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Ngondo
The Ngondo is an annual water-centered festival held by the Sawa (ethnic group), Sawa (coastal peoples) in Douala, Cameroon. The highlight of the festival is a ceremony of the jengu. The ceremony is held at a beach on Wouri River, Wouri Bay, during which a devotee enters the water to visit the underwater kingdom of the miengu (plural for jengu). The miengu are believed to be similar to mermaids, and will grant good luck to their worshippers. According to tradition, the devotee can remain underwater for hours, and emerge with his clothing appearing completely dry. Children are not allowed to attend the ceremony. Ngondo was banned by the government of Cameroon in 1981, but reinstated in 1991. The ceremony is held during the first two weeks of December every year. Gallery File:HRKaba.JPG, Women with blue Kaba File:Kdfkaba00.JPG, Woman with green Kaba File:KdfKaba010.JPG, Women with black Kaba File:GedKaba.JPG, Women with striped Kaba File:Le soir au Ngondo à NBAGA-BAKOKO.jpg, Festi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wouri River
The Wouri (also Vouri or Vuri) is a river in Cameroon. Cameroon has two major rivers, the Sanaga, the longest at about 525 km (325 miles) long and the Wouri, the largest. The Wouri forms at the confluence of the rivers Nkam and Makombé, northeast of the city of Yabassi. It then flows about southeast to the Wouri estuary at Douala, the chief port and industrial city in the southwestern part of Cameroon on the Gulf of Guinea. The river is navigable about upriver from Douala. Exploration The Portuguese navigator and explorer Fernão do Pó or Fernando Pó, is believed to be the first European to explore the estuary of the Wouri, around the year 1472. The explorers noted an abundance of the mud lobster ''Lepidophthalmus turneranus'' in the Wouri River and named it "''Rio dos Camarões"'', Portuguese for "River of Prawns", and the phrase from which the name Cameroon derived. The phrase "''Rio dos Camarões"'' later became Camarones when the Spanish arrived in the region. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assiko
The Assiko is a popular dance from the South of Cameroon. Originally based in the Bassa country, this rhythmed dance takes its name from two words: ISI, changed into ASSI, which means earth or ground; and KOO meaning foot. The Assiko is danced dressed in a simple T-shirt and a full skirt with a pronounced, billowing waistline that emphasizes hip movement. The choreographies of Assiko use several lop-sided walks, successive small close walks that the dancers make at different heights, standing up or crouching, which makes you feel they float on the stage. There are also demonstrations of sense of balance, contortions and physical strength calling to the exhilalaration of dance or trance. The Assiko is also a musical style. The band is usually based on a singer accompanied with a guitar, and a percussionist playing the pulsating rhythm of Assiko with metal knives and forks on an empty bottle. Double bass, drums and some brass Brass is an alloy of copper (Cu) and zinc ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jengu
A jengu (plural miengu) is a water spirit in the traditional beliefs of the Sawa ethnic groups of Cameroon, particularly the Duala, Bakweri, Malimba, Batanga, Bakoko, Oroko people and related Sawa peoples. Among the Bakweri, the name is liengu (plural: maengu). Miengu are similar to Mami Wata spirits Bakoko the name is Bisima. The miengu's appearance differs from people to people, but they are typically said to be beautiful, mermaid-like figures with long hair and beautiful gap-teeth. They live in rivers and the sea and bring good fortune to those who worship them. They can also cure disease and act as intermediaries between worshippers and the world of spirits. For this reason, a jengu cult has long enjoyed popularity among the Duala peoples. Among the Bakweri, this cult is also an important part of a young girl's rite of passage into womanhood. As a single spirit Jengu may refer to a single spirit, as well. In some traditions, this spirit replaces the class of miengu spi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sawa (ethnic Group)
Sawa may refer to: Places * Sawa, Nepal, a village development committee * Sawa, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, a village * Saveh, sometimes transliterated Sāwa, Iran, a city * Sawa Lake, Iraq People * Sawa (Hrycuniak) (born Michał Hrycuniak in 1938), Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland and leader of the Polish Orthodox Church * Devon Sawa (born 1978), Canadian actor * Homare Sawa (born 1978), Japanese footballer * Masakatsu Sawa (born 1983), Japanese footballer * Munenori Sawa (born 1978), Japanese professional wrestler * , Japanese voice actress * Sawa (singer), Japanese techno-pop singer and DJ Other uses * Sawa Station (Ibaraki), a railway station in Hitachinaka, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan * Sawa Station (Nagano), a railway station in Minowa, Nagano Prefecture, Japan * SAWA Defence Training Center, Eritrea, a military academy * SAWA (Non-profit organization) * Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio station * Sawa, legendary character from the myth of the founding of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douala
Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region (Cameroon), Littoral Region. Home to Central Africa's largest port and its major international airport, Douala International Airport (DLA), it is the commercial and economic capital of Cameroon and the entire Economic Community of Central African States, CEMAC region comprising Gabon, Congo, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic and Cameroon. Consequently, it handles most of the country's major exports, such as Petroleum, oil, Cocoa bean, cocoa and coffee, timber, metals and fruits. , the city and its surrounding area had an estimated population of 5,768,400. The city sits on the estuary of Wouri River and its climate is tropical. History The first Europeans to visit the area were the Portuguese people, Portuguese in about 1472. At the time, the estuary of Wouri River was known as the Rio dos Camarões (Shrimp River). By 1650, it had become the site ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Its nearly 27 million people speak 250 native languages. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, and the Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area ''Rio dos Camarões'' (''Shrimp River''), which became ''Cameroon'' in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tupuri
Tupuri (or Toupouri) is a language mostly spoken in the Mayo-Kebbi Est Region of southern Chad and in small parts of northern Cameroon. It is an Mbum language spoken by the Tupuri people with approximately 300,000 speakers. Tupuri was erroneously classified as a Chadic language by Joseph Greenberg, due to a vocabulary list that is actually that of Kera (cf. K. Ebert 1974). Distribution Tupuri is predominantly spoken in the southeastern part of the Moulvouday plain, in: *Kaélé, Porhi, Taibong villages in Moulvouday commune * Guidigis commune, in Mayo-Kani department * Kar-Hay, Kalfou, Datcheka, Tchatibali communes in Mayo-Danay Mayo-Danay is a department of Far North Province, Cameroon. The department covers an area of 5,303 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 529,061. The capital of the department is at Yagoua. Subdivisions The department is divid ... department The Viri or Wina are ethnically Tupuri, but today they speak a Massa dialect. Tupur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festivals In Cameroon
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before the advent of mass-produced entert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Religious Festivals In Cameroon
Religion is usually defined as a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements; however, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacred things, faith,Tillich, P. (1957) ''Dynamics of faith''. Harper Perennial; (p. 1). a supernatural being or supernatural beings or "some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life". Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of deities or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. Religions have sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
