Tell Me More (Post 14)

'The fool who has said in his heart there is no God above.'

And so what else might we be hanging on to – as if for dear life – that we are reluctant to get rid of? Well, it is hard to know where to begin; however, we could start by looking at the explosive phenomenon of culture or as is commonly put ‘African Culture’. I won’t bore anyone about the silliness of that phrase when it refers to a continent so large, vast and riddled with a variety of peoples with a lot of differences. So, I will bring it closer to home. Whilst in Nigeria, I often heard it said how such and such is not ‘part of our culture’. Usually, what was referred to were human behaviours and choices frowned upon by our religions eg women baring the flesh, smoking, sex before marriage etc. You can fill in your own examples of what you may have heard to be not ‘our culture’.

I have often wondered just exactly what this phrase meant as culture is not a very solid and fixed thing; it is fluid, changing to suit the times and to provide answers to certain expressions of human society. It has struck me that a lot of human vices have earned this phrase ‘not our culture’, anything from prostitution to internet fraud.  However, I digress. At this point, I would like to relate the story my father told me of how in the 60’s he would always bring presents home to his family from Europe. What his grandmother always favoured and he always got her was tobacco because she was big on the stuff. She, like her daughter, my grandmother were greatly renowned traders who later went on to build houses and own property. These women grew up in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, at a time when the influence of the colonialists was not that widely felt.

My great grandmother was a woman who used tobacco and who took charge of her financial affairs, things that might be referred to by many in Nigeria today as ‘not our culture’. My grandmother followed in her mother’s footsteps and they must have been a snapshot of women of their time – powerful, independent and reckoned with. What about the cultural traditions of many African societies where women dressed, on occasions, exposing parts of their body wearing not more than a covering for the breasts and waist beads? And why wouldn’t they when, along with the men who went about with a bare torso, they lived in a very hot climate that would not make it comfortable for a lot of clothing? I realised that a lot of what we call ‘not our culture’ actually have no such basis in fact. If anything, what we refer to as ‘our culture’, is actually foreign and came with the colonialists who brought Christianity with them.

This was an imperial England that was a very unequal society with a strong class system and women had very few rights. This England was very influenced by Christianity and pushed for full covering for women (helped by the fact that it is a cold country), agreed with the biblical injunction for ‘wives to submit to their husbands’ and for ‘women not to dress in men’s clothing’ and generally ran a society where men were in charge. We see the same in very religious countries all over the world today. The British transported these values to their colonies whose original cultures and systems and religions they regarded as ‘barbaric’. This was an England whose religion would not allow for female priests but regarded our traditional religions as 'barbaric' when they were less discriminating and oppressive to women. (Recall the priestess Chielo of Agbala in 'Things Fall Apart) 

But my father’s generation who grew up in the 50’s and 60’s lapped all this up, embraced Christianity and these values and passed on to their children how ‘un-Christian’ values are ‘not our culture’. And now, this is the refrain of many Africans and Nigerians who have no clue what their culture really was and what culture it is they now call theirs. So what has it cost us to buy the religion of Europe and stake our destinies on a God we never had a history with, a God transported to us with the sword and with domination? Well, it has cost us a lot indeed – first the erosion of our real culture and second, as will be covered in the next article, it has cost us our language!