The story
Lela Festival in Bali Nyonga
Lela is Bali Nyonga's four-day December royal festival, moving from a religious purification day through a war-commemoration day with gunfire and military display, a political day when the Fon appoints new ministers, to a final day of dancing. Centred on the Fon and the sacred Wolela shrine, it is one of the Cameroon Grassfields' most structurally distinct chieftaincy festivals.
Lela is structured as four distinct days, each with its own character: a religious opening at a sacred stream where ceremonial white flags are purified and the land's guardian spirits asked for protection, a second day of war re-enactments commemorating the historic battles of the Bali Nyonga and their Chamba ancestors along their migratory path, a third day given over to politics, when the Fon appoints new nkoms, or ministers, and addresses the state of the chiefdom, and a fourth and final day of dancing with far less gunfire.