Thursday, Oct. 1. It's Nigerian Independence Day, and Saminaka is kicking off SL's first African Festival! The Cantaloupe Treasure Hunt with fabulous Nigerian plant-related prizes (clothes, jewelry, furniture, more!) will be underway, as will the Nigerian Plant Exhibit, the Nupe Culture Exhibit, the Horse in Africa Exhibit, and three Photo Contests! Not to mention the vendors' stalls....
Thursday, Oct. 1, 5 pm SLT We're kicking off the festival with a DJ'd dance party and loads of music! Also fireworks! And we hear some masquerades may show up....
Friday, Oct. 2, 5 pm slt Oliha Yiwama will be getting out his rl drums and giving an exciting talk and demonstration about African music! Don't miss it--he didn't have an Afro-Cuban dance band for years for nothing! Plus his training in Nigeria.....
Friday, Oct. 3, 6 pm We're inviting all SL equestrians--and even the horses themselves--to come out for a durbar, where horses and riders are decorated to the teeth and prance around to the wonderment of others. And afterwards? Why, a dance party with African music, of course!
Saturday, Oct. 3, 11 am slt Tamsin will trot out the slides and give a talk about African art and its rules--were they meant to be broken? If you've ever been a little puzzled about why African art looks the way it does, come and rev up your knowledge pronto!
Saturday, Oct. 3 noon slt Oh, today is the decorated canoe regatta! How many will there be? One? Two? Dozens? Get yourself down to Saminaka's infohub tent in advance and pick up a canoe box with free mod canoe, some pennants, and a link to a rl Nigerian regatta, and get to decorating! Tam will give you permission to rez your canoe if you arrive 10 mins or so in advance. And there's a prize....
Saturday, Oct. 3 5 pm slt Masqueraders, acrobats, stiltwalkers galore! Put on your costume and join us, or just gawk! And right after the regatta and masqueraders, it's time for another African dance party--pull out the stops!
Sunday, Oct. 4, 11 am-2pm (this will be off-sim, starting at the University of Delaware's SL Headquarters, but there will be a tp at Saminaka to get you there from the infohub tent). The launch of Ananse, academics interested in Africa and the Diaspora in Virtual Worlds, gets underway with a talk by two content persons AND techies: Britain's Khoisan Fisher introduces Bryan Mnemonic, who will discuss Virtual Harlem and the Virtual Age. Afterwards, guided tours of Virtual Africa, The Middle Passage in Africa and the US, and Virtual Harlem.
Sunday, Oct. 4, 5 pm slt Our very own Oliha Yiwama is a man of many caps and crowns--two involve African divination and spiritual traditions, focusing on Nigeria's Edo and Yoruba people. Listen to this priest and diviner talk about African Spiritual Traditions, his American background uniting with 12 years of Nigerian training!
Sunday, Oct. 4, 6 pm slt Masqueraders, acrobats, and stiltwalkers tripping the light fantastic again, as a prelude to you dancing to terrific DJ'ed African music under the stars. A final fireworks display will herald the announcement of the winners of the photo contests AND--will you be the best-dressed African man or woman? Because each of them will get a prize too! Dress up!
While many canoes are small, meant for individual transport and fishing, the dugouts used for regattas are usually larger. In the days before other transport, huge canoes were used for long-distance trade or war parties. They could hold up to 30 people, or be loaded with foodstuffs, cloth and other goods. Regattas developed as a social version of the cavalcades of soldiers and merchants, with paddlers dressed alike, their canoes decorated with awnings, pennants, and dancers on attached platforms. 
The Ijo, Itsekiri, riverine Yoruba and Nupe take part in regattas for special occasions—distinguished visitors, holidays, coronation anniversaries and more. They have a competitive element, each vying to inject more eye-catching displays that the next, with prizes awarded to the winners. The sight of a graceful canoe riding low in the water, paddlers slapping a percussive salvo on the waves in perfect unison, would be glorious enough, but some are rigged with revolving elevated sections, women dancing aloft for visibility. At other times, a dancer will take to the prow, vigorously performing in a precarious location. Dance in riverine areas is extremely graceful, inspired by the balance developed by canoe use. It often employs a position bent at the waist, and when performed in a canoe requires a delicate set of calculations to ensure neither the canoe nor the dancer are overset.
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