Love of culture

A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.

 

And today being 12 may 2015 brings a celebration of unity in a town called  Awka, capital city of Anambra State  nigeria  as they celebrate their festival and  Long before it acquired that status, it was known for blacksmithing. But more than that, it is one of the few communities in the state and in fact, Igbo land that seems to have maintained some measures of link with the past in several ways.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3002643292042869765#editor/target=post;postID=4816850311283056337

This festival is known as " IMO-Oka" festival and is a week long festival of masquerades and dances held in May at the beginning of the farming season in honor of a female deity who it is hoped would make the land fertile and yield bountiful crops. The festival starts with Awka people visiting the community of Umuokpu with masquerades and it ends with a visit to the IMO-Oka stream on the final day which is heralded by a heavy rain that falls in the late afternoon.
There are four major events performed during the festival, the Ede-mmuo, ogwu oghugha, egwu Opu-Eke and Egwu Imo-Oka. Egwu Opu Eke is a rich cultural dance performed by female worshipers of Imo-Oka shrine which includes priestesses and ordinary women alike decorated in colourful costume dancing in the market square in honour of the deity controlling the shrine.
The Imo-Oka festival showcases a variety of masquerades (mmanwu) from sinister ones which flog spectators to friendly ones which sing or dance. The masquerades are believed to represent the spirits of Awka ancestors coming from the land of the dead for the festival.