Just A Young Boy That Wanted To Learn More About His Culture

I was 4 years old when my dad decided it’s time I go stay with my grandma in my home town. He was scared that I was going to grow up without learning or knowing the culture and traditions of our home land. I didn’t understand my language(igbo) at that time because I had no one to teach me. My father thought the best and fastest way to learn my language was to leave me with my grandmother.

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My grandmother was the best human in my life, she loved me so much, even though I wasn’t her only grandchild. She showed me immerse love.

I can recall her telling me that no one can ever love me greater than she does. That affirmation still runs through my mind even after her death.

I arrived my hometown with my dad and lo and behold my grandmother couldn’t speak English, and I couldn’t speak igbo(our native language). Language was a barrier and due to survival instinct, one of us needed to compromise and learn the other’s language. My grand mother was an old woman, her brain is vastly occupied and couldn’t accommodate learning a new language at that age. So being the younger vibrant one, I had to compromise to learning the language so as to create a form of communication between my grand mother and I.

That was the first and most important part of the learning process of my culture and tradition. Communication was needed for messages to be passed from my grandmother to myself. While learning the culture and tradition, i fell in love with the food. When I was staying with my dad outside my home town, I always rejected our traditional food because I didn’t like the look and I preferred junks. But here I was left alone with an old grandma that doesn’t know what junks are. I had to compromise once again to eating our traditional meal. I then found out, it actually tasted nice, I loved it so much that whenever I eat junks now and I don’t eat those traditional meals I feel incomplete.

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The best part of my childhood experience living with my grandmother in our home town was our periodic Full Moon tales experience. During the full moon, all the mothers will wake everyone up, share us into groups based on our age groups, each group will have an elderly moderator that will tell us fantastic tales during the full moon. We will all sat down on the bare floor, with our small tiny heads facing up because the moderator is sitting on a stool. I remember the cricket sound at the background, I can remember the subtle light gotten from the full moon reflecting on us while we listen to old tales that happened long long ago. After listening, half of us will end up falling asleep and the mother of each child will gently carry each child in their arms and take them inside.

These were good times where nothing mattered but being happy.

I remember my grandfather sitting by the corner roasting coco yam, I asked him why he was doing that so late in the night. He said during his adolescent age, these were things he used to do with his brothers, some of them were dead but he wanted to feel the connection, so he decided to that during the full moon.

I also learnt about the different types of days in my home town and some days were forbidden days to not go to the river. In my home town we only have 4 days in a week. The 4th day is usually the market day. On this day, every trader is expected to go and sell their goods in the market. Some choose the market days as the only day to trade while some trade everyday regardless. Going to the market on market days is very exciting. Because this is when you will see lots of people on that day, and the market gets extremely busy. You also see lots of varieties of things you would love to spend your money on.

Took me sometime but I was able to love and appreciate my culture and tradition. Grateful to my Dad for letting me get such experience.