My 2017: Welcoming this new year (African Traditions)

If you dont know how much Africans love celebrations and festivities, then you really don't know anything about Africa. Right from the beginning of time, we Africans have loved celebrations. Almost every African tribe has a festival or more of their own. I think every African can attest to this. I, for example, am from Osun State in Nigeria and one of our most prominent festivals is the Osun-Osogbo Festival. But this post is not to talk about that but rather to depict how New Year is celebrated in my part of the world, Nigeria.

Nigeria, like every other African nation, loves festivities and the New year is no exception. Though generally celebrated in association with Christmas beacause the dates are not so far from one another

Hence the term, merry Christmas and a happy new year

In Nigeria, the new year is a time when the sounds of "knockouts", "bangers" and "fireworks" fill the like air. It's a time when animals lose their heads it's nothing (I've killed about 6 fowls within 5 days). It's the time to eat till you can't move a finger. However, the new year festivities really begin on the 31st because. . .

Nobody sleeps!!!

Everyone stays awake into the new year. Everyone wants to do the countdown to the new year. People however choose to transit into the new year in different ways. Some people like me, who are Christains, choose to go to church for what we call the watchnight or crossover service. Others choose to party, at clubs, at home or at other venues. Others roam the streets lighting fireworks and a sorts. Whatever people choose do, they're awake, except they're some depressed sadist who stays at home sleeping. But most people stay AWAKE!

New Year's Eve

Like I said, the new year cheer begins on a new year's eve and our tradition in my home, as a Christain family is to head to church for the crossover or watchnight service where to praise God for seeing us through the previous year and pray to him to see us through the next. We headed to church around 8pm and the service began around 9pm. During the service, I prayed, listened to the sermon and mostly played the keyboard. Due to some discrepancies however, the clock in church was wrong and it wasn't until 12:05 before we realised WE HAD MISSED THE COUNTDOWN into the new year.

New Year Day

After the service, we headed home. Right from the car, I began to receive and make calls to my friends to wish them a happy new year and didn't sleep until 4am. I then woke up at 8am and turns out the first thing I did this year was to wash plates and then the car.

I then took my bath and headed to church with my family. Yes, yet another service. The new year service. Africa is a very religious place, you see? Though I wouldn't count Christainity as a religion but rather as a way of life, but let's not get into that.

After getting back from church, the celebrations began. We kicked it off by having a good family lunch prepared ny my mother. It was Ofada rice (a local breed of Nigerian rice) and a spicy stew (assorted with fish, beef and whatnot). We took it with soft drinks and then rested for a while by chatting and watching TV.

After this we headed to the mall for a family outing. As expected, the mall was quite rowdy. It was filled with all manner of people; black, white, asian (name it). It was pretty fun walking around and shopping. We took a few pictures too

After leaving the mall we headed to Foodco and purchased some food. Ongetting home, we ate a light dinner of meatpie, doughnut and soft drinks and chocolate as desert and then went to bed.

The Celebrations Continue

Yes, the 2nd is also a special day but all we did today was really mostly eating. For breakfast, we had fried plantain and tea. For dinner we had pounded yam (of course, yam that's pounded in a motar using a pestle, duh!) and Okro soup (please don't ask what it is, lol). Here's a pic tho.

For dinner, we ate fried rice and jollof rice with Chicken and Salad. It was really yummy I can honestly still taste the food in my mouth.

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I wrote this post for @anomadsoul's contest and it's a bit shorter than I wanted to make it because I had to rush to meet up with the deadline. I hope it's enough to win.

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with love,
@ajremy (the teen with steam for steem)

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