By Malek Arol Dhieu
Each day we spend pushes us away from our very own cultures and takes us much closer to adopted cultures. I, personally, thought native cultures would be native cultures and foreign cultures would be foreign cultures because both of them have commonalities acceptable on either side. But I later regretted that foreign cultures have consumed the native ones to a greater extent that there are white women by color, and not by origin, there are Indians by dressing code, and not by origin. There are New Yorkers by dressing code, and not by origin and there are many more Western-oriented imitators who have abandoned South Sudanism or Africanism and become wholly Westernized.
It’s very unfortunate that there are South Sudanese Nicky Minajes, Shakiras, Beyonces, Snoop Doggs, Rick Rosses, Lil Waynes, and many other celebrities who walk almost naked by wearing short skirts and upbreaking bras (in the case of girls) and by pulling trousers down their waists (in case of boys). The greatest tragedy is that there are ladies using hypertrophic drugs to enlarge their hips and breasts so that if they don’t exactly become Nicky Minaj, then they will become Nicky Minaj-like and there are boys applying hair chemicals to grow dreadlocks like Lil Wayne and other Rastafarians around the world.
Well, for the sake of civilization, then we need not to replace our cultures with the Western ones completely, but we need to take what is good and add it to our own cultures for our own benefit. It was untraditional to hug, kiss, or sleep with a girl on the road and such practices are happening now. It was untraditional to pierce noses and navels so as to put rings on them, and such practices are everywhere now. There were no gangsters, pickpockets, or Toronto boys, and such practices were adopted in videos brought from the west.
There were no creams for bleaching skins and lips then, but now, even children of the bleached mothers are too bleached on account that their looks should not betray their mothers very much. Bleaching has become a culture that any woman/girl who hasn’t bleached herself is even laughed at, not only by other women but also by boys. Is this not promoting bleaching to its climax? Tattoos are also promoting bleaching as they appear visibly on the bleached skin.
Because of modelling, also believed to have been adopted from the West, many gentlemen are bleaching their lips to appear girly so as to outshine their unaware competitors in modelling or in hunting for girls. Because prostitution, also copied from the West, has engulfed South Sudan, girls never wear long skirts and long-sleeve clothes for the reason that they trouble them when undressing in brothels and self-contained hotels. A female friend of mine told me such short and transparent clothes are called “no time”, meaning they can be easily removed, and the browsing goes on untroubledly.
On the other hand, it appears that there have been girls who approach boys to ask for love, I’m not making this up. Culturally, was it in South Sudan that girls could court boys? It’s a Western culture. Presently, it is ear-piercing that there is what is called sugar daddy or sugar mummy whereby a man/woman spends money for the benefit of a relationship with an often-younger sexual partner. Did this not originate from the West?
Our foremothers even refused to engage in sex after their daughters were married, compared to now when 40-year-old women buy their sons with money to tickle them, I mean to inject them with new blood. There are so many Western-introduced cultures to talk about. However, some cultures from the West are appreciable, and they must be embraced to the fullest. Such cultures have loosened the bonds that attach South Sudanese too close to uncivilization.
Why did our forefathers and mothers make it to history without creams, artificial hips/breasts, tattoos, or short skirts? Our cultures are our identity and so, whoever abandons them and adopts Western cultures is a traitor to cultural heritage and should be punished ancestrally. Our foremothers were black and brown, and that was why the white men emptied their motherlands to come to Africa in search of beauty, but because our then mothers rejected men with blue eyes and long curled hair, the only resort of white men was to rape them.
Not only our foremothers, when the Westerners realized that the giants could only be found in Africa, they introduced the slave trade mainly to take the giant Africans to the West for two major reasons namely, to adopt the gene of Africans by allowing slaves to ‘ride’ white women and to use the gigantism of the African slaves in building their nations.
Europe, Asia and America were built by African slaves, and they claim to have been the most developed continents on earth when they took developers somewhere else. How many more developers have they left in Africa to develop her? Dear Africans in general, and South Sudanese in particular, what importance lies in the cultures of someone who undermines himself to such an extent that he robs you to humanize himself? Our cultures are our identity. We do not destroy cultures, but we modify them.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba.