26/08/2022
New Yam festival in Edda
Ikenna Emewu
History
No Igbo people can say for sure when the New Yam festival started in the Igbo nation.
But one thing certain is that the entire Igbo subgroups, clans, etc, celebrate the festival.
The celebration is linked with the prime position of yam as the major and number one staple of the Igbo nation.
Globally, the yam is autochthonous to the Igbo people and by extension, the West African rainforest region where the yam is found in the wild species. The wild yam is called a*o among the Edda Igbo.
Scientifically, before the Igbo man invented crop production or farming, this species of food was harvested from the wild and eaten for the sustenance of the population.
Such time in archaeology and anthropology is attributed to the era of hunting and gathering economic mode when man had not settled to a spot into a sedentary economy.
Cultural studies attribute the invention of agriculture to the origin of urbanism or the building of towns and cities through a settled life as human societies had to live at a spot and take care of their agricultural inputs like crops and animals that were domesticated.
In archeology, in the Igbo world, for instance, some scientific works by the likes of DD Hartle, Thurstan Shaw, Vincent Chikwendu, etc have reconstructed the earliest tool making that is related to settled community life to some 300,000 years from the artifacts of stone axes found in the Ugwuele Cave of Uturu in present Abia State.
Also, the ancient pottery artifacts in Ukpa Rock Shelter of Afikpo, Ebonyi State date to 4,000 years ago. In the historic time chronology or cultural evolution sequence, agriculture came far earlier than pottery making.
But exactly when the Igbo started celebrating the new yam is not known, since it is an intangible culture and our people didn’t have writing or even if they had, such never preserved into antiquities or relics to give such precise clues.
Origin of yam in Igbo
The best we have about the history that although has no date to it is the folk tale of the origin of yam. In fact, buttressing this goes to even the name.
The word yam is a corruption of the word Niam, the Mandingo word for yam. The Mandingo is an ethnic group in some West African countries such as Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Gambia, and Senegal. It was from their language that the Portuguese and English borrowed the word and tweaked it to yam. It is understandable since they knew the crop in West Africa and could not have had a name for an item they never knew.
According to the folktale of its origin, the Igbo have the story that yam and cocoyam came from one of the ancestors of the Igbo world who while the people had famine was commanded by the gods to slay his first son and first daughter as a rescue.
While that ancestor did as commanded, the blood of the son spilled on the ground sprouted the yam tendril. Likewise, the blood of the daughter sprouted the tendril of the cocoyam, and the two food items later rescued and preserved the entire Igbo from extinction in famine.
Whereas the tale of this incident has no date to it, it only buttresses that the two crops are indigenous to our world, and not imported to us like the cassava that came from its nativity in the Amazon forests of southern America, particularly, Brazil.
Celebration
The methods of celebration and processes differ from one Igbo world to another. There are hardly two Igbo culture groups that celebrate the new yam exactly the same way. While we see some other Igbo groups, especially Anambra eating roasted new yam at the celebration, it is an abomination to roast the name yam in Edda until after the eighth day of the harvest.
In Edda, the first day the yam is harvested must be the Nkwo day of the Igbo week, the shrine of the god of yam is opened the day after. The shrine is made of stone slabs called Nfijioku. Some Igbo call is Ifejioku, Ahajioku, etc.
So, Nfijioku is the deity of yam. The Edda traditional priests of yam who are all linked to some priesthood collect every new yam peeling in their homes and drop them in the Nfijioku until Izu ato (eight market days) is complete.
The calendar
Before the festival is ushered in, a set of priests called Nde elom count the native calendar to announce when the festival starts. They are also the first people in Edda, as priests affiliated to yam, to celebrate the new yam or eat it.
After that eighth day of dropping the yam pealing, the local priests make some sacrifices and cover the top stone slab. That is called Ikwuchi Nfijioku (closing the Nfijioku) It is only after that that the new yam could be roasted in a fire in Edda culture. Among the Edda of 72 traditional villages now demarcated into 11 government-recognized communities, ike ji does not hold the same day. It is rotated and serially done in the same pattern every year. It is also from that order that other traditional festivals flow around them all. While mgba (wrestling), closes the traditional year after the planting sea*on, Ike ji signals and symbolises the New Year. It is from it that all other traditional festivals take their datum date.
All-inclusive
New yam festival in Edda runs a full week, spanning the four market days, a sign of high regard and importance and it is the only festival in Edda that runs the entire Igbo week. It is also the only one without any religious encumbrances that it is upheld by adherents of foreign religions among the people to date.
It starts on an Orie with the sounding of the Ikoro which is done quite early that morning. This is heralded with songs of joy by the community to welcome the king of foods. The Edda sees the period from after the cultivation of the yam to its harvest as unwu (famine or hardship) when the people survive on just any food to augment. So, as the ikoro is sounded, the people sing their songs of joy called Oroo Ji. Oroo in Edda means sound or noise of joy, while uma means dances of joy.
The joy of the sea*on is also signified in boys making tiny bamboo cuttings they carve the interior, make dry banana stem barks into tiny balls they feed into the cavity of the bamboo. When the ball of banana dry stem bark is pushed from one end of the bamboo pipe with a wooden spindle, it pops out from the other end, making a sound like a tiny gun. It is called egbe oro. The little boys find so much fun playing with their egbe oro its explosion sound is cheered. This egbe oro aspect lasts as long as eight days until the nfijioku slab is replaced, signifying the end of the celebration.
The day after the ilutu ikoro (sounding of the ikoro) is the Afo day when people go to the market to buy items for the celebration.
The following day, Nkwo is the day the people go to the farm to harvest the new yam which goes with songs of joy as they are brought home. The yam is praised in the songs as the harbinger of joy that had brought an end to the famine that had ravaged the people.
On the Eke that follows that harvest, the yam is made into porridge and eaten among the kinsmen. It is called Eke Ipo, and the peak of the celebration. It is actually that day that signifies New Year’s Day. The ipo has rules of commensalism around it as only people of the same kindred eat them together and whoever refuses to eat the ipo with his kinsmen is deemed to have excommunicated himself or herself. Both men and women eat the ipo of mashed boiled yam prepared with red oil, salt, and pepper.
Women and maidens day
The Orie that follows that is Orie Eyighiya in Edda. It is a celebration mainly for women and young maidens. Traditionally, Orie eyighiya was the only day the first daughter (ada) is given out in marriage. The women dress in their gorgeous wears, sing and dance all night till the following morning of Afo with the young maidens who wear a heavy array of beads on their waists. Some of their wears are woolen strands of ropes made into a heavy cluster to cover their private parts, from the upper waist down to the lower lap before the knees. The beads are called asi while the woolen strands are called udo, which is coated with camwood and come in resplendent red colour. The young maidens also have their entire bare bodies beautified and covered in camwood smears called ufie.
Eyighiya used to also serve as a celebration of purity for the young maidens who were virgins. They only wear beads or woolen dresses (udo) with bare tops and very fine decorated hairstyles.
That day and segment brings an end to the week-long festival that involved men, women, boys, and girls.
Significance
The significance touches on
* Communal sharing
* Celebration of the king of the food crops
* It also signified the Igbo new year
* It celebrated the purity of the young virgins and the elevation of moral values where the older women taught the young maidens the virtues of motherhood, being good home keepers and wives, and industry.
* It celebrated originality of the crop
* It formed a bond and renewal of kin bond of the people
* It celebrated hard work and industry since only the diligent in farming, the chief occupation of our people, cultivated yam and had yam to harvest.
* It celebrated the social responsibility of a man being able to provide for the family. It would be remembered that in the Igbo world, only men cultivated yams while the women cultivated cocoyam
* The festival served as a bond of unity
* It is a point of peity when the people give thanks to God for preserving their lives to harvest the seed they sowed
* It helped sustain the cultural identity of the people in so many ways, especially since only the Igbo celebrate the new yam.
Role of the people
There is no celebration, cultural observation, or preservation that is not about the people
* For the elderly men and fathers, their role was the demonstration of their ability to provide for the family, to work hard to cultivate, tend the crop, and up to harvest. Our people joke about lazy farmers and the laggards that they are so lazy that weeds choked their yams in the farm.
* The mothers and elderly women also played the role of providing for their families to celebrate. The festival has to do with parents buying new wears for their children and those dresses, including the camwood paste, the maidens smeared their bodies with and the fancy hairstyle was mainly the duty of the mothers to provide for their daughters.
* The young men took part in going to the farm with their fathers to harvest the new yam. They also participated in a celebration called Ichu Afa that was held on the evening of the Nkwo ikelata ji (the day the new yam is harvested. Ichu afa (knwo afa) was like what we call the crossover night that holds on New Year’s eve.
In the Edda calendar, that Nkwo the new yam is harvested and brought home is like the last day of the present year while the following day, Eke Ipo is significantly the first day of the new year. So, on the evening of that Nkwo, the young men dance around, kind of bidding the fading year bye while looking forward to the next day when a new year is ushered in.
As the young maidens participate in the eyighiya dance that lasts the entire night and on most such nights in August when the celebration holds, the dancers would be drenched in rain that they defy to celebrate their joyful moment.
It is their period to learn the ways of adult womanhood life and proper behaviour.
Ikenna Emewu (Edda Prince
Journalist, scholar, author, researcher
