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| Ngondo | |
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Ngondo is the traditional assembly which brought together all the coastal people, Douala,
Bassa, Bakoko, Batanga, Yabassi... gathered under the generic name of Sawa People (Sawa means "coastal").
This assembly is the occasion of rejoicings each year at the beginning of the dry season.
Contest of Sawa fight, traditional dances and even election of Ngondo Miss on at the same time traditional and westerner criterias (sic). The "Festival of water" ends the Ngondo. It occurs on the banks from Wouri. All the traditional heads are present to listen to the message of wise and the ancestors for the year to come. At the time of this ceremony, in addition to a race of dugouts and a procession of the various groups of dance, religious organizations... there is more sacred part; it consists of the immersion of a sacred pot in Wouri by a diver who stays 9 minutes (!!) in water to go to see the ancestors who are at the bottom of Wouri. When it comes back to surface, the pot is not wet and it contains the message of the ancestors whom the initiates will decode before announcing it to impatient crowd. One can notice that this festival unfortunately took a more commercial turn with in particular the omnipresence of the sponsors whose Tee-shirts replace the traditional clothes... Small outline of Ngondo through photographs . |
A guard. His Tee-shirt does not mislead anybody and it is obviously Orange which one recognizes the typography. (Orange arrived in Cameroun in July 2002 to replace Mobilis) |