The Mwaka Kogwa Festival in Makunduchi (Zanzibar) is related to a new year celebration. It is celebrated in the month of July.It comes from an old Persian tradition (over 1000 years ago). The important part of the festival (as far as I understand)is that the people from two parts of the village of Makunduchi have a mock fight. The idea is that in this way they wipe out the frustrations and difficulties of the past year. The fight finishes by putting fire to a hut. Someone has to flee from the hut in a specific direction and the direction of the smoke tells something about the future, the new year.We run into this quite by coincidence. This is a little part of my video of our Kenia-Tanzania trip June-July 2006. Total length of my video is about 2 hours 16x9, recorded with Sony HDR-HC1E (in HDV 1080i, but converted into DV).

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