Hello everyone, trust we are all doing good? Today is a great day to be alive and glad.
Today I’ll be talking about the third topic for week which is the traditional belief in my hometown.
I’m Igbo from Imilike, Enugu state of Nigeria. We have many traditional beliefs in my hometown many of which are good and some that needs to be abolished totally. Today I will be talking about just one of the traditional beliefs that needs to be abolished which is the Eje Agu masquerade practices. I would have posted a picture of it but nobody has it, I have not seen it anywhere too.
There are many good masquerade festivals in my hometown which are fun and enjoyable, I will tell you guys about it later but for now let’s talk about this particular eje agu masquerade festival which needs to end because it’s not beneficial to the community.
The Eje agu masquerade festival is done once every year in my hometown and it is practiced by just men, women are not allowed to practice it.
Nobody is allowed to come outside the day the eje agu festival is being practiced, both men and women, old and young, nobody is to see the masquerade face to face, the people that barely had encounters with them never lived to tell the stories the next day.
The only people allowed to be out that day are the performers. I’ve never seen them before and I don’t know anyone personally that have seen them but I’ve heard several bad stories about people that saw them and it’s not a good thing. They always die after some hours of seeing them. Some of them say they are very tall with a scary face, some say you don’t see their upper body just their legs, nobody dares them.
I remember a scenario a long time ago I traveled to my hometown with my family not knowing the next day would be the eje agu masquerade festival day. My brothers and I left the house without telling our parents to go visit our relatives. It was so weird because we didn’t see anyone on our way to their house not until we reach our uncle’s house and they were all shocked to see us, they all shouted in unison and said today is eje agu masquerade festival day, we were confused and asked what eje agu means because we didn’t even have any prior knowledge of the festival, that was the first time we heard about it.
He sat us down and told us everything about the masquerade festival, we became scared and started shivering 🥺, intense fear man. He told us we were lucky that God really saved us and we thanked God that day. He had to call our parents to tell them we are in his house and we won’t be going back till the next day because of the masquerade festival. We were all scared and traumatized throughout the night. I asked him the benefits of the festival and he said he can’t think of one so I was wondering why it’s being practiced when it kills people.
I believe this masquerade festival should be abolished because it causes harm to people. I can’t think of any benefits because it’s not even fun like it’s fellow masquerade festivals which we love to watch. Many people have died because of this festival so it needs to be totally abolished. Many people that didn’t have the luck we had that day have perished for this fetish practices. I really hope it would be abolished totally.
Thank you for reading my post, we will meet in my next post.
