Culture Clash (mag)
Before my migration to the UK from Nigeria, I never used to attach much attribute to my culture. Settling in the UK has opened my eyes to a lot of things, most importantly, appreciating my roots. A lot of people refer to culture as being a way of life; I see it as one of the factors that govern your faculty of thinking and your perspective to life.
I was exposed to a lot of things that came as a shock to me. One of the ways of familiarising myself to the British culture was watching television. I became aware of the type of relationships between families, where children call their parents by their first name. That is forbidden in my culture because as a Nigerian, you are supposed to respect your elders whether they are your parents or not. You cannot call them by their names; you have to use the word “sir” or “ma” whenever you are interacting with them because age is believed to confer wisdom so older people are granted respect. Besides, you have to wait until invited before you can call anyone by their first name.
Also, when greeting the elderly, you are supposed to bow your head as a sign of respect. In most cases, females go on their knees while males prostrate. I quickly got over the first shock when I found out about other things like parents can get arrested for beating their children and that you should look into people’s eye when you converse with them. The major way of punishing a child in my culture is through spanking the child and it is found intrusive to make direct eye contact with people you do not know well except if there is a longstanding personal relationship. It is common to look at the forehead or shoulders of someone that you don’t know well.
I know it may sound like my culture is harsh, but we have other beautiful things like dress code, beautiful traditional attires for men and women of different tribes. When I wear the gele (attractive head tie) it seems to be a fascinating piece of artwork to most people. This is when I started to appreciate and embrace my culture. I was surprised to find that Scottish people had their own type of traditional clothing and the Indian women wearing a sari. Oh! And another beautiful thing about my culture is the vast range of appetizing and delicious food, well that is probably because I like food a lot.
All in all, I figured that culture do have impact on way of life, the saying that “when in Rome be like Romans” should apply in some cases. The most important thing to remember is that your culture partly defines who you are and you should never forget your roots.
Photo by William Murphy.
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