It’s a beautiful thing that the world is now linked in such a way that we have the possibility to interact with people from both far and near. We are now in our own interconnected world which has been called a globalized village-in this world anything is possible! No wonder Mama Nne, my grandma, born in the nineteen thirties, still shakes her head in disbelief almost like there’s some sort of witchcraft underneath all these that she would rather not have anything to do with.
Now the chances of people born in different tribes, races, and tongues finding themselves, interacting, and even getting married have increased so much so that my mom would let her first daughter, her Ada (what a first-born daughter is called in Igbo) date someone who is not from the eastern part of the country and even supports the intentions of marriage with a supposed outsider even after the daily warnings I received from childhood, I was brought up to think of a companion as a man with mainly two qualities, a man who is responsible and Igbo. Unfortunately, I had never been a big fan of eastern men, never dated any, and didn’t have the intention to, well it’s possible that my parents helped sowed the seed three decades ago when they decided to leave the east and journey to the northern part of the country to settle and find greener pastures and there they raised all four of us. So by the reason of association, I was almost blind to certain cultural differences and I found it easier to accommodate and even embrace people who were different from me.
 |
| Miss Agnes, Mr. Funsho, and their pupil |
Was it a good idea for my parents to have relocated and come this far to start a family? Right now, I would say a big yes! considering that my siblings and I panned out to be a bit more open-minded and ready to take on the world a little more than our parents were and this counts for the numerous amount of opportunities we are ready to explore and risks we are ready to take but to be honest, I would say we lost out on one aspect which I feel is almost as important as the rest. My parents did their best for us to learn the Igbo language, they spoke it to us at home and all that but it so happens that only two of my older brother panned out speaking the language moderately but unfortunately my younger brother and I ended up only being able to understand the language but find it difficult to speak it. Now I feel that’s a disadvantage because I believe that if parents are moving, then the advantage should be that they are conscious so that their children pick up the essence of other cultures, the language and all that, it should be a plus almost like the children become a better version of their parents with the added knowledge of other languages, world, cultures, and religion. It should be a thing of pride knowing that if a parent knows just one language for example, their children get to know two or more just by the virtue of birth, and association, no hassle, no effort-they just grow up knowing and speaking these languages-this to me is an upgrade. But the bad side to this is the fact that parents don’t see the need to reinforce their own culture even more than they would have done if the kids were raised in the environment that they themselves were raised in, they don’t realize that freedom comes with responsibility which in this case is intentionality. From the looks of things, these days children lose aspects of their former culture in exchange for a new one or none at all.
At this rate, the world is not about to stop being a global village anytime soon, and is that a bad thing? No! But now we need to start to reassess our stands in the midst of all these knowing that this system can make us better only if we are intentional about it but if we are not, it can go as far as taking from us our very own essence that at the end of the day we are left wondering who we really are.
Comments
Post a Comment