Yoruba People

Hello! We are the Yoruba people. We are happy to share our story with you. Our home is in a warm, sunny part of the world called West Africa. Many of us live in a country called Nigeria. Our families are very, very important to us. We live together, play together, and help each other every single day. We especially love and respect our elders. Our elders are people like our grandmas and grandpas. They have lived a long time and are very wise, so we listen carefully to what they teach us. Some of us live in big, busy cities with tall buildings and lots of people. Others live in smaller, quiet towns where everyone says hello.

We love making our world beautiful and colorful! One way we do this is by making special woven cloth. We use threads of many bright colors to create amazing patterns. We wear our beautiful cloth for special parties and also for every day. We also create art with beads. We can take hundreds of tiny, shiny beads and make them into pictures or beautiful jewelry to wear. We love music and dancing, too! A special instrument we play is the talking drum. When we play it just right, it can make sounds that are like words. It is like the drum is talking to everyone and telling them to dance!

We also love to tell stories. Our families have been telling the same wonderful stories for a long, long time. Grandparents tell them to parents, and parents tell them to their children. These stories are fun, and they teach us important things about our world. Being Yoruba means we are part of a big family that loves color, music, and sharing stories. We live all over the world today, but we carry our traditions with us. We are proud of who we are and happy to share our culture with you.