M.O. ENE

PREAMBLE

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Igbo kwenu! Umu Igbo Unite, kwenu! Igbo Tri-State, kwenu, Igbo kwezuo nu!

Thank you for inviting me back from across the Hudson River. Last April, I was here in the Big Apple. We met on Wall Street, the financial hub of the world. Shịshị, I did not see! I spoke on Ịgbankwụ, the Igbo traditional marriage. I promised you a book. I delivered. Amazon it! We gather today in Queensbridge Park for the 6^th BBQ/Yam Festival of UIU: Umu Igbo Unite. Tulu nu ugo! (Congratulations!) I wish I had written a book on new yam festival. No new promises, please! This speech will be brief, by my standard, a scratch on the surface of sense, symbolism, and significance of Igbo New Yam Festival.

INTRODUCTION

Igbo New Yam Festival is an explicit equivalent of Easter, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Kwanzaa, Christmas, and New Year celebrations rolled into one. It marks the end of toiling and the beginning of harvesting—a new era, the promotion of justice, equity, peace, and progress for a more fruitful future, a celebration of our earthly existence—the living and the dead, an appreciation of ancestral supreme sacrifices, a celebration of the benevolence of Anị, the Earth deity, an immense gratitude to Eze Chiukwu Okike Abịaama, Amaamaámachaamacha, for sustenance of life.

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Though anchored on harvesting first yams, the festival commemorates the harvesting of other crops from the generosity of a good land God gave to a gifted generation. In giving thanks, the Igbo roast yam tubers—not turkeys, propitiate to ancestors and generous deities, and consume roasted yams with fresh palm oil.

Yams can be boiled and eaten with spiced stew or salted-peppered palm oil. It can be cooked as yam porridge with dry fish and meat or sliced and fried like French fries or English chips. Top of the line is boiled yam pounded into fufu and eaten with delicious soups of assorted vegetables, fish, and meat.

It is also common to eat roasted or boiled yams with oil-bean salad called akpaka or ụgba. The popular Igbo salad is specially prepared with spiced and simmered stockfish, okporoko, in a palm oil-potash sauce (ngụ).

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YAMS

Yams are centuries-old plants with underground tubers and twining vines with heart-shaped leaves of predominantly green color and shades of purple. The tubers of different weights have bright-brown colors and mostly white pulp. Some varieties have yellow flesh and darker skin. Yams grow from pieces of tubers that are planted to produce shoots and die to produce much bigger tubers within four-five months.

Yams are reportedly rich in fiber, high in potassium, manganese, copper and contain important nutrients and oxidants that support bone health, growth, metabolism, heart function, regulate blood pressure, control blood sugar, and improve reproductive functions. Humans do not eat raw yams—they are toxic; cooked, they are delicious.

ORIGIN

To the Igbo, yam is divine. A popular myth backs it up. As with the kolanut, this happened when human beings communicated with beings in the spiritual realm, when the space between the living and the departed was not too great. There was a vast famine in the land. A great oracle consulted the gods. It was revealed that a dude and a damsel must be sacrificed. It was done. As directed, the male body was cut into pieces and buried in many mounds of earth; the female body was subjected to the same unpleasant treatment and buried apart. Within four weeks, seven native weeks, yams spouted from the male remains, while cocoyam grew from the female flesh.

Four months later, the land had an abundant harvest of yams and cocoyam. Famine never ravaged the Igbo country again. One version of the myth is interesting: The chief of the community (named Igbo probably for effect) sacrificed his first son (ọkpara), named Jiọkụ or Njiọkụ, and his first daughter (ada), named Ede. The flesh of Jiọkụ reproduced “ji” (yam), while Ada yielded “ede” (cocoyam). For this reason, the festival celebrates the death and resurrection of Jiọkụ and Ada.

NOMENCLATURE

The kolanut and yam are two common Igbo words; there are no dialectical variants—just different varieties. Interestingly, as with ascribing ‘ịwa ọjị’ and ‘ịgọ ọjị’ to kolanut communion, ‘iwa ji’ or ‘iri ji’ is not a correct designation for the yam ceremony. In using “iri ji” (literally ‘eating of yam’), one wonders why no one uses ‘ịta ọjị’ (‘eating of kolanut’)! The answer is simple: No one is compelled to eat kolanut or yam. Easting (iri) and ịwa (cutting) are phases of the ritual, a small aspect of the ceremony. ‘Ahịajiọku’ does not mean market for roasted yams! ‘Ahịa’ is also hustling. ‘Ji’ means ‘yam’ as a noun; ‘hold’ or ‘beget’ as a verb. ‘Ọkụ’ means ‘hot’ with a high tone, and ‘possession’ with a low tone. So, ‘Ahịa ji ọkụ’ also means ‘Commerce and industry beget bumper harvests.’

Many communities use different terms. One common core is that new yam festivals are predominantly celebrated mid to end of August or early September—the so-called “August break,” when rainy season takes a breather.

Popular terms include: Ajụ (in parts of Enugu and Ebonyi States); Ahịajiọkụ (popularized by the Ahiajoku Lecture Series instituted in 1979); Ahịanjọkụ (an obvious dialectal version that injecxts the legend of Njiọkụ and Ada); Ikeji (popular among the Aro of Imo and Abia States); Ifejiọkụ (obvious influence of Onitsha dialect); Iri ji (Ọhụrụ), popular jazzy rendition of ‘eating of (new) yams’; and Ọnwa Asatọ (‘Eighth Month’) in Nri sphere.

Others are Oru Owere, also commemorating the founding of Owerri by Ekwem Arụugo (alias ‘Owere’) and his followers who fled their ancestral home in Uratta and arrived their present place of habitation after a treacherous exodus. Otute Inyi in Oji River, Enugu State, Afịaọlụ in Nnewi, Orureshi among the northern-neighboring Idoma, Eje among the Yoruba, Em’orho in Edo are just a few names across Nigeria.

SIGNIFICANCE

Yam is a mark of accomplishment: Diji  bụ ọgaranya. No other crop is so valued and ritualized. There is no ‘ezeakpụ’ (‘king of cassava’) or ‘ezeede’ (‘king of cocoyam’). The festival signifies survival; without a steady source of sustenance, many communities might as well fold and relocate.

Yam is so significant in Igbo life it features in popular philosophical expressions of earthly existential essences. Setting priorities: Á gbara aka na-azọ ala, onye nwe ji ana-akonyue ji n’ala. Whoever regulates resources determines distribution: Oji ji, jide ede: onye ọ wanyere, o rie. Sex segregation: Á naghị enyiwe ewu n’ọba ji. The essences of diligence, humility, patience, and persistence: “Gbanụ-gbanụ kwujie ji, o tukwuru ala gwupụta ọdụ ya.” Hierarchical order: Ji anaghị esi n’ọdụ epu ome. Measure of wealth: Ụba anaghị agha ji.

SYMBOLISM

The new yam festival is about supreme sacrifices and about renaissance and restoration. It celebrates the living and the dead. The appearance of masquerades refers: Mmaọnwụ–the beauty of death—represents the departed. Of course, the living is mmandụ—the beauty of life. Yams are so sacred it is a sacrilege to step over them. Yams symbolize hard work and honesty. One can steal a chicken and survive the shame; stealing yams is an abomination—no matter the level of one’s pot poverty. The culprit becomes an instant outcast in days of yore, since spilling human blood is a desecration of Earth Deity.

Yam is a symbol of sacredness used to represent faith in the supernatural. Yam embodies fertility: Just a slice of its old self is all it takes—not a seed, not a shoot, no pollination; just the body sacrificed for communities to live and thrive. Thus, yam symbolizes supreme sacrifice. This explains the presence of yams at bridewealth ceremonies before or during ịgbankwụ (weddings). Yam and cocoyam project the great sacrifice that a woman makes in leaving her home for a man’s kindred, where she will multiply herself and beget a new nation of great men and women who look different—like Jiọkụ and Ada.

RECOMMENDATION

As with ịgbankwụ, diaspora Igbo can force a common Igbo term for new yam festival. Ahịajiọkụ should be adopted as the generic name: a great gathering for a celebration of abundant harvests. Ahịa is not just a place for buying and selling, it is a ground of great gathering for hustles, a socializing scene, and center of cultural contacts. Thus, great masquerade festivities take place at market squares which double as town squares. You have turned Quakerbridge Park into ahịa today. Bravo!

Secondly, we should reserve the last Saturday in August for Ahịajiọkụ festivities and the following Monday as a public holiday in predominantly Igbo societies. In America, the day will coincide with the Labor Day weekend in 2025. Whenever it does, Ahịajiọkụ should be planned as a four-day festival with lectures, picnics, ballroom dances, cultural displays, and community work.

CONCLUSION

Ahịajiọkụ, the New Yam Festival, must be preserved. We can now plant yams in America and not depend on imports that are expensive and often damaged on transit. Summer is getting hotter, and yams do well in bags of rich soil when watered and tended like flowers. We must do this in remembrance of the sacrifices of our ancestors and for the wellbeing of future generations.

The festival is not just about harvesting, entertainment, and feasting, it is also about hard work, honesty humanity, and humility. Work is a cure for poverty: Ọrụ bụ ọgwụ ụkpa. During this festival, youths are taught about two things that create wealth: products and services—not prayers to sundry spirits and empty events that consume the little we have.

Dignity of labor is the sustaining spirit of a stable society, the mantra of the moment: Produce more, consume to nourish the body, celebrate to uplift the soul, and trade to make money in a popular marketplace of goods and ideas: ahịa. Hence, the principles of Ahịajiọkụ include sustenance of life, economic growth, cultural immersion and human development.

Again, I thank you for inviting me and for listening.

©MOE, 8.27.22

@aladimma