Expose fête traditionnelle

INTRODUCTION

In Côte d'Ivoire, yam, a perennial and climbing plant with large tubers, is closely linked to the history of some people particularly that of the Abbey people, located in the south-east of the country. According to the tradition of this people, this tuber would have been saving for him by making his mysterious appearance at a critical moment to save him from the terrible famine it had to go through at some point in his history. Sometimes considered food with special properties, even supernatural sometimes object of time recognition. Hence the introduction by the Abbey of a feast of the yam that appears as the participation of the living at a feast in honor of the saving tuber. In this study, we will first show the origin of this holiday, then explain the organization, the preparations and the running of this festival.

I-THE ORIGINS OF THE DJIDJA

At the Abbey, the Djidja or yam festival is celebrated quickly for three days. This feast is a kind of purification, marking the end of a year and the beginning of a new one. Originally, when crossing the Como River from Ghana, the yam saved the lives of the abbey ancestors. Thanks to the elephants who had consumed them and who, in their way, had just given up, this tuber was recovered and consumed when it had never consumed it. The genies that had protected them during this trip were thanked until today through a ritual called "Miripoh". The Miripoh is the sacrifice of the new yam, intended for protecting geniuses. A few weeks after this sober ceremony, all the villages are asked to celebrate in a grand way a feast in honor of the ancestors, the geniuses and the saving tuber. To perpetuate the tradition, it was decreed by the elders that every year at the same time this festival must be celebrated. It is since this period that the feast of yams was initiated abbey country. Today, while keeping its origins, it is a charity festival where each son is obliged to abandon all the larval or existing conflicts, in order to share together the different meals of the three days during which the 'Djidja' is celebrated .

II-THE ORGANIZATION OF THE DJIDJA FESTIVAL

The cantons of Morié, Tchoffo, Khoss and Abbeyvê, are the four cantons of the department of Agboville, where the Abbey people live. The sages decided that the celebration of 'Djidja' had to obey two fundamental cumulative rules in time and space.

On the one hand, a one month deadline is respected in the celebration of the festival between two cantons. Then, that each canton celebrates it according to its positioning along the river 'Ogbo' or Agnéby, from upstream to downstream. Thus, with this ancestral rule, the feast of purification or 'Djidja' or feast of the yam, opens by the Morié canton upstream of the river 'Ogbo' or Agnéby, running in September, to end in December, by the canton Abbeyve, located downstream of the river. The Tchoffo and Khoss cantons celebrate the event respectively in October and November, always taking into account the Abbey calendar. The last people celebrated the feast of yams in the month of December is the canton Abbeyvê. The mystical explanation is that we must allow time for the stained water from the purification sessions of the initiates of each village of the canton, as well as the debris and other decoctions, to be swept away by the water of the rivers. to jump into the river. According to the tradition, no canton must receive the impurities of another canton, that is why a delay of one month is observed between canton.

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