The 333rd good thing about Lagos: Nigerian Cultural Day at the American International School

I always enjoy going over to the American School when they are having their annual Nigerian Cultural Day.  Each year they choose a specific part of Nigeria to feature with cultural displays and this year it was Lagos' turn.  So they had a demonstration of the Eyo, which is the traditional Lagos masquerade.  When an Eyo festival is held, it is to commemorate the life of a prominent Lagosian who has passed away.  The Eyo are symbolic spirits who go through the streets of Lagos to cleanse the city of all wickedness.  They carry sticks to ward away evil and evil doers.  It was fun to see these characters again with their leaping and spinning.  Attending the Eyo festival will always be a lasting memory from my experience living here.  Luckily I don't have any lasting bruises from the swat I got, even though I had removed my shows and I wasn't doing anything inappropriate that would signify disrespect.  But I'm kind of glad I took a swat, because it makes the memory and the story-telling more interesting!

 

 

These Eyo did some charging at the crowd and some waving of sticks, but, of course, they didn't do any swatting of the school children.  They were on their best behavior.

 

Besides the Eyo demonstration and the music, there were food displays. some shopping with great prices,

 

and I always enjoy seeing all the school children and teachers dressed up Nigerian.  I love the vibrant colors and patterns of Nigerian dress and the richness of Nigerian culture.

The 328th good thing about Lagos: Children's Museum Day



Last May on the day I was leaving Lagos for the summer it was Children's Museum Day at the National Museum.  I had been there for this celebration before and I really wanted to come because the kids are so cute, many of them dressed up or costumed for the occasion.  So I made sure I had my bags packed and ready to go so I could stop over for some of the program. 

 

When I got to the museum, the program was already in progress and prominently in front of the performance area was this car.  I knew there was a "big man" there....

 

The license plate on the Rolls told me who it was -- the Ooni of Ife.  I knew that later in the day at the Museum they would be opening an exhibition of the Art of the Ife.  It is a great exhibition that had travelled to museums around the world, including the British Museum and I had seen it at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.  So the King -- called the Ooni -- was there, I'm sure, because of the exhibition opening.  He certainly gets to ride in style.  

 

Don't know which of these guys is the Ooni, but there were lots of "big men" there.

 

 

There were lots of dancing performances from different Nigerian cultural groups.

 

These dancers with all the coral in their dress are from Benin City.

I got some pictures of cute kids in costume waiting in line for the toilet.

Nigerian children are all so beautiful!

The 315th good thing about Lagos: The Lagos Carnival!

Usually we travel out of Nigeria around Easter, so we haven't been in Lagos to view the colorful celebration of the Lagos Carnival, which has happened in the past few years on the Monday after Easter.  So I didn't feel too bad about staying in Lagos this year with a packed weekend of activities. I had a friend from African Book Group who was handing out VIP tickets for the stadium.  Carnival consists of two parades -- one for youth and one for adults.  They take different routes, both of which end up at Tafewa Balewa Square, the same big stadium where we enjoyed seeing the Eyo Festival.
This parade was not quite as unusual as that celebration.  Carnival was full of vibrant color from bright costumes.  The parade organizers had prepared 12,000 costumes for the parades!  I don't know if it was different for the adults, but the youth in various groups just paid a small registration fee and were given a costume to wear.  The costumes were really quite elaborate and I can't imagine the work the committee had to do to get all of them designed, sewn, and organized.

The result was an overpowering visual feast and I had a hard time deciding what photos to post here and so I decided to just show you a bunch, to give my readers a sense of the visual overload, without a lot to say.

There was very little live music during both of the parades, most of the marchers just danced to the recorded music broadcast through the stadium.

 Just to reassure you -- I took many more pictures that I'm not posting here.  And though I was busy snapping away, I was also frequently being snapped.  I was among a small group of fewer than 10 white faces in the crowd and many, many people wanted to take pictures of us and with us.  It was kind of weird. 

They really enjoyed it when we jumped into the parade to pose for a picture.

And after someone thrust their baby at me to take my picture holding him, I handed my camera to them so I could also record the moment.

Shortly before we were going to leave, it was getting crowded down on the parade level, so we decided to go up in the stands to get a view of the crowd.  It was amazing to see how many people had assembled!

We really had a fun time marveling at the costumes, but one thing that surprised me is the scarcity of food vendors in the stadium.  There was a small booth selling schwarmas and drinks and one other small food booth, but neither were very busy.  There just wasn't much food at all being sold inside and not many people eating (very different from a typical American celebration).  But when we left the stadium and went outside, there were plenty of food options there.  We guessed that getting a license for a concession inside was expensive, probably making the food more expensive, so Nigerians were getting their snacks outside.

We didn't try the boiled eggs....  maybe at next year's parade.