At three years, I travelled to Accra, Ghana with my parents who relocated there for better prospects. Today, I have spent seventeen summers there. My earliest memory of New Delhi, my ‘hometown’ dates back to when I visited my grandparents, a year later.
Fast-forward my life to age eight: I attended school in Accra; Gyasi, my Akan friend, spoke Twi, Mawuli, an Ewe, spoke in his dialect – and we were the best of friends; a Soccer team. Some other teammates were Bao, a Chinese, Sulaiman from Lebanan, Akkani my Yoruba friend, besides Aseem and Saurav, from India’s Mumbai and Kolkata, respectively. We were a motley crowd; thrived in one another’s company. Unbeknown to me, my horizons were already expanding, for my cosmos was a miniature macrocosm. By the time I was in the seventh grade, I spoke Twi, knew a smattering of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, was proficient in English; had embarked on learning French.
Growing up in a country that boasted of multi-cultural and multi-linguistic ethnic groups, I celebrated Christmas with gusto, shared presents with my family and friends; enjoyed the traditional X-mas pudding at Julius’ home. Diwali meant another festival of lights, exchange of sweets, lighting candles and firecrackers. Eid came twice in a year; each brought different delectable dishes in its wake.
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Building a Lego car, had been my favorite game, however I burgeoned as I successfully overcame challenges; made most of the opportunity of making a robotic car follow a curved black line, sense any obstacle in its path and a ‘pathway clearer’ which would move the obstacle aside. That was also when I realized that I wanted to learn more of engineering design, understand technology; use my math skills to solve problems. Today, I have the distinction of having secured distinctions in various math and robotics competitions, under my belt. (479
Many of those who were ripped from their homelands, dreamt of returning home to their families. After emancipation, the young Africans regrouped and found their own settlement once their dreams of returning home could not become a reality. In “Africa Town” the Clotilda Africans made a living through agriculture and trade techniques that they brought from Africa. This clearly shows, that Africans held on to their traditions unfailingly. “Africa Town,” was founded upon indigenous African cultures and a form centralized state systems.
With all of the cultures, religions, and governments in today’s world, it can surely be a shock transitioning from one culture to a completely new one. You may not speak the language of the people around you, eat the food they eat, or wear the same clothes they wear. Firoozeh Dumas experienced this kind of difficulty growing up, having to grow up as an Iranian child in America when the world wasn’t as accepting of the Islamic culture and religion. In her memoir Laughing Without an Accent, Dumas recalls stories from her past about her family, her experiences in America, and her observations of the differences between American and Iranian life. These stories act as real-life examples that reveal the importance of family and how different cultures
My memory floats down a long narrow hall, A calabash of history. Grandpa stood high in Watusi shadows… And crowns never touch Bantu heads… The future of Dahomey is a house of 16 doors, The totem of the Burundi counts 17 warriors… To Ashanti mysteries and rituals.” McElroy pulls from various different locations in Africa, from northern Africa which was call Bilad as-Sudan, to Watusi and Ashanti people who were in eastern and western Africa.
It is also a story of intercultural marriage, the foreign population of Addis Ababa in the early 1970s, and a descriptive narrative of the early years of the Ethiopian revolution. The book keeps repeating the descriptions of ritual and village life, rural travel, problems for women in a society
Growing up in a family where my mom was a doctor and my dad was a musician, I was exposed to a lots of things in my life. For example I was able to see Broadway plays and and go on family trips to Disney every year in the winter. A lot of people would say I was very fortunate to be one of the family where I knew both my parents and they did there best to give me a lot of life experiences. But me being an African-American male it seems like I not supposed to how do experiences, I was supposed to not know my father not to be able to go on these trips with my family.
Tenacious. In 1989 Liberia, West Africa was faced with the economic stress of a civil war. In 1989, my parents were faced with leaving three children in that war. My mother had recently given birth to her fourth child in America, and returned to Liberia. When the war broke out the US Embassy would only let her bring my sister, the American citizen, back to the states.
PURPOSE The goal of this lab was to build a mousetrap powered car. The mousetrap car needed to travel fifteen feet. The purpose of building these mousetrap cars was to demonstrate our knowledge of motion, friction, force, distance, and energy. We have studied these concepts, and each one is a factor in the success of a mousetrap car.
In the short story ``By Any Other Name'', Santha Rau talks about her childhood, going to a school with a majority of English students and teachers. On the first few days of school Santha and her sister began to realize how their Indian culture made them different then their peers. The moment of realization was during lunchtime: “The children were all opening packages and sitting down to eat sandwiches. Premillia and I were the only ones who had Indian food.” (Rau 10)
I’m able to resonate with a plethora of things, yet the thing I consider my identity is I’m an adopted, Haitian immigrant. I was born in Haiti in 1998, in a small village in Thomazeau, I moved to Croix-des- Bouquets right after my birth and I lived there until I was 9 years old. My family's financial situation was adequate. My mom was always able to find a way to make ends meet. This cause our neighbor to be envious of us.
Many stereotypes of African culture have emerged due to western literature and media and first hand accounts of explorers. Things Fall Apart offers a view into the truth and reality of African cultures, which are often misconceptualized by these stereotypes. Acebe shows how African society functions well without assistance from foreign travelers. In Things Fall Apart, Achebe counters the imperialist stereotypes of Africa by keeping certain words in the Igbo language, as opposed to translating them into English, to fight back against the spreading western culture and to embrace their own way of life. He also counters the imperialist stereotypes of Africa by using Igbo proverbs to show how their culture values many of the same things that western
Have you ever read a novel about African cultures and traditions from African point of view? The novel Things Fall Apart, a tragedy by Chinua Achebe, centers on one tragic hero in Igbo village of Umuofia in Nigeria and the effects of European arrival on his life and Igbo clan. Throughout the novel, Achebe introduces Igbo customs to the reader by creating several occurrences and how they react on them to claim that the Igbo is civilized before the Europeans arrive. The significant difference between Igbo and Western cultures is the way wisdom is passed on: Igbo oral traditions transmit values and knowledge orally by allegorical tales, while Western literary traditions educate people through generations by written texts, just like the novel itself.
Throughout my entire life, I viewed myself as an intermediate between my Nigerian and American heritage, because I grew up seeing what both worlds had to offer. During the day at school, the majority of what I heard was in English along with the occasional slang, and my lunches consisted of pizzas, stale hamburgers, and my favorite: nachos with mystery meat and gooey cheese, while during the night at home, the words of my parents’ native language Igbo could be heard all over the house, and from the kitchen aromas that roamed about the house could range from fried plantains with egg to fish and pepper soup would roam. The way I thought of myself was even clearer to see in my name, as “Stacy” is American, and “Godfreey-Igwe” is Nigerian, but
S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee these Post-colonial writers have all dealt with Africa in their own individual and unique ways. Achebe does not treat the African culture and ways of life as something hybrid, complex, dependant for its significance on the Western style of perceiving things or neither has he shown Africa to be existing only in relation to its difference from or consonance with the Western form of religion, culture, identity, and discourse. The major theme of the novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ centers around the destruction of Africa’s intricate, almost incomprehensible but unique way of life and culture in the wake of British colonization and forced or maneuvered conversion to Christianity. The administrative as well as religious changes that the British tries to impose upon the native Africans has the disastrous effects of uprooting the indigenous people from their original root and tradition and can be seen as some instruments of subjugation, subordination and subservience which starts with creating distrust, doubts and insecurity in the minds of people for their Igbo tradition, and its cultural and religious practices and ends with making them internalize the Christian way of life and British administrative apparatuses. Another theme that is explored in this novel is the inherent fault of the central character Okonkwo, who is ambitious, industrious, honest, masculine but is rash, and unthinking and his sense of self and identity is wholly dependent on the approval of others in his community and he thinks of anything that intrudes into it as a threat and he tries hard to be a man though in a flawed manner.
Right from my childhood days, I was always eager to know how things work in surroundings. When I was given toys, I hardly played with them rather tried to dismantle it and try to know the mechanism running it. During school days, I have participated in many science exhibitions which further motivated me towards taking my knowledge and experience onto a higher and advanced level. With this desire and curiosity to understand machines and mechanisms, I chose to complete my graduation in Mechanical Engineering.