source
It's a thing of practice or it's seen as a custom for Easterns to travel home to their village or home town during the holiday mostly during Christmas celebrations. I am an origin of Anambra State, precisely Nnewi Nigeria. My mum and dad are both from Nnewi but from different community.
Before I lost my dad, every Christmas holidays, my dad always take I and my siblings to the village. My dad's home town is close to my mum's hometown, at that time, I was always scared of my dad's mother because she was really old. During my time or visit in my dad's home town, there wasn't mud houses around but the difference then and now is that people are building houses and structures around. When I was little, the road were lonely and surrounded with bushes.
After my dad passed away when I was a kid, more that %60 of the times we visited home, we always love staying back at my mum's hometown because it's more like a town with tarred roads but my dad's side is also like a town but my dad's house is through a lonely path that has less houses by the side. At that time, I remember following my grandmother to the farm and as I wasn't used to farm work, I found the experience worth while and when we are done farming, we gather up some snail for consumption later.
My grandmother has never been the type to like snail and you shouldn't use her pots to prepare any snail recipe. There was one experience I had when we travelled to my maternal home, on a sunny day, everyone was outside discussing, when we noticed a big python on the fence called Eke in Igbo land, some were saying that they should kill it while some were saying that it was harmless that they should leave it to go it's way at the end I can't remember if they killed it or left it. If what happened then had happened in this time, they would have killed the python without any conflict.
The scenario that took place then prompt me to ask my mum if their was another part to the story why they don't kill Python, She said during their time, they never regarded it as a deity but because it was harmless to them, they took it as a norm to not kill it. The python was free to roam around the village and those who are brave would carry the python on their body to play with it. In a near by village, it is against their tradition to kill a python, if you do either knowingly or unknowingly, you are required to do a befitting burial for the python. There are some mysteries behind a python in most Igbo land till this day.
Most times I say I'm lucky to have being born in this generation, I talk more about my maternal home because I didn't get information about my paternal home from my dad. When my mum was younger, unlike now they made use of slate and chalk in their school to learn and they walk more than 30 kilometers because their was no vehicle then but only bicycles which is used by her dad.
As of their time, waring of clothes was not compulsory because they had few clothes but while going to school they go with school uniform walking on bare foot to their school not minding the distance they had to walk. Before they started wearing clothes, what they wore then was beads all knitted together to cover their body. As at their time, there was mud houses everywhere and their livelihood was based on farming and sales from palm wine. Compared to now everywhere is occupied with tall buildings and modern facilities and tarred road everywhere.
This is my entry to crossculture question for the week, you can enter by going through the rules here or you can find the post here. Thanks for reading, do support by comment or an upvote
This weeks question:
🌎🌎🌎How has your hometown changed in your lifetime? How has it changed since your parents were young?🌎🌎🌎
What are your memories of your hometown from when you were a child? How has it changed? Has it changed for the better or worse? Perhaps both? Share both sides with us if you'd like. We want to hear your experience and perspective.
Share pictures if you can!!!
Really looking forward to this one!
Rules:
- Please post your submissions in the Hive Cross Culture! community.
- A few answers will receive a percentage of the next post and curation
- please use the tag #crossculture and #ccq
- share this post, it’s more fun when we have more entries!
- Check out other entries
- Share your honest opinion but try to be respectful of others too!
- Deadline: 1/16
By @sgt-dan
Click on the banner to get redirect to the server. Art made by @tripode