“Nku no n’ mba na eghere mba nri”.
This translates literally as: a people cook/ prepare their food with the (fire) woods available to them. This simply means that a people’s culture sustains them.
Culture is a compendium of a people’s past experiences of success, failures, anxieties and the lessons learnt from them. Every generation adds their own experience to its development (by perfecting/ pruning) and hands it over to the next generation.
Thus, a people ‘s march towards extinction starts whenever they begin to distance themselves from their roots, that is, from their culture. In the history of humanity, no people have ever survived it.
The poverty, joblessness, insecurity and confusion we are going through today, as Ndigbo, are traceable to the abandonment of several centuries of experience, preserved, coded and handed over to us.
You can contribute in repairing what has been destroyed by standing before a mirror and saying to yourself today: I am beautiful. Once self-esteem is restored, the healing process will begin.
Have a blessed week.
Angelo Chidi Unegbu