Dregs of the Urn!

The 'Grow Today Council,' perhaps in an unflinching adherence to its down to earth purports, established an outpost in the Bronx borough of New York City. I remember clearly the first day I walked into the office of this supportive foundation by the side of the New York City Public Library, off the busy Fordham road in the Bronx.

Jasmine who managed the Bronx center took out time to instruct me on the foundation's vast support system, as soon as I was ushered into her straggly office space. I had come for final discussions and contractual fine-tuning as it were of my papers and work file as I prepared, of course with help from the council, to undertake this journey to the country where my forebears had their origin.

My parents being people of means, had assisted me to gain formidable access to the good things of life. I had just graduated with an excellent degree from the Columbia University, one of the American Ivy League colleges, majoring in Literature and Classics. It is therefore needless to state the fact that I had a number of mouth-watering job offers waiting for me. In the course of my stay at Columbia, I had of course travelled widely, and been a participant in a number of transfer programs especially in the Scandinavian countries, as well as some parts of South East Asia. I was groomed in culture, as much as any man of my time could be, no less formidable in scholarship, with a world view of a real time scholar. I was aided in this regard to pluck fervently from as many trees as I could reach in the endless vastness of the forests of world culture, of thought and literary expositions.

It was a burning desire to explore and draw as much as could be drawn from the labyrinth of African history, magic, thought and world view that led me to submit the proposal over which I was invited to the Grow Today Council for conclusive discussions. The foundation which supports American youths who intend to spend time studying other cultures out of the United States had accepted my proposal and was ready to support me with needed materials and stipends during my proposed one year sojourn in Nigeria.

Attempting to stem the flip side of assimilation was also a quiet aim of this outfit. The theory was out there and actually it would seem that numbers support the position being pedaled that children of immigrants – or second generation immigrants – as the studies describe them, correctly or incorrectly, are playing catch up with the born Americans. It is the position which the council has come to accept as having been properly verified that since the young immigrants are noted to mimic more of the criminally aligned and or anti-social attitudes, and so tend to struggle more to meet up with the original natives, that they are oftentimes caught in the mix of crimes and the criminally minded. It is a secondary aim of their outfit to stem this apparent growth within these groups that nudges the council also to support young folks to interact as much as they possibly could with their original home cultures. It is, in Jasmine's own words, another attempt at creating new first generation immigrants out of the so-called second generation immigrants. What has, however, irked me incessantly about this proposition is the realization that those dubbed the second generation immigrants are in my mind and actually if properly examined, nothing but native born Americans. But, this not being the crux of my mission, I never allowed it to nudge deeply within me.

I decided on a homecoming, to revisit my roots. I agreed within myself to take a personal look at that which I had heard so much about and to examine its relevance or validity, not by what I have been told or what I have read from books and magazines, but by direct, firsthand experience of that culture and that society which I readily claim at all times. For how could this culture be mine and how could I attempt to integrate it into my adaptation to the present culture and by extension, the ecumenical views that I have attained, if I know by real experience, nothing about it? If all that I know are historical thoughts, descriptions, pictorials and or representation of cultural practices gleaned from the stories of parents or uncles, and gathered from the accounts of others' experiences, I would not be an actual cultural participant. I would at my best rightly claim to be associated to this culture mainly by virtue of my ancestors having lived and had their roots in it. I could never in the real sense of the word, call this culture mine. I knew within me that twenty full lifetimes would not be able to completely decipher this culture, that I would only scratch the surface, yet I sought so much to scratch that surface, and gain life again by it. At this point I am then forced to ask: 'where the hell do I belong'? Having arrived the city of New York with my father at the age of three, and consequently grew up here, all I knew was the culture of the Big apple. The pictures, the dancing, the videos, the shows, the music, the subway, the cursing, the slang, the dressing, the under the butt pants position, the women, the life at college and the beauty of vast New York was all that I knew as culture. I struggled through school and moved out of my parents' home when I got into college. Perhaps it was what I saw and heard in college, perhaps it was the several evening arguments that ensued in our apartment, perhaps it was due to the fact that I had become increasingly bored with being reminded of the fact that I own and or that I am part of something which I do not feel in my mind that made me decide to go back home. Or yet maybe, my various journeys to various parts of the world, my various visitations to various homes, settlements and practices, made me think of some other home among all the other homes. Sitting back to think again, I say it was an aggregate of these factors, neither this nor that, and still all of this and that.