How To Make The Feok Festival Attractive

The Feok festival is celebrated annually to honour the ancestors of Buluk for a good harvest and also thank them for helping conquer notorious slave raiders, Babatu and Samori in the late 1890s. We always try to relive those days with cultural performances of which the Feok war dance is one. This festival came into being in the early 1970s and has since been observed in the same old ways, making it unattractive.

The Feok war dance depicts a rich cultural and traditional heritage

I think it is about time we started taking steps to make the Feok festival more attractive to investors and tourists. This way, more people will be interested in it and we can capitalize on that to bring development to Buluk. These are some of the things we can do to instantly market Feok to the world better than we are currently doing.

• Get the history right: Feok means "harvest" and that may be why it is celebrated immediately after the harvest season (December). So how come the war dance and all this talk about slavery and war? Until we are able to sort this history out to make meaning, we will continue to celebrate our confusion with the pouring of libation and ancestral war gear.
• Organize all the components: There are times people ask about the meanings of some of the constituents of the Feok war dance but don't get favourable answers. This leaves them thinking the whole Feok war dance thing was just made up. Why not get a resourceful person who can gather all these items in one place to easily give out information to inquisitive visitors? Is it not about time we stopped the 'guess what' game? Mr John Agandin and some people are planning to set up something similar which I believe needs the support of all well-meaning Bulsa.

• Assemble cultural material: There was a time someone proposed a museum be built and stocked with all the material that makes up Buluk history. I think this is a great idea which has the potential of marketing the Feok festival better. All the different armour that make up the Feok war dance can be kept there and properly labelled with a brief history of each item and its importance to the war dance. The battlegrounds such as the Azagsuk shrine can serve as a great tourist site. An individual, however, has to always be present to give out the history of the place and how the war started, just like the Paga slave camp in Kasena - Nankana district.

• Improve upon the war dance: The dance itself seems unattractive with so many uncoordinated dance moves. Who dances that way? There should be coordination at every step of the dance. We can even choreograph the whole dance process. People should not be allowed to interrupt the war dance because .... it is a war dance! The women who follow the Warriors should also dress attractively and in the same kind of cloth. Everything should be in a choreographic form. The dance moves can also be diversified. A day or two can even be set aside for the performance of the war dance alone.

• Expand the celebration: The bigger, the better. The more people are involved in the war dance, the better it will contribute to its effectiveness in the promotion of unity and development. Why not structure the war dance to include the various communities? Times have changed and the history alone cannot do much towards our collective goal of better people united by one destiny. Places like Fumbisi, Kanjarga, Weisi, Bachongsa, Uwasi, Chuchuliga, and other areas can all come as different groups to partake in the war dance. It shouldn't be left to the people of Sandema alone. When this is done, the venue can always be rotated yearly to open up all parts of Buluk to investors since the Feok festival is our biggest annual celebration. After all, it is not just the history we need but the investment that it can bring along to make home a better place.