Understanding who I am and my culture

By knowing well who I am more day by day, I will know the world I live in better day by day. The geography, the social affordances, customs, rights and rituals, language and nuances, politics and religion, play and work, births and funerals, weddings and celebrations all part of the fabric of our culture.    Although we human beings travel and resettle due to various reasons; whether through political unrest, refugee settlement, immigration process, migration (due natural calamities or just for the sake of migration) pioneering instinct, higher studies, better life-style, rural or urban landscapes…………..The movement of people around the world is not new. However, what we take with us is unique to us and to us alone! We are sum of what our memories and experiences make us!!

Hagedorn (2000) mentions how hard and complex it is to describe culture, and I believe that this is right; although I come from India, you cannot categorize me and say that my culture is just Indian…. Culture is a complex notion and goes deeper than one can perceive from just the word itself.

I took with me , brought along with me: my family beliefs, my experiences, my sense of self, my ‘Mana’ , my language, my traditional beliefs and stories and folklore both cultural and family oriented, and I also brought my physical self of who I am in relation to what I can offer the world as a responsible and conscientious citizen. Each one of us bring with us our unique individuality and personality evolved and enhanced with the flavors of our family, our communities, our language, our culture, our food, our religion, our friends, our landscapes, and or society…………………..in this great life matrix, although we may share many similar traits values and beliefs and customs…..yet…….., is my great understanding of myself, after my three years of study, I have come to a deeper understanding of this notion and come to respect and honor it deeper:  no two people can be identical in their thoughts and beliefs!!!  This can therefore be called my culture in its right place.   

A review of literature indicates that a clear definition of culture is elusive (p138.) Ikiugu 2007.  It can therefore be safely concluded that culture is a human creation, designed specifically to make interaction possible, which then facilitates collective community adaptation to the environment, according to Dewey 1957.

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Darjeeling the tea growing mountains where I come from…..” KO Darjeeling te papatuwhenua……….”