August Ceremony, Drums

Our ceremonies are usually 2 days long, starting on Thursday, a sacred day for us, and continuing on Friday. Yesterday we focussed on the food at the August ceremony. Today, we’ll briefly discuss the drumming. The drums in the morning begin around 6 and finish at 8 am. The evening drums typically start at 7 and end at 10 pm. But let the drums speak for themselves.

August Ceremony

In the good old days we would be celebrating the August ceremony on the first Thursday of August – and this year that is August 4^th. No one remembers the African name for this ceremony but it used to be quite grand and was an anniversary for all the vodunsis/dancers. As expected the vodunsis had a prominent role. In the morning they were dressed in white while the animals were sacrificed. The animals sacrificed would include a calf, goats. mocoys (land turtles) and fowls (chickens). The Rada never scarified nor ate sheep and pigs. Refer to the April 26 ad 27 post for more information on the drumming, dancing and singing which usually stops around 9 am. Today we’ll focus on the food.  

The breakfast is called abobow and includes accra (ground black eyes peas, balled and deep fried), stewed black eye peas, rice and bread, all drizzled with olive oil.  The midday meal is called amewa and we enjoy a dish called herre (cock and hen boiled separately, broth used to make cookoo, flatten cookoo on plate with chicken on top), regular cookoo and the meat from the sacrificed animals.  Dinner is callaloo, meat and rice. Yum, yum!