Festivals work like cultural memory keepers. They gather a community around something familiar and turn an ordinary practice into a shared story. In many societies across the world, a festival is a kind of social language. People return to it each year to remind themselves of who they are, what they know and what they want the next generation to inherit. When scholars say that festivals shape identity, what they mean is that a festival quietly teaches people how to see themselves. It does this through the songs chosen, the boats polished, how the food is prepared, the colours people wear, and even the way elders speak to young people in the hours leading up to the event.

The Boat Regatta as a Stage for Invisible Labour

For communities that live by the water, these festivals do something even more powerful: they tie identity to the rhythms of the tide and the rituals of fishing. Even in places where opportunities are limited and the wider world barely looks in their direction, the festival becomes proof that the community’s way of life carries beauty and meaning. It creates a sense of belonging that does not depend on wealth or outside validation, such that grows from the people themselves.

This is exactly what the Enatta Foundation, through the inception of its Boat Regatta in 2024, aims to create for fisherwomen in underserved coastal areas. In many of these communities, women are the anchors of the fishing economy, yet their expertise is rarely acknowledged in public. However, a boat regatta changes that dynamic; it gives their craft a stage and tells their story in the open air where everyone can see it. The regatta presents the everyday actions of fisherwomen and their communities as a cultural inheritance that can be passed on across generations.

Lessons From Other Fishing Traditions

Importantly, comparison to long-standing Nigerian festivals is instructive here. Events like the Argungu fishing festival have shown that a fishing festival can become a mirror in which a community recognises its history. Lagos’ own boat celebrations have equally revealed how the water can become a place of pride, and not just a route for survival. In both cases, the festival turns a livelihood into a profound identity that ripples through time. That same transformation is possible for women who have spent generations working along the creeks and inlets of Lagos’ coastal communities through the Boat Regatta. 

Something happens when fisherwomen and their contributions are highlighted in their communities, which is that they begin to recognise their own place in crafting their individual stories and communal heritage. Through the boat races, cultural performances and competitions, as well as Enatta Foundation’s unique addition, the health outreach, the boat regatta becomes a vessel for cultural memory for every party involved. It reinforces the identity of a people and redefines their life and lived experiences as a cultural ecosystem to agencies and institutions who are drivers in this space. 

Truly, this is how culture grows its roots. It grows wherever people are given the space to show who they are without apology. It grows when a community sees its own strength reflected back at itself. The Enatta Foundation Boat Regatta is that mirror for fisherwomen, and we call on individuals, developmental partners, government ministries and private institutions to join us in achieving these goals in the 2025 edition.