My Family Culture

If I am caught up in a catastrophic event that will take me away from my home country to a country that share a different culture from mine and probably will not return, the three major items I will carry will be, a photo of my family and I dressed in our traditional/ cultural attire, I will like to come along with a bible and also a piece of a musical instruments that represent my culture.

When giving an explanation on the three items, I probably will start with the picture of I and my family, because on special occasions we go into a photographic studio so as to keep the memories of that particular event and retell the story. Pictures are very important and huge part of my family and they can tell stories without individuals telling the stories. The second item is a big part of my spirituality, my bible gives me direction in live, comforts me and gives me hope and re-assurance in life, it preaches love to me and how to dwell among people and not being judgmental. My last but not the least item is the African gong to play music with, for entertaining my family and maybe our new neighbors. The African gong is a unique instrument in my culture, so it will be good to introduce to our new neighbors playing and singing African melodies and I believe they will enjoy it because music is the food of love, soul and spirit. Music uplifts the spirit and relaxes us and gives joy to the heart.

If upon arrival I am told to drop two items out of my three major items I will be devastated because all three items are really important to me, but at the same time glad that my family is still with me. Aside from the three tangible items, there is one that will always be part of me, the invisible one that can never be taken away, that one remains with me until death and this is my memory. I can always improvise to get the two items I dropped replaced.

The insights I gained about myself is that I will always be strong with my family around me no matter the situation because the greatest support I can get as an individual is from my family. About my family culture, to me I feel culture changes with the emergence of new generation; culture is something that you can modify to suit your taste, and the insight I got from cultural differences as a result of this exercise is that cultural differences in general shows the way different cultures live, what they eat, their believes and their religious belives.