Calls for federation and integration marked the cultural rendez-vous.
The Toupouri community in the Littoral rallied over the week-end in Douala for their annual traditional festival Feo Kague otherwise called ‘Feast of the Cock’. The feast was opportunity for the many participants from various cultural backgrounds who learned that punctuality and beauty signify the cock to the Toupouri people.
In a display marked by the Gourna, Waiwa, Dilna, Nini and Sili dances, the Toupouris were culturally distinctive, visible by virtue of their uniqueness, regalia and attraction. It was occasion for the Toupouri man who appeared only in shawls, stocked animal skins around the waist, held a spear or staff which symbolises vigour and victory at war as well as painted face, chest and hands with coloured clay. If not that the appearance was a clear mimicry of their bygone days and reminder of the Toupouri ancestral lifestyle to its near fullest, the mythical chants and their traditional dance styles in themselves were a clear teaser to ambient cultures that have been adulterated by western influence.
The 15th edition of Feo Kague on Saturday, December 15, mobilised Toupouris to the playground of the Saint Michel College at Terminus to celebrate the four aspects of the Toupouri culture; harvest, ancestors, holy people and New Year. The opening of the festival was marked by immolation of cocks at the playground during which the traditional Chief of the Toupouri community in Douala, Dadandi David, called for federation and integration. The sacrifice was then carried out by various families around neighbourhoods. Lazare Kolyang described the festival as one that helps cultural schizoids, mostly young people, to cultivate a sense of self-esteem for their land while upholding the pride of sonship without a compromising dogma to their belief systems in the face of modernity. Meanwhile, last Friday the organising committee acquainted the press with the different articulations of the feast and called on them to use their various outlets to call many to the economy of Feo Kague at the Saint Michel College playground.
