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Things that occur when growing up African

I was supposed to be figuring out how to design a website and instead I was enthralled in the videos of Christiana Rants! on her blog. I tried brainstorming my website design in my mind whilst watching about six of her insightful videos and then I realised that I needed to stop. I took one last skim at her blog posts and found a post title ‘Growing Up African‘ and within this post she has written and sub-post titled ‘Things that occur when growing up African‘. After reading the main title, I had a feeling that my childhood was about to be retold in this post. And surely it was!!! Christiana’s words confirmed things which I never really acknowledged before. Here are some of the things Christiana has noted in the post with my commentary added.

  1. That moment of shock when you discover everyone doesn’t bath with a bucket and sponge. I thought the shower was a monster. And funnily enough my first experience of the shower wasn’t in my own house. When I was about 6 years old my Mum’s Fijian-Indian friend offered to babysit me overnight because my parents were working. My mum’s friend’s daughter who was about 16 or 18 at the time was getting ready to prepare the shower for me and I started to go into a frenzy. I was so scared of the shower! I pleaded for a bucket and sponge. It was quite a traumatizing episode. She eventually persuaded me into the shower. And from that day… I never looked back. Except when the water cuts out in Ghana. lol.

  2. That day you discover that they don’t serve Supermalt in pubs. In fact they don’t serve it anywhere. Most people outside your milieu have never heard of Supermalt. This fact will puzzle you forever. My dad told me that NOBODY knows what malt is!!! He said my Mum and all the Ghanaian people I know love it because they didn’t have coke when they were growing up! He didn’t mean it that way, but he wanted me to understand that it was highly likely that if I mentioned Malt at school, no one would know the kind of drink I was referring to!!!

  3. Finding out the woman you call grandma isn’t your grandma. Neither is your aunty, your aunty. Or your cousin, your cousin. In fact 95% of the people you refer to with a term that suggests they’re a blood relation are not. As a very inquisitive child, I always wanted to know the real connection I had with all the people I was and still am calling ‘Aunty’ and ‘Uncle’. I was told that pretty much every African adult old enough to be my parent should be referred to as Aunty or Uncle. It was a sign of respect. At the time I didn’t understand, but I did it anyway. When I went to Ghana for the first time at 16, this practice was thrown back in my face when I would call my respective relatives Aunty or Uncle and a stranger would often tell me I should refer to my Aunty as my Mother and Uncle as my Father. Frustrated and confused, I went to my Mum who assured me that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. Made me realised that although I was born in Australia and was taught many of the traditional Ghanaian practices, we had created our own practices – a fusion of both cultures.

  4. Going to parties and there’s a high table for special guests. Ironically the table is often not that high. It’s just an ordinary table covered with wrapping paper and draped with Christmas lights. At some parties there are more people on the high table than at the rest of the party.

  5. Weddings usually begin 1-3 hours late.Or for that matter, every occasion means we are running on African Man Time!

  6. That embarrassing moment when you go to the airport and despite obsessively using the scales at home, your mum has excess luggage. You stand at the check-in desk watching your parents try and negotiate a deal so they don’t pay for excess luggage. When that fails, they start to “spread the weight” across the suitcases. When that fails they eventually hand over the stuff they really didn’t have to take to the relative who drove you to the airport. The first 3 hours of the flight back to Africa is spent with your mum lamenting over the luggage lost. In my case, my Mum being able to miraculously fit the excess into her hand luggage. 

  7. Being called downstairs to change the channel, even though the remote is NEXT to your mum. I live in a single story house and my Mum can even call me on her mobile from her room to come and turn the light off or change the channel. 

  8. When the ends of your extensions have been burned and keep sticking to your school jumper. I had to forcibly retire quite a few items of clothing because of this issue. I was so excited the first time my extensions where put in hot water. From that day I knew that my clothes would be safe!

  9. Going into the freezer, taking out a tub of ice cream, opening it and feeling devastated when you discover it’s frozen stew. This still regularly happens to me.

Read the rest of the entry at CHRISTIANA RANTS!

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