It’s almost taboo when one fails to be discreet with matters that does not sit comfy with others, especially people from your stock.
And there is no way I could bring my experience across without scrambling that set cultural code.
The first reality that hits you when you arrive Europe and you start to warm into the social and organisational culture is that you find you are ‘disorganised’.
Another is that you are dishonest. And finally, you could sense you have false estimation of yourself.
It has nothing to do with your intrinsic quality of being intelligent. You are standing before the mirror of self-ethic, and it could only tell how you look not how you think you look.
And your first reaction to this reality of your actual weight on the scale of things is a feeling of ‘rebellion’.
To rebel against a system that has cut you to size and offered you a fresh start at rebuilding self.
For many religious people as me whose personal views and resources were shaped by religion and the limited social and cultural spaces that offered us little or no push to challenge things outside our limited spheres, we lived by on the assumptions that only God could make someone better.
How does God craft a liveable society if not by instilling in men the conscience and cognitive resources to bring it about?
Some would trounce my text believing I am attempting to glorify the culture of Europe, not at all, just that by design they have achieved better social and organisational architecture than Africa have.
And for sure there could be many things in our clime Europe could realistically learn from if they so wish.
‘Disorganised’, yes! As an African you noticed your room has more stuff in it, not just from the sheer instinct of ‘self-aggrandisement’ you are used to, more of the fact your brain is trying to reset itself from the chaotic culture of disorder.
You always jumped the light.
Beat the queue… batter your way through…
Hardly keep to time. You run a raft of activities half of them not planned for.
And how would one not suffer from that kind of disorganised lifestyle when you have lived in cities where electric poles have 200 tangled wires, houses lumped in semi shanties…and schools meant for 100 students admit more than 1000 and above?
Prayers are said in offices before commencement of meetings, but the books are kept away from auditors because the records in themselves are smudged. Does prayer need to be said to set accounting records straight?
You relearn your English and communication because you weren’t taught the correct and proper way.
And gradually you are weighting yourself correctly to better standards.
How people don’t have to spend fortunes to arrange a funeral for their dead, as social functions are planned based on one’ personal budget. Not on the ‘social media’ standards!
And you live just as you are not how you wish to be perceived.
Living in Europe is a functional and practical weight loss program.
Each day you find how unnecessary it is to live your life within the focus of others.
Life in Africa is short nasty and brutish not just for a fact we have a dysfunctional system brought upon by bad governance, more of a fact that we have a social system that revolves around petty competitions.
I can remember so many big mansions erected by some rich people in my village and today no one lives in them. And other bigger ones built by peers meant to upset some other people’ records are today grotty looking and deserted.
And yet we haven’t realised our vapid sense of vanity?
Sometimes its easy to blame Africans for the way they live. People can’t get better when they have no better examples to glean from.
It is our hope that Africa’s’ diaspora resources and prospects of good leadership will transform its people and it’ social ethic.
And how badly we need that to happen! Africa is home to genially good and nice people who want and dream the best for themselves.
What happened? A good number are victims of their own society.
How people are mis-shaped and their personal optics damaged by the spectre of their social fate.
