My First Visit to Nigeria Essay -- Personal Narrative Traveling Essays

My scratch base Visit to Nigeria In this essay I will reconstruct my first let down to Nigeria. The journey took place when I was seventeen in early(a) 1993, during which while Nigeria was under the military rule of General Sanni Abacha. For the most fracture of my trip I stayed in Lagos, former capital state and fluid highly recognised as the commercial capital of Nigeria, although I did visit other parts of the country including Ondo State and Jos. Between this time and the time I left, in early 1994, I experienced and learnt a cud about the Nigerian glossiness. My main focus will be on the particular aspects of Nigerian culture that I saw as relevant to me as a teenager at the time, and also on my views in the lead and after the journey. Up until the point of this journey I had bangd most my intent in the city of London and my cultural views were very much British. I was not very beaten(prenominal) with Nigerian culture, and the parts I was familiar with, which came m ostly through my parents and other family members, were not very appealing to me. view back now I imagine that one of the reason things same(p) that did not appeal to me was because it went so much against the British culture which I had already related to fully accepted as my own and deemed as normal. For example eating certain food, not including chips, with your right transcend instead of with a knife and fork. Leading up to the time I left for Nigeria, I had never really identified myself with the Nigerian culture even though both of my parents where originally from Nigeria. I was the first born(p) of my mother followed by my two younger buddys, Steven and William. We were all also given Nigerian names along with are English ones mine was Femi and my brothers were Ayo and Bayo. My father was still studying along with working when I was born and my mother was working also, when I was about three eld old I was sent to live with a white nitty-gritty class nanny in a town ca lled Warminster in Wiltshire. It was a common phenomena in Britain in that period to see West African being bought up by Foster parents while their parents worked or examine (Groody and Groothuues, 1977). I did my first two or so years of old school in Warminster before my parents decided it was time for me to return to live with them in London. I was one of very few blacks in Wiltshire at the time, so apart from the occasional rare visit made by my par... ... you is to experience it first hand. I found it much easier to accept traditional aspects of Nigerian culture when there where others, who like me were also infected with westward popular culture, around me who appreciated also. I do not sapidity that this acceptance came from any sort forced group conciseness, but to a greater extent from having the ability to choose aspects of the culture which I liked in an purlieu where my choices were more sociably accepted. While in Nigeria I also met a reasonable amount of other Ni gerians who had had similar experiences while growing up as I did. Meeting with such people was one of the strong aspects of my journey as it enabled me to talk and laugh about some of the things I went through as a child which originally made me thumb socially excluded. It also helped me to discover my cultural identity as a British born Nigerian. BibliographyBammer, A, (1994), Displacements, Volume 15, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press Kureishi, H, London and Karachi, in, patriotism The Waking and unmaking of British National Identity, Volume 2, Minorities and Outsiders Watson, J.L,(1977), Between Two Cultures, Oxford, common basil Blackwell