It’s been exactly 10 months since I got to the UK for my postgraduate study and a lot has changed about me. My academic skill and knowledge has been refined tremendously and more importantly is the reformation of my cultural integrity. As an African (Nigerian to be precise), I grew up with certain cultural values which formed my thought process and social mannerism. I found myself in a strange land but I was determined to succeed anyway. From the Western movies I watched in my home country, I knew it would be foolish of me to call every white man a Briton because there are non-Britons and non-Europeans who are also white-skinned. As a result, I often started off my conversation with every white-skinned fellow I meet with the question, ‘where are you from?’ My adaptive nature to new environments presented itself as I mingled with people from different parts of the world and tried to establish a niche for myself. I didn’t feel inferior due to my skin-colour even though I was snubbed by a handful of Caucasians for a reason I never cared to know. I took more pleasure in the fact that the majority of my friends enjoyed my company and loved to have me around. Then the culture shock began.
“You can call me Peter”, one of my lecturers said to me the first day I met him. As expected, I found it very difficult to call him by his first name because my cultural values taught me to respect my elders and those in higher authority, but to my greatest surprise, my UK lecturers wanted me to call them by their first names including PhD holders and Professors! Also, I would walk into a hallway or corridor and find strangers opening doors for me. “How nice”, I said to myself. Who the hell will open doors for you where I come from? “Haven’t you got hands of your own” or “wait a minute, do you consider me to be your servant?” are the ‘friendly’ replies you may get if you are lucky. I was also fascinated by the fact that commuters were fond of thanking the bus drivers after transporting them to their individual destinations. A bus driver on the streets of Lagos will hardly get such a compliment from commuters. It is more likely that he gets to be abused and screamed at for driving either too fast or too slow. I found it absolutely amazing to witness the high level of patience, courtesy and mutual respect that the British people possess.
The positive shock I felt was riddled with some negative ones as well. During winter, most Britons had their dresses covering their entire body surface as a result of the near-zero or sub-zero fluctuating atmospheric temperatures. As Spring faded away, though short-lived, and Summer crept in, the length of the dresses began to shrink until it became very little and highly provocative most especially to fresh foreigners in the country. The bum shorts and bra-less tops being flaunted everywhere I turned reminded me that I was indeed in a strange land. Over time, I realised that it was absolutely normal for them to dress that way because they wanted more parts of their body to be exposed to sunlight for the purpose of tanning. As much as I understood this, I felt some of them had taken the summer clothing style to the extreme and should rather walk naked than to hang pieces of clothing materials on their bodies all in the name of summer! Rape incidents in the UK is not on the increase as far as I know, so even though I had my reservations about the summer dress sense, UK citizens had absolutely no problem with it which made my opinion very irrelevant!
Furthermore, I was on a train heading to London Victoria one morning when I saw a man telling his 10 year old son to reduce the volume of the music blasting out from his mobile phone in order not to disturb other passengers and the boy replied, “Gosh dad! What the hell! Please let me be!” and his dad sat there looking at him helplessly. My jaw dropped to see a 10 year old having such guts. I couldn’t imagine myself talking to my father in such a disrespectful manner without getting a thunderous slap. The western world embraces the concept of not smacking their children when they misbehave and this has made many of them to be recalcitrant and nonchalant! If such a child is left with an African family, some consistent whips and lashes will chase out the rebellious tendency in that child. As espoused by the biblical text which says, “spare the rod and spoil the child”
I also remember being invited to a church where I saw one of the male priests wearing a pair of earrings; and when I went to open a UK bank account and the bank staff who attended to me had a pair of ear-rings on. As he spoke to me explaining the benefits of the savings account, my gaze kept shifting to his ears and within seconds I had formed an opinion about the kind of person he might be. In my home country, when a man wears a pair of earrings, it shows how irresponsible he is. All white-collar occupational sectors (not only the banking sector) in my country do not allow male employees to wear earrings or pierce their body because it is regarded as being rascally! But there I was in the UK sitting with a banker who had a pair of earrings on. I watched him closely and discovered that he knew his job excellently well and that his earrings had nothing to do with his profession and productivity. Therefore, there was a sudden conflict in my mind on how I should judge the personality of the banker.
Any foreigner visiting the UK for the first time may likely experience the conflict of cultural identities and it is expected that the longer the foreigner stays in the UK, the more the cultural lines will dissolve. This makes such people imbibe the British culture quite fast but at the risk of sacrificing their original cultures (which has sadly been the lot of many Africans living in the UK for so long). Not all foreigners will absorb the new British customs, as a few others will hold on staunchly to their original cultures but may become alienated in the new environment (which is the root cause of cultural fanatism/fundamentalism).
As much as I would love to imbibe the patience, courtesy, mutual respect, professional meekness and high-tolerance level of the British people, I do not wish to embrace their loose dress ethics or liberalism towards child discipline. Social and moral ethics (which are often founded by culture and religion) should guide our conscience daily in order to prevent us from abusing the liberty as we have seen countless times! As much as I would also love to preserve my original culture by upholding the elderly respect, sticking to the morally appropriate dress sense, smacking my children when required, etc., I do not wish to retain the undue aggressiveness of the typical African which is reflected in his jungle justice approach to emotional matters; overly judgmental; and the show off of over-bloated pride. This leaves me in a conflict of cultural identities which needs an immediate resolution.
The most beneficial means of resolving the cultural conflict is to consciously blend the positive aspects of both cultures and discarding the negative contents. The first step in achieving this is to admit that NO CULTURE IN THE WORLD IS PERFECT! Therefore, by respecting and admiring the beauty of other cultures and absorbing the positive aspects into ours, we create a superculture which will transform our mentality and personality into a unique cultural model worthy of emulation both at home and abroad. Lets appreciate who we are irrespective of where we come from and not be too proud or rigid to accept new elements from foreign cultures nor too loose or flexible to discard our aboriginal customs which forms the basis of our existence.
___________
This article was wrtitten by Babajide Macaulay, published by Pencil Goddess and republished here by permission
