What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?

What’s a Cultural Tradition from Your Country That You Love
I’ve been asked this question a few times, and my mind always goes to the same place: the New Yam Festival.
If you’re not familiar with it, the New Yam Festival — Iri Ji, as we call it back home — is one of the oldest and most cherished traditions among the Igbo people. It marks the end of a farming season and the beginning of a new harvest. Yam, for us, isn’t just food. It’s a symbol of hard work, provision, and survival. Growing up, I remember my grandmother telling me that no man was considered wealthy or respected in the old days if he didn’t have a barn full of yams. That always stuck with me.
What I love most about the festival isn’t really the yam itself, if I’m honest. It’s everything that happens around it. Families travel long distances just to be together. Elders bless the harvest before anyone is allowed to eat the new yam. There’s music, dancing, masquerades, and food shared generously with neighbors, strangers, and anyone who walks by. Nobody eats alone during Iri Ji. That spirit of communal celebration is something I don’t take for granted, especially now that I see how easy it is for us to grow individualistic in the world we live in today.
There’s also a quiet spiritual layer to it that resonates with me. The festival is fundamentally about gratitude — thanking God (or, traditionally, the gods and ancestors) for provision and survival through another farming cycle. As someone whose faith shapes so much of how I see life, I find something beautiful in that. Long before I understood grace theologically, my people understood the discipline of gratitude. You don’t just take a harvest for granted. You pause. You acknowledge where it came from. You share it.
I think that’s the piece I try to carry into my own life, far away from village barns and yam tubers. Whether it’s after an exam, a small business win, or just a good day, I’ve learned to pause and say thank you — to God first, and then to the people who helped me get there. It’s a small tradition to live by, but I think it’s shaped how I move through the world.
So that’s mine. A festival about yam, yes, but really, it’s about gratitude, community, and never forgetting where your blessings came from.