OUR culture

After spending the best part of the last week writing one post to no avail, I decided to give up and write about something else. Please accept this as an apology for my recent silence.

My advance apologies to the Igbo’s, Hausa’s, and other of the many different tribes and ethnic groups we have in Nigeria reading this post if I cannot do this topic justice with my very limited understanding of your cultures. The culture I have the most exposure to is the Yoruba one and most of my ideas about the Nigerian culture are directly linked to that.

Unfortunately (it really does bleed my heart) I never had the opportunity to do a Nigerian history or Nigerian geography lesson, let alone learn any of the different languages or cultures that we as Nigerians can boast of. I try my hardest to read as much as I can and catch up on all the lost lessons, field trips etc. All history books, videos, documentaries etc are welcome as Easter presents.

When I moved to Lagos, it didn’t take longer than a week for my knees to hit the dust. After being cautioned that a kiss on the cheek, and a good afternoon or good morning depending on the time of day will not suffice because “awa Yoruba, a se be”, it’s just not done. Before long I was “kunle-ing” for everyone just to avoid being told that I had no manners. I am sure my mother is cringing reading this, so just to calm her nerves I should point out that she did teach me these things, of course I knew I had to curtsey to older people, just not to every Tom, Dick and Harry with a speck of grey hair and an exaggerated opinion of themselves as an ‘elder’, ‘superior’ to you. As alien as ‘curtseying’ was to me, I have since discovered far more peculiar things. To mention but a few:

• People are “honouring you” by showing up uninvited to your home fully expecting to be entertained, fed, and to take awoof to their family members that couldn’t make the trip
• It’s apparently not weird for people to wake up in the morning and decide that they are gonna send you a bag full of oranges or apples or some other fruit, for no reason. I don’t eat those things. I watched snow white and the seven dwarfs, I cannot rationalise the sending of fruits.
• Buying a wedding gift for the bride and groom is unnecessary, instead get a ton of plastic buckets and put stickers on it that say “Sumbo hooks Toks” (or whoever hooks whoever as the case may be) to give out to wedding guests who may not actually know who the bride and groom are, but they came for the star and puff puff.
• Aso-ebi. I understand this one somehow but at the same time I don’t understand it. Why must everyone wear uniform to display allegiance and loyalty to the people doing the party (yes yorubas wear aso ebi for everything – wedding, birthday, funeral, naming ceremony, you name it). It is an EPIC waste of money. After 2.5 years I already have a whole section of my wardrobe full of buba and iro, funny dresses, in god-awful materials that I will never wear again, and I dare you to find someone more selective than me in the events I attend.
• My mum always says to me “If you don’t go to theirs they won’t come to yours”.... there is an extremely strong sense of community. If your half brothers, wife’s cousin’s, step son is doing a house dedication in Taraba state (you have to go by road, and there are no hotels so you have to kip in the car), you had better be there for fear that when you are washing your first Pajero he may not attend. And when you go, you must go hard, with your plastic buckets personalised for the event in your Sunday best, wedding gele ... I have an aunt (RS) that says even if the celebrant doesn’t want to dress well, she will still go looking her best, regardless of whether she is out-dressing them.
• Over the top curtsey. My brothers can attest to this, but if my mum is calling someone say to ask for the name of a shop or something. She will first “greet” the person. E ka le, Eku ata ro de le, eku joko, eku dide, eku **fill in the blanks**. Everything she can greet them for doing that day she will first do that for 30 mins before she finally lands with her question. All I can say is: I wish I was MTN if a 2 second phone call takes 35 minutes.
• Etc etc

Though I have really just painted the Yoruba culture in a negative light, I don’t think it is, It’s weird granted, but the point I’m making is that it’s different. Much as I expect that there are certain weird things that Igbo people do, that Itshekiri people do, that Calabar people do, and they are very different from the way things are done in the west. It is extremely sad and unfortunate that as Nigerians we are becoming less appreciative of the wealth of culture and tradition that we have. We do not document it, we don’t celebrate it, and an increasing number of people don’t pass it on to their kids.

As I mentioned earlier my education even while I lived in Nigeria was British through and through, I have (had) no idea about what makes our culture unique and worthy of our pride, and there are many more like me. Fortunately my eves dropping was worthwhile and I understand and when in the right environment I can speak Yoruba but my brothers don’t, I have many cousins and family friends who don’t and this is completely unacceptable. When the videos of the American student in Ibadan learning to speak Yoruba were doing the rounds, many people (Yoruba people) couldn’t watch the sequels because they did not have subtitles. This typifies the Nigerian situation, It is always a foreigner that is keen to learn, document, popularise what is ours. I do not blame the ‘youngsters’, I blame those that never passed it onto them. I challenge you to find an Indian or Chinese person that can’t speak their language even if they have never been to their countries; they and their forefathers are proud of their heritage and fought to keep it alive.

I think until we know our culture, love our culture all our efforts to preserve or better what we call Nigeria are pointless, because we don’t know what we are fighting to keep alive.

xoxo.