The Dance

I never got to experience the dance as we moved before I could, but my sisters did. Imagine this, the meeting hall, usually angry and the place your father's go for dry matters turned to a bustling hall. There it is full of food - Roasted vegetables, yam and chicken curries, everything I adored then and now. Our siblings would dance and meet men of the communtiy. First step in the way to marriage, but you are too old for it now.

— Lamij Hodenay

The Dance is the first stepping-stone into marriage for Izij men and women. At 16, girls would have gone through private rites which deemed them an adult and boys would have gone of The Hunt in turn. When enough of the youth have took this and the river has finished flooding, a dance is put on in the village hall which is intended both as a communal celebration of adulthood and also get the younger Izij thinking about marriage.