Topic Content:
- Topic: The New Yam Festival
- Text: New Oxford Secondary English Course for SS1 pages 33 – 34
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions on it.
The New Yam Festival:
The feast of the New Yam was held every year, before the harvest began, to honour the earth goddess and the ancestral spirits of the clan. New Yam could not be eaten until some had first been offered these powers. Men and women, young and old, looked forward to the New Yam Festival because it began the season of plenty – the new year. On the last night before the festival, yams of the old year were all disposed of by those who still had them.
The new year must begin with tasty, fresh yams and not shrivelled and fibrous crops of the previous year. All cooking pots, calabashes, and wooden bowls were thoroughly washed, especially the wooden mortar in which the yam was pounded. Yam foo-foo and vegetable soup was the chief food in the celebration. So much of it was cooked that, no matter how heavily the family ate, or how many friends and relations they invited from neighbouring villages, there was always a huge quantity of food left over at the end of the day.
(Achebe Chinua – Things Fall Apart, Heinemann)
Questions and Answers:
1. When was the feast of the New Year held?
A – The New Yam Festival was held every year before the harvest of the new yam began.
You are viewing an excerpt of this Topic. Subscribe Now to get Full Access to ALL this Subject's Topics and Quizzes for this Term!
Click on the button "Subscribe Now" below for Full Access!
Subscribe Now
Note: If you have Already Subscribed and you are seeing this message, it means you are logged out. Please Log In using the Login Button Below to Carry on Studying!
Responses