mukina2:

I am From Sierra Leone and i'll give our ways of celebrating naming ceremony, engagement, marriage, death and charity (sara) as i remembered them

When a woman gives birth  to a boy after the 7th day its the naming ceremony. its calling 'pull na doe' or komojadeh' if its a girl its 8 days, after prayers have been done, the name of the child will be whispered into the child's ears and  a sheep would be slaughtered, the entrails are given to the mum and the name would be announced  to everyone. if the child has name sakes in the gathering, they all pay for the name to the mum.The baby's hair is cut off by the paternal aunt and kola is chewed and put in the baby's mouth.
Soon after if its a boy ,they circumcise him its called 'behtee', a guy with goat skin bag would circumcise him ( i was scared of them ) lol.

On to engagement, when a guy sees lady he likes and wants to get married to her, he and his family members would come to the girl's family with a calabash  filled with things, alligator pepper,biscuits, bitter kola, ordinary kola nut, needle and thread, pins, a mat, fanna ,plenty other  things (cant remember them now)and money for all the people who helped to bring up the girl, the people she sent on errands and so on. the calabash is given to any young girl to carry . At the wife's house, the door will be firmly shut, they will come sing and then knock three times, if its a stubborn uncle at the door, he would demand for money before opening or he would pretend he didnt hear what they are saying, when he finally opens the door, the guy's family will say that saw a rose in the compound that they want to take away for safe keeping, then different girls would be covered up and brought outside for the groom  to identify his bride, for each girl that comes out he has to drop some money  until his bride to be appears, then they do the prayers, open the calabash and explain the use.meaning/significance of each to her, then they give her the ring and she now goes around with it showing the invited guests, neighbours and everyone else around, then we party


Weddings
The bride and groom to be have to choose two respectable married people to be their God parents and God witnesses, then they choose their entire entourage, little bride, little groom. ring bearer, usherettes, ushers, bridesmaids, flower girls, page boys etc ,and they choose wax cotton or anything, each for  every group (boys side/girls side/ relatives/ god parents and god witnesses) choose their own. then they have the bachelors  eve, plenty merry making and people wear their cloths ( known as ashobee). The day of the wedding, the bride's youngest brother/daddy/uncle takes her to the mosque/church.the bride is a bridal gown and the guy in  suit/kaftan and oku wrapper  on his hand ,(for muslims), After  prayers and all that, they now go round to older relatives to drink water, after drinking water, they now head to reception/party.

for some people they add extra cultural activities like hunting, orjeh, gerafeh, and the likes to celebrate afterwards (not everyone does this)

funeral
when a muslim dies, he/she is buried as soon as possible, if you die like in the morning you;ll be buried at 2oclock or 4oclock, they will lay the body at home for relatives and friends and see and then they take the body to the mosque for prayers and then burial. If the person that died was male, his wife/wives would go to  a mourning period for 4 months and 10 days, wherein they only wear white,the first 10 days they are not allowed out of their rooms, some one would be bathing them and so on.In addition, they'll take out a book and ask for those that he/she owned or for those that should pay him or her, so that they pay up and if the deceased owed you, you would give your name plus the amount and that will be given to you from the 'kasankeh' ( the money people give to pay their respects to the deceased

when a christian dies, they wait until all the family members agree on a burial date, then they proceed to wake keeping (some do not do it though), they do laying out ceremony and then the casket is sealed and taken to church. If the person that died was very old, powder or blue would be thrown on the relatives and the casket would be danced with till the cemetery.

After the funeral.
Muslims do 3 days,7 days and 40th day charity,1 year 2 year and so on (if the person that died was old, they would cook plenty food,if the person was mid age, they would prepare snacks only, like akara,beans,  ginger beer  etc but if it was a young person they only recite the Quran and share fura/kola. Water in a glass plus some of the fura/kola is kept on a table , its believed that the deceased comes to eat and drink it  .Christians do libation for the dead on 40th day, they cook and the food is done like a sara, you grab what you can. its called kapu kapu, they also put water but with beans, akara,potato etc which is believed the deceased will come and eat it, most times the grandkids would go and thief it in  the morning the older folks would be telling stories of how they saw  and heard the deceased ( yeah right) 

will post more as i remember

Ranoscky:

Interestin topic, Im lovin it.

@Mediatrix, what city in China are you in?. . .Guangzhou, Donguan, shengzen, Shanghai or Nanghai?

namdo:

wow, Kayode and Babatunde in trinidad and tobego nnaaaa lekwa ijee.

mukina2:

thanks Ajali
lol nope am not creole and yeah they have Yoruba ties, because i noticed that some words we use are also being used by Yoruba, .ours is called Oku tribe.

ajali,
Interesting piece tho! I was beginning 2b having appetite wit 'em.
My question goes thus, is it true dat u Jar-ma-ny(as Germany is being refer2 in nigeria, due 2their work, work,work) cant do without achohol, due 2bad water and all dat? Hope dat does not have any effect as a result of an excessive in take of achohol? Also do u think it doesnt have no religion implicatns?

tausi:

Kenyan in the house!!!!!!!!yuhuuuuuuu

Hi all; am kenyan and love NL. Kenyan culture, beliefs and traditions are so diverse that I can't go into details here. There are over 40 tribes in kenya with different traditions and beliefs. I grew up in Nairobi which is a very modern multicultural city.

freecocoa:

Well i'm biafrian-nigerian mum is from nigeria and dad is from biafra so i guess that makes me biafran,our tradition is well known to most nigerians so i'll spare myself the stress of typing.

whiteroses:

wow i feel ordinary as a nigerian with this thread lol diversity is a good thing more pics? if u got

jba203:

Just a point of concern. Lets kindly re-frain from saying things like "Non-Nigerians", because that implies that everyone is striving by all means to be Nigerians. In South Africa my land, white ppl use 2 reffer 2 us as "Non-Whites" thats like saying we really wanna be them or like them. Thats wrong, lets find a proper political correct word 2 use. peace out

beejaei:

Did not know we have so many foreigners and visitors on NL? We are indeed the giant of Africa.

ajileko:

@bammykake  Wah gwann with you. Tell me something. mi wan know how jamaican celebrate xmas. Is this when we eat BUN and Cheesse. Mi wan know cus mi a fi guh back soon and visit mi uncle dem.

@question, The african name is very common in the caribean and even schools with african names are common, eg "Calabar high school" in Kingston.

@topic am from germany.we dont really have
culture we have rules and laws
Lol.

MzDarkSkin:

CONTINUED: Religion in Jamaica is also like the Americas but we are mostly a Catholic/Christian island, though there are Muslims, Rastafarians ;etc.
Voodoo or Obeah as we call it is widely practiced and plays a major role in our OVERLY superstitious culture.
We have Kumina (from our Congolese ancestors) and Junkunu (our west African ancestors) festivals too.

hmmmm. . .and the Maroons (descendants of Jamaica's first African and freed slaves) basically hold the key to our culture, they even speak
African dialects and raw patois that the "city-fied" lol dwellers at times do not understand. This is because they usually do not leave their villages or allow city dwelling Jamaicans to enter and they refuse modern technology or influence. Some of them are so cultured some historians can even identify where in Africa they came from or at least influenced them, but there are SOOO many different Maroon clans throughout Jamaica, they are not all the same. My family are Maroons from St. Catherine, but we are watered down 

Jamaica is complex but very interesting. Our national hero is Nanny who was born in Ghana along with her brothers Accompong and Cudjoe, who fought against both the Spanish and English (I think only the English though). Nanny was so untouchable that the English had to appraoch her on several occasions begging for a treaty lol no wonder our women are so hard lol. Anyway she and our other heroes in Jamaica formed and were part of the Maroon culture that shaped our religion and culture as a whole in Jamaica.

otumfour:

these 2 names, Accompong and Cudjoe
the Accompong sounds like the Ghanaian name >>Acheampong-an ASHANTI name
and CUDJOE is a Ghanaian name as well, Cudjoe is the name given to a Monday born in Ghana
In Ghana, we have names for all the 7 days, so a child is named after the day he/she was born,we call them house hold names

MALE
MONDAY- CUDJOE/KUDJOE
TUESDAY- KWABENA
WEDNESDAY- KWEKU
THURSDAY- YAW
FRIDAY- KOFI
SATURDAY- KWAME
SUNDAY- KWESI

FEMALE
MONDAY- ADWOA
TUESDAY- ABENA
WEDNESDAY- AKUA
THURSDAY- YAA
FRIDAY- AFUA
SATURDAY- AMA
SUNDAY- AKOS

I say, this thread's been 1 of the best so far on Nairaland

Kilode?!:

The Wikipedia entry for "Nanny the Maroon" actually said "The Maroons mainly consisted of people from the Akan region of West Africa. The Ashante tribe, from which Nanny came"

Otumfour, I suspect "Nanny" is a corrupted form of the Akan/Ashanti name "Nana" or what do you think?

MzDarkskin's post Reminds me of Wole Soyinka's tale about his search for an old lady who kept memories and stories of her family history from Africa. Soyinka went searching after he learnt about and her village in the Jamaican hill settlement of Bekuta (Soyinka belived it was named after his birth-city Abeokuta)

In his book You Must Set Forth at Dawn, Soyinka wrote that the lady was long dead by the time he got there and the village over grown with weed, her family only had a faint memory of her stories.

Soyinka said he spoke with the grand-daughter who said but "no one pay much time for that Africa foolishness. She only keep all that in she head, so when she gone, no one pay any mind to such things"

Wole Soyinka wrote that he felt "gutted" after hearing that.