What the name means
The festival is called Iri Ji, which is eating the yam, and in many places Iwa Ji, the breaking of the yam, because the first tuber is cut into four. Both are built on the same word, ji, the yam itself.
Communities also keep their own names for it. Nnewi calls its festival Afiaolu, a name the town adopted around 1918; the Ikwerre call theirs Egelege; at Afikpo it’s Ikeji. These aren’t different festivals so much as the same harvest kept under a local name.
When it happens
It follows the harvest rather than a fixed date, at the beginning of harvest when everybody is free from farm work. The first yams come in July and August; Nnewi holds Afiaolu in August, Ika and the Ezza of Abakaliki in September, others run into October. It isn’t held on the same day everywhere, on purpose, so that guests can come from the neighbouring towns.
That’s worth knowing before you book a flight home for it: a date that’s right for one town can be a month out for the next one.
Who eats the first yam
The first yam isn’t simply served. It’s offered first, and only then eaten. New yams can’t be eaten until some have been offered to the earth goddess and the ancestors.
Who makes the offering depends on the community: the chief priest, the eldest man holding the ọfọ, or the Igwe. At Igbo-Ukwu the chief priest presents the yam to the deity before anyone eats; at Nnewi the Igwe eats first. Then every adult man performs his own rite at home, to the extent he can afford.
The yam spirit goes by many names: Ahiajoku, Ifejioku, Njoku, depending on the town. Thanks go to the yam spirit, to Ala the earth, and to the ancestors, sealed with a libation. The words said over the first cut yam at Uzoagba are: Ji ọhụrụ nke afọ a, anyị na-egbuwa gị taa. New yam of this year, today we cut you. And to the ancestors: Ndị ichie, lere nụ ji ọhụrụ, soro kwe nụ rie. Behold the new yam, share the eating with us.
The old yams go first
In some communities the last of the previous year's yams must be finished or thrown out on the eve of the festival. At Nnewi all old yams are consumed or discarded the evening before. Elsewhere it’s the pots, calabashes and the wooden mortar that are washed, rather than yams thrown away.
The rule about eating early was taken seriously. In many parts of Igboland it was an abomination to eat the new yam before the festival; at Ikwo the offender could be ostracised. Carrying fresh yams through a town before its own festival was an affront, and the yams were seized.
Yam is a man's crop
Yam was the man's crop, and cocoyam and the rest were the women's, though ambitious women and widows kept yam farms of their own. A man who grew enough took a yam title, Ezeji or Diji, graded by his barn: a hundred stakes for the first title, four hundred for the highest. The women's counterpart was Lolo ede, the cocoyam queen, in two grades by heaps of cocoyam.
That’s why the yam is called the king of crops and the only one with a ritual of its own, and why ji is the word the whole festival turns on.
What the day looks like
Yams are cooked in every form the town knows and shared. At Afikpo the festival dish is pounded yam with ohe sarara, a white soup. There’s music and dancing, and at Nnewi masquerades parade the square as soon as the Igwe has eaten. In Achebe’s Umuofia the second day is the wrestling.
If you’re learning Igbo and want one word for the day, ji is it, and it’s worth being able to say it properly.