, let me break it down.

Like the green lace I bought at 4000 Naira and approximately in steem which is 35.7 steem per yards at one big market in my state, and the 4 yards was 16000 naira aproxinately 142.9 steem
then I bought the Cotton the cotton lining at 450 naira per yard approximately 4 steem and it was 4 yards which amount to 1800 Naira and in steem 16.0. then my seamstress charge my 18000 naira and in steem 160.7. the total amount I spent amount to 35,800 which in steem was like 319.6. then to make it more beautiful the cost of the gele was 3000 naira approximately 26.7 steem.

At this medium I will like to invite my friends to join me #natalia3, #ekemini5, #icon-monday

Cc,
@stephenkendal
@steemchiller
@pennsif

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