Sto­ry and pho­tos by

Edi­son Boodoos­ingh

Trinidad and To­ba­go Imo Odd­uwa In­sti­tute, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Black In­di­an Cul­ture and Mas­quer­aders and the Oje Egun­gun So­ci­ety, pre­sent­ed their Her­itage Mas­quer­ade Egun­gun Fes­ti­val 2026 in Pe­tite Cu­ra­caye, San­ta Cruz on Sat­ur­day, Ju­ly 25, fea­tur­ing a street pro­ces­sion from their shrine in Pe­tite Cu­ra­caye to the La Venezuela Stat­ue on the San­ta Cruz Old Road.

The Egun­gun Fes­ti­val is an Or­isha fes­ti­val from the Yoru­ba re­li­gion of South West Africa, which pays homage and trib­ute to the an­ces­tors through rit­u­als in the mas­quer­ade; it means “pow­ers con­cealed” or “dry bones (of an­ces­tors), and pro­vides an im­por­tant con­nec­tion be­tween the worlds of the liv­ing and the dead.

One of the core prin­ci­ples of the Oje Egun­gun So­ci­ety is that an­ces­tral ven­er­a­tion is a uni­ver­sal tra­di­tion. While meth­ods dif­fer across cul­tures, every eth­nic group, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and re­li­gion ho­n­ours those who came be­fore them.

Chris­tians com­mem­o­rate de­part­ed loved ones through memo­r­i­al ser­vices and All Souls’ ob­ser­vances; Hin­dus per­form rites; In­dige­nous peo­ples through­out the Amer­i­c­as ho­n­our an­ces­tral spir­its.

The names and cus­toms may dif­fer, but the un­der­ly­ing prin­ci­ple re­mains the same: ac­knowl­edg­ing those whose lives, sac­ri­fices and wis­dom con­tin­ue to in­flu­ence fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.