The New Yam Festival (Finjie Lie in Nafaanra) marks the day when people can begin to eat the new crop of yams (finyjie in Nafaanra). Here women gather round a wooden mortar to pound cooked yam tubers to make fufu. Women pound with heavy, round-ended pestles. Working together, they use their pestles to pound and turn the fufu. Pestles hit the mortar's edge as they pound, creating a rhythmic accompaniment to their work. The musical sound of women and their helpers pounding fufu or grain was an integral part of the soundscape of village life in the earlier times. To the rear (right) calabashes (gourds, chrÔ‘ in Nafaanra) wrapped in netting are ready to be sent to market. To the front sits a pottery grinding bowl (left), a calabash (center) and metal cooking pots (right). Ahenkro, 30 August, 1982.
