STEEMIT ENGAGEMENT CHALLENGE WEEK 2 | MY COUNTRY'S CULTURE | BY @feyol55

Hello everyone, it's my pleasure to welcome everyone to the week 2 of this engagement contest. Special thanks to the admin of this amazing community (STEEMIT PAKISTAN) for bringing up this interesting topic of discussion. In this write up, I will be discussing about a unique and popular festival that's well celebrated in my country.

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INTRODUCTION

When we talk culture, we are talking about a unique way of life of a group of people, state or nation. Our culture is what differentiate us from another group of people within the same country. Like in my country, we have different people with different cultural background, you can easily identify them by the way they dress, speak, sing, the kind of food they eat and so on. Some of these cultures include : the Benin culture, calabar, yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Tiv, Udoma etc. In the next section, I will be talking specifically about the Osun festival that's predominantly celebrated among the Osun people which belongs to the yoruba tribe and culture.

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THE OSUN-OSHOGBO FESTIVAL

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The osun festival is a popular festival in the Yoruba culture of my country. Infact it is generally considered as the biggest annual festival or religious event among the Yoruba people. It is always well celebrated and one fascinating thing about this festival is that it usually attract spectators, prominent people and worshippers from all over the world. The festival usually holds in the month of August every year as it is an annual event. The name 'Osun' actually refers to a river goddess of all things like fertilizers, spirituality, divinity, beauty, destiny and love.

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History has it that this festival started about 600 years ago and it was pioneered by the oshogbo community. It was said that the intention of the founders was to actually clear all the trees present in that location for settlement. But as soon as the felling of trees began, a spirit from the river-god Osun ordered them away and ever since then, the place turned out to be a sacred place of worship for the devotees. During this festival people are dressed in all white robe and apparels, they will come to appease the goddess daily for two weeks. During this time, they will be playing drums, singing and dancing. Apart from this some other activities are been carried out like offering of sacrifices to the river goddess.

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It is important to point out that this festival is internationally recognized in countries like Brazil, Cuba, Yugoslavia and Slovenia. People from these countries and some other foreigners come down to Nigeria to participate in this festival.

However, in 2020, precisely August 14th, the event took some twist as restrictions was placed on some of the festival activities due to the covid-19 pandemic. The Nigeria government at that period actually banned all social gathering and this affected the involvement of many people, though the festival still went on and took place but only worshippers were permitted to make sacrifices.

CONCLUSION

Culture and festival are parts of human life, they are important aspect of our social lives specifically. Every country has their own unique culture and festival that is been celebrated either annually or periodically. I love my country Nigeria because here, we value our culture and festivals. I will end this write up by admonishing us to keep representing our culture well and to be always proud of it.

I whereby want to invite @chukwu10 @msquaretwins @allbert @ruthjoe to participate in this contest.