Welcoming the new year is always in a glorious mood, a joyful mood. I always welcome the new year day in a spiritual manner by attending mass and praying in church right from 31st of December to 1st of January which is the next day; we call it CROSS OVER NIGHT.
Now let me not waste time in introducing you all to the customs of my area, the traditions in my Family.
- Making fireworks : this is one of the traditions that indicates we are in a new year or about to enter into a new year. Both children and adults engage in this activity. Either the big fireworks or the smaller ones which are referred to as Banger. Below is a video of my friend and I playing with banger
- Cleaning and ironing : Another tradition is to clean the whole surrounding cos we believe the new year must not be celebrated in a dirty environment, and so we have to ensure the whole surrounding is well tidied up and this work is always being supervised by the elders in the family while we the younger ones engage ourselves in the cleaning. Below is a video a brother of mine made while I was ironing my clothes
- purchase of new clothes and footwears: Oh!!! This is the part we the younger ones in the family loves most, this is the time we bring our shoulders high, showing our friends our new attires. If for any reason an elder in the family wants to punish anyone of us, the elderly person will just tell the younger one that he or she is not buying clothes for us, we will cry without stopping until our request is being attended to.
- Entertainment: like I said, this is the tradition both in my area and in my family. We are mostly introverts in my family and we really don't like partying and socializing, but I love mingling with friends. Some pictures to show how we celebrate the new year with friends
below is the picture of the DJ (DJ Borte) on the wheels of steel, always giving us some "oshozondi and fia music" that's the informal language we use in referring to any hip-hop song.
Still on the part of entertainment; the new year eve is always celebrated with delicious foods cooked and served to all. The family has some specific food that are cooked during this period and they are listed below:
Amala and Ewedu soup
Ewa Oloka
Eba and Efo riro
- Excursion: Boomyah!!!, we all over this. Everyone in the family sets out to any tourist attraction center to celebrate the festive season with a lot of socializing, no one is left out of this, none amongst us most make an excuse of being an introvert. We also travel with friends. Below are some of the pictures I took at excursions I went with families and friends.
6)Reunion:This is the time when everyone come together to in the family (not extended though) to celebrate together and discuss on how to make the family better in different ways, how to help those in the family that needs help.
Now one bad thing that we are now facing and that we have accustomed to is the situation of fuel. Every new year time, we are now faced with the difficulty of finding fuel due to the fact that a lot of people will be travelling from one place to another and so this usamually cause scarcity of fuel around this period, so it has been a customary act which we are used to. Below are picture is took form the scene of fuel scarcity
I hope you have been able to learn one or two things about the norms we are used to during the new year preparations.
I will not forget to thank @anomadsoul for this opportunity given steemians, this will be the third one I will be participating in.
I hope to be a winner, though no one is a looser.
Am your home boy; @camillius