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

My First Visit to Nigeria In this essay I will repair my first visit to Nigeria. The journey took place when I was s yetteen in early 1993, during which time Nigeria was under the military rule of General Sanni Abacha. For the most jump of my trip I stayed in Lagos, former capital state and still highly recognised as the commercial capital of Nigeria, although I did visit early(a)wise 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 lot about the Nigerian conclusion. My main focus will be on the particular aspects of Nigerian culture that I saw as relevant to me as a teen at the time, and also on my views before and after the journey. Up until the point of this journey I had lived most my life in the city of London and my ethnical views were precise much British. I was not very familiar with Nigerian culture, and the parts I was familiar with, which came mostly through my parents and other famil y members, were not very appealing to me. Thinking back now I imagine that one of the reason things like 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 progress 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 of my mother followed by my two younger brothers, Steven and William. We were all also given Nigerian name calling along with are English ones mine was Femi and my brothers were Ayo and Bayo. My father was still studying along with running(a) when I was born and my mother was working also, when I was about three years old I was sent to live with a white middle class nanny in a town called Warminster in Wiltshire. It was a co mmon phenomena in Britain in that period to see West African being bought up by Foster parents piece their parents worked or studied (Groody and Groothuues, 1977). I did my first two or so years of primary school in Warminster before my parents decided it was time for me to restitution 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 western everyday culture, around me who appreciated also. I do not feel that this acceptance came from any sort forced group conciseness, but more from having the ability to lease aspects of the culture which I liked in an environment where my choices were more sociably accepted. While in Nigeria I also met a reasonable amount of other Nigerians who had had similar experiences while gro wing up as I did. Meeting with such people was one of the significant aspects of my journey as it enabled me to talk and express joy about some of the things I went through as a child which originally made me feel socially excluded. It also helped me to discover my cultural identicalness 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 deuce Cultures, Oxford, Basil Blackwell