July Happenings :)

Hello from the beautiful city of Prague!

As some of you may have noticed, thank you Duru aburo mi atata, I have been MIA again from the blog and blogosphere in general. Life has been super busy these last few weeks, and it has been showing me pepper recently. Why you wonder? It's because I apparently have a knack for over-stretching myself.

A few weeks ago, I realised that I was reaching a plateau in my German learning, and worried about it going the way of my Italian, I decided to challenge myself by registering for the TestDaF. It is a German language exam that tests from level B2 to C1, assigning the numerical values 3-5 to the three different levels. The exam was painfully expensive, so I am determined to get a 4 (equivalent to a B2.2), as this would in theory exclude me from all future German language tests. I'm far from a B2 at the moment, and with only 6weeks to go, I am having to put in a lot of work.

 Weekly German Plan

Then three weeks ago, I went back home to England because my uncle was getting married. I got to experience the Yoruba traditional wedding up close (we were the groom's representatives), and I loved it! The vocabulary, stunning outfits, customs and traditions and the theatricality of the whole ceremony meant I was completely blown away! I had previously participated in such a ceremony only once, 2years ago at my friend's wedding in Nigeria, but the stress then was so much that I decided it was not for me. However, although I could see how stressful it was for my uncle, this time I was carried away by the magic of it all, and I honestly CAN'T wait till it's my turn.

Of course in I have also been travelling a lot, as usual, because it's the summer holidays and my middle name is Ajala. This is my second time in Prague this month, for instance,  even though I have no right to annual leave in my first year of employment (the Belgians apparently like to test their employees' endurance and work-like-a-dog-ability). What this means is that I have been doing lots of extra shifts and replacements, working long periods without breaks, and then trying to group all my days off together (the last one was a 12day working streak that almost killed me!).

As you can see, busy busy busy indeed! Obviously I haven't had much time to blog, however I have been making an effort to visit people's blogs every couple of days, even if it means that I don't get the chance to leave a comment. I'm sorry about that, but it's only until I write my exams in the second week of September. Really hoping the result is worth all the effort and sacrifice...fingers crossed it is!

Nigerianising My World Since 2000-gbogboro

This post was inspired by J's post on sharing her food culture with her husband. I read her post and found it weird to read that some people seem almost ashamed of their culture. I'm not sure if it's the parents' fault for not having instilled better pride in their children or society's fault for celebrating certain cultures over others. Whatever the case, I will never understand how anyone could be ashamed of their culture, because to me one's culture is one's identity.

Nigerian me at London's Notting Hill Carnival in 2012

In my case, inasmuch as I love experiencing and being a part of other cultures, you simply could not have any sort of relationship with me without learning about Nigeria, the Yoruba people and even more specifically the Ondo culture! My cultural identity is part and parcel of who I am, and I proudly share the good, the bad and even the ugly with my entourage. I do this mainly through sharing the things I love the most i.e. food (as per the original FFO), and books.

For instance, I bought Things Fall Apart for the MIL in German and Americanah for Hanna my German friend/conversation exchange partner. And when we lived in Paris, my sis and I bought my French family friends about 4-5 books by both Chinua Achebe and Chimmamda Adichie. Just last week, my Mexican friend told me proudly on the phone that she'd bought Things Fall Apart and was reading and enjoying it too. Chinua Achebe is one of my very favourite writers, and it is of course natural for me to introduce my loved ones to his writing and through it, the Nigerian culture!

In terms of food, my main thing is fried rice which seems to  have worked wonders on everyone for whom I've ever made it. My French family now loves fried rice and plantains to the point that my French mum said, as we walked past an African shop two weekends ago, "look another place we can buy plantain for dodo, let me note down the address." And few weeks before that, my Mexican and Italian friends suddenly sent me whatsapp pictures of them eating and enjoying food at a Nigerian restaurant I'd once told them about in Paris. In both cases, I was shocked...and at the same time proud of the good job I had done! When I went to Nigeria nko? I brought back a few bags of Kilishi from which I was planning to send some to my mum in England. The mistake I made was taking it to show them at work where it was quickly devoured, sotay I had nothing left to send to my mum lol. This in spite of the stereotype about the French being snotty about non-French food.

As for T, laisse tomber as the French say. He loves Naija food as much (if not more than) as he loves me haha! Pepper soup, dried fish and prawns, egusi, fried rice, spicy kilishi, ati be be lo, he loves it all. I'm pretty sure that our future home will be full of wonderful Nigerian food, as well as British, German and other countries' cuisines, inasmuch as we do not validate or denigrate any one culture over the others. 

I recently spent time explaining the Nigerian elections to colleagues who saw my Facebook statuses and asked about it. And since my uncle is getting married, I am finally learning about this aspect of my culture and excited to talk about all the rites and different ceremonies to anyone that will listen. I've been explaining the Nigerian(Yoruba) traditional wedding process to Hanna and my MIL who is looking forward to seeing pictures. I even showed people at work pictures of my mum in her traditional outfit. 

The thing is even though I think of myself as a child of two cultures, I celebrate and talk about Nigerian culture more because it is less known here than the British culture, although I often go on about that too. I don't force my culture down anyone's throat, or pretend that every thing about it perfect (no one culture is),  but neither do I hide who I am. Instead, I surround myself with open-minded people who love me and everything about me including the craziness that is my Ondo-Yoruba-Nigeran-West African-British-English-Kentish self.

Do you have a bi-cultural relationship or friendships? How do you share your culture with others?