MKU Don’s Research Project Exhibited in Jamafest Cultural Fair in TZ
JAMAFEST (Jumuia ya Afrika ya mashariki festival) is an annual event organised by the six East African community countries with the aim of promoting East Africa’s diverse cultures by displaying them at the festival. East African community member states include Kenya,Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and south Sudan.
Four students from Murang’a Teachers Training College were purposively identified through their Physical Education lecturer and participated in a traditional games research project led by Prof. Peter Wanderi of Mount Kenya University. The four students Exhibited 2 traditional games, namely the spinning cone and stones tossing games in the 2019 Jamafest in Dar es slam, Tanzania through teamwork and support from the ministry of Culture (Kenya), Mount Kenya University and Muranga Teachers Training College.
On 19th September 2019, we started the journey from our college to milele hotel, Nairobi where we were to meet people from various parts of our country Kenya with different cultures (teamkenya). At milele hotel we were welcomed and addressed by different officials from the ministry in which the cabinet secretary Amina Mohammed gave a speech to show that she had given her consent for teamkenya to represent at the Jamafest.
On 20th September 2019 we begun the journey to Dar es salaam at 5am. We arrived at Namanga border point for yellow fever inocullation and stamping of our traveling documents, the journey continued to Dar es salaam which took long hours, and we managed to reach at 1am. We spent the night at Kurasini the place we stayed for the time we were in Tanzania.
On 21st we visited the national stadium where the Jamafest events we’re to be held. we spent the day show casing different cultures eg traditional songs and dances from the five East African communities.
On 22nd September the festival was officially opened by Tanzanian vice president Hon Samia Suluhu at uhuru stadium. She gave room for various artists, traditional games, traditional songs, dances and exhibitors to show their cultures. Despite all these, we got to be entertained by the East African musicians.
On 25th September according to the program, it was our turn as traditional games teams to showcase our cultural games. This was conducted by two countries Kenya and Tanzania. Tanzania had; mchezo wa mbao(ajua), kukuna nazi, weaving and mudako( stone tossing). Kenya had; ajua, cone spinning, stone tossing(ochako) and tug of war. Samuel kamau and Haron Mwendia displayed cone spinning equipment while Mercy and Divinah displayed ochako a game that resembles mudako(Tanzanian game).
On 26th, we also played same games as people enjoyed watching and we got a visit from a Tanzanian minister from the office of the president. We got to learn and practice a new game called Archery hoping to train more on the game as days go by.
The 5 days long festival ended on 28th September and was closed by Tanzania’s Minister of Culture, Dr James Vunigoma.
Jamafest 2020 Edition will be held in Bujumbura, Burundi in September 2020
