The school celebrated Nigerian Culture Day in celebration of the 47th Independence Day for Nigeria. Every teacher, student, parent and worker has to dress in traditional Nigerian dress and the entire school day is dedicated to learning about and participating in different cultural activities.
These are a few of my students posing for the camera in their traditional dress. Notice that it’s mostly the type of fabric used and not necessarily the pattern for the majority of the school.
I spent most of the day in my room teaching clay mini courses. The classes I had created Ibo Spirit Masks and Shrine Figures.
This is one of my example masks. They are actually celebrated in Ibo culture as spirits. Since the Ibo culture believes in reincarnation, these figures are very mysterious and not to be mocked. My students unfortunately only had 30 minutes to create theirs, and so the results were less than fantastic but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway.
When I was allowed to escape, I was able to take some great shots of the 'village' built in the courtyard and some of my fellow teachers in their outfits.
In the middle of the school courtyard a mock Ibo village was made. The workers started late in the afternoon the day before and built everything from scratch.
During the actual culture day, the entire school gathered around the courtyard and watched traditional dance, a day in the life of a village and distinguished speakers from the community.
The school band played Nigerian music and the National Anthem. I had no idea so many of the kids would know all the words and be able to belt them all out like they did. Then Josie burst my bubble and said that the kids had probably been practicing in music. It was still an impressive sight. This is a particularly bad angle but the only one I could get in my spot...three stories up.
In the middle of the village was the goat in the tiny little shed. This however is inaccurate since it’s evident around the city that goats roam free. It’s hard to see, but this goat also shared with two chickens. Also a falsehood, if the city of Lagos is to be believed. The livestock in the city is as free as Wyoming. For free range meat, it aint all that good. And yes, that does mean I have eaten goat. Not bad, but tough as all get out. Speaking of killing livestock, part of the traditional Ibo war dance involved throwing a live chicken around all over. Kids were bawling as they saw this tied chicken being flung into the air and plummeting down, smacking into whatever it landed on. I am pretty sure the chicken was to die anyway, but the broken wings, flying feathers and pitiful squawks make for a telltale memory.
A ton of adults showed up for the event as well. Most just mingled around and got in the way. I actually got really upset when one of my students had to baby-sit her 2-year-old sister in my class because her mom left to shop at the mock Lekki Market that the school set up for the kids. Yeah, she left her daughter to baby-sit in class while she took advantage of the deals. Sick. But it’s the yuppie culture here among the expats.
Unfortunately, my camera died about an hour into the day. However, Josie, my amazing assistant for the day, was able to capture the rest on her camera.
I will post more pictures when Josie gets them to me. There are some awesome pics of dancing, re-enactments and more gorgeous pictures of me! But you are going to have to wait until the sequel.
3 comments:
sounds like you had a really good day. I am glad that they were able to do something like that at the school so that the children and their families can enjoy and learn about the culture more.
Fabulous pics. The culture must be interesting and you must be learning alot!
waohhhh this is lovely..nora
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