Nigerian culture ( A sneak peak)

Okay, long time no reads… Well my phone had issues, and I’ve spent the last week attempting to revive it. We are almost there.

Anyhow, today I just want to take some time off to appreciate Nigerian culture. Too bad I wasn’t born back in the day before the colonialists showed up. I absolutely love my Naija culture, form the folklore, DANCE, marriage rites, customs, DRESS, values, to the general lifestyle, and even our present day slangs. The broken english sef fresh wella.

The Nigerian culture is very wide, with 36 states, 774 local government areas and over 250 tribes and ethnic groups. So you can imagine just how diverse our culture is. I just can’t get over it. On a personal level, I hail from Adamawa state (in northern Nigeria) ‘the land of Beauty’ , from the Demsa LGA and am Mbula by tribe. My people have various outfits depending on the event, mainly consisting of the colours red, black and white. We are know for our warrior qualities ( I think I have some of those :D), and we majorly eat fish n a lot of acha too, with tuwo (some form of carbohydrate pudding) and we like kuka too. We have a relatively simple marriage process and we value and respect our women. We dance basically with this sorta rhythmical movement of our backs, legs and necks (I am guessing this is why my aunties always said I should be proud of my long neck) and I learnt it when I was still a kid, its really weird and totally fun!!! Our main hair style is close to that of the fulani’s consisting of a lot of big and tiny inter-switching french braids and cowries as the hair accessories. We make use of Calabashes as both kitchen utensils and house decorations. We of course use a lot of beads and horse tails too. So enough of the Adamawa culture.
As much as I am an adamawa girl, my father married a benin woman (from western Nigeria), if you are Nigerian you would understand how weird this is, therefore I consider myself half-cast (do not even laugh ._.). I love love love her culture. They wear beautiful coral beads, and coral bead head pieces that are oh so intricate. They tie mostly white wrappers and red/maroon velvety materials. It is an epitome of pure beauty. The value age groups and eat a lot of pounded yam and garri ( fermented fried shreds of cassava tubas). They have so many superstitious beliefs (they always crack me up), they also have a lot of soups including the ever famous groundnut soup and corn soup. They value marriage, large number of children (the measure of your success) and oh so celebrate their husbands. They have a real high regard for any one older than you ( even if its 2 minutes I promise). They are sha awesome.

Well enough with the much writing, here are some pictures of an outfit that Benin and Urohgbo young girls wear (most people don’t know this). I wore this outfit for a photo shoot on saturday (did I mention I do some in-school modelling), its for this completion ( Abuads next top model (abuad is my school bdw)). You can vote for me by going to @nicoleadehi_valeo on instagram and commenting my name (Patsy) under my picture. Thanks a lot. So here’s a sneak peak into a tiny part of our culture.
The Pictures of the women in a lot of beads and red wrappers are the Real womens benin outfits. Its lovely yea???. Sorry I do not have any pictures of Adamawa people, al get them when I am home next.

I will do more write ups on other tribes and such… And post outfit pictures. My fellow Nigerians feel free to comment and add to the gist above and for all none Nigerians I hope you enjoy this…