WHEN YOU ARE NIGERIAN, BUT LIVE AMONG ROMANS

There is one sentence that every child who grew up abroad will tell you that someone told them at some point. Be this person a parent, a guardian or just a random adult who believed that they had the right to educate the young one: "Don't forget that you are from Nigeria even though you live abroad".

This sentence was mainly said with the hope of maintaining a status quo that consisted of gratuitous sexism - in particular misogyny, classism, bigotry, tribalism. ageism, etc. In fact, everything that we should have discarded in Nigeria a long time ago. And this was the reason why you could easily find a Nigerian who had lived a decade or more in Italy, but had not done away with his or her "Nigerian mentality". He or she had to maintain it in order to pass it on to the next generation. There were also hypocrites who only wanted other people and their kids to possess the mentality while they and their children lived very Italian lives. Eg: pastors.

As a child who went to primary school in Italy, you would learn three notions from the very first day:

1. Respect is not by age;

2. Respect has nothing to do with addressing people by their titles or name;

3. Respect is mutual.

The moment you learnt this, immediately the scale fell of your eyes, and the struggle between your Nigerian and Italian counterparts began, and furiously.

- Why does this person feel like he or she can talk to me like this?

- Why does this person insists that I call her aunty even though she is just a couple of years older than me?

- What is Dr (Mrs)?

- Why is this old person acting mad because I asked him to apologise to me?

And that was how the "disrespect" that our adults from Nigeria and/or who insisted on holding on to non productive practises of Nigeria feared so much, began.

Cultural confrontation is inevitable, as well as necessary. It's the only way you can succeed in a foreign land. Believe it or not, your academic and financial success will depend largely on your ability to let go of those silly doctrines that do not serve you as a person, but instead serve the collective alone. And yes, various cultures around Nigeria will always lose out to Western cultures. For one, in the West, the individual is valued. Unlike in Nigeria where the individual is in function of the collective and is considered nothing without the collective, and their approval.

This is not to say that an individualistic culture is supreme. That level of egotism is also damaging on the long run. However it remains more attractive than moulding yourself to blend in with a bunch of adults who went through to same process with people who have been dead for ages.

Exposure has nothing to do with living in a foreign land, watching foreign movies or reading foreign authors. It is about confrontation. That moment when you sit down and put your old/native reality side by side with a new/acquired reality.

The deeper you are willing to dive and the more you are willing to shed will determine how opened your mind will be.