New Yam Festival

The Ifedi family where Yours Truly happens to arise from, celebrated their New Yam Festival on the 5th of August. We celebrated it in a grand style as Popsy bought chicken, garden eggs and palm wine. Being the last born of the family or rather the only girl in the family that was "Less Busy" at the time (Kene already signed out and was busy with her laptop). 

The task fell on me to do the cooking...Me and me alone! It was quite challenging to do the whole family cooking as Popsy invited some of our relatives and family friends. If it was a normal Sunday Rice and stew that would be eaten by just my immediate family, it would have been better but here the reverse was the case. I was just worrying too much unlike me...what if the stew turns out to be too watery or too salty? what if the yam gets too soft? what if this...what if that. At a stage I was like haba Zaram what's your problem? why are you behaving as if it's your first time in the Kitchen? this is ordinary Yam and Stew for crying out loud, you have cooked it severally before. Just be yourself and do your thing, it will turn out fine, if it doesn't well they just have to eat it like that. You cannot come and kill yourself by yourself so relax and Relax I did! I started with my chicken...then Popsy already went out to attend to one or two things and Kene was busy with her laptop in the room. OYO (On Your Own) was my fate. 

Did I mention that our Generator got spoilt the other day? well it did spoil and the result nearly ruined our mini festival! I was on the stew when big bro came back and a little while after that, our light went of. It was a little bit strange because it didn't look as if there was power outage generally and when I confirmed that it was only our light that went of, I checked our meter only to find out we ran out of power. 

The time was 3.45 pm and the EEDC office around closes by 4 pm. I called Popsy and got the meter card, then gave it to my cousin to rush to EEDC and buy power as we had barely 15 minutes before they closed. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it as they were already closed for the day before he got there. There was no generator, no light and we were expecting visitors. After much deliberations we decided to settle for the smaller generator we haven't used for a while and luckily, it was still in good condition, we just had to pour in enough fuel and oil. By then I was already done with my stew and started cooking the yam, just when we thought everything has been settled, we ran out of cooking gas and the yam was yet to be done. Again we had to start looking for where to re-fill the gas and complete the cooking. The kind of drama that happened that day made me start thinking if my village people decided to check up on me on that day of all days!

The New Yam Festival of the Igbo people (Orureshi in the idoma area, Iwa ji, Iri ji or Ike ji, depending on dialect) is an annual cultural festival by the Igbo people held at the end of the rainy season in early August.The Iwa ji festival (literally "new-yam eating")^[4] is practiced throughout West Africa (especially in Nigeria and Ghana) and other African countries and beyond, symbolizing the conclusion of a harvest and the beginning of the next work cycle.^[2] The celebration is a very culturally based occasion, tying individual Igbo communities together as essentially agrarian and dependent on yam. Wikipedia

To cut the long story short, everything turned out beautiful at the end of the day. My stew came out perfect and my yam was neither too hard nor too soft. Though not everyone invited was able to make it, the few that did joined us to celebrate this festival. I dished out the food, Popsy prayed over it and thanked God for the New Yam Festival which marks another succesful farming season and bountiful harvest where Ndi Igbo celebrates the act of "itinye ihe n'ala, weputa otutu ihe" we ate to our satisfaction after which we popped two bottles of wine and made a toast. It was a wonderful get together and we all had a great time!