A people bereft of culture.

"Share about the culture of where you come from"

I have always been that person meddling with semantics to get my way & I'm thinking should I in this very instance? By "the culture" what do you mean exactly? "Where I come from?" It's open to interpretation yeah. I have a good reason for wanting to be funny you will see.

"The arts, customs, lifestyles, background, and habits that characterize a particular society or nation." "The beliefs, values, behaviour and material objects that constitute a people's way of life." That's according to my Livio offline dictionary. What came into mind though when I read "the culture" was the African culture of where I'm from. If I were to write on the latter well it would be a very short piece indeed. I will be candid here. I'm Shona, from Zimbabwe. The Shona can be found around Southern Africa region, Botswana, Zambia & Mozambique. When it comes to the African culture & traditions with regards to the Shona from Zimbabwe I think I can say with certainty that ours has long since waned like a candle in the wind. Whiffs of adulterated norms maybe, yes. The Ndebele, Tswana, Basotho, Swati, Pedi et cetera have singular vibrant African cultures; arts & lifestyles. Something they are proud of & identify with. Every heritage day "what are we wearing?" Is the question being thrown around. We might want to jump on African print material that we have seen on "African Movies" but nah uh, that's not ours. We have no singular wear that we identify with or a cultural way of being. I'm not too sure if colonization was that effective or, but growing up I do not have a faint memory of any "African lifestyle &/or traditions" I could be wrong but evidently not so much. I am hoping fellow bloggers will prove me wrong on this one. I even tried Googling & yeah even the black & white pictures of our "ancestors" they are in cotton clothes. Unlike when you Google the Zulu traditional wear for example, bam, no confusion there. The only remnants of African Culture I can think of is when someone's son gets charged an exorbitant bride price & they throw the its "our culture" rhetoric. Other than that well yeah. While we're at it let's talk about how African culture seems ominous. I always find the prejudice around African spirituality intriguing, especially the dynamics when Christianity gets involved. Everything pre-Christianity seems to be the dark ages & off-limits. So where the African civilization then unknown to the creator & vice versa? There is history of them worshipping & making reference to "Musikavanhu", the creator. If the catholic pews & ubiquitous Pentecostal churches are taken away, our we a people without religion? No trace of how our people worshipped before the continent was colonized. Topic for another right? Coffee maybe, sure, I hate coffee though. So since by definition culture is not confined to "African culture" as my psyche would have me believe let me tell you about my culture then. We are a hardworking, altruistic people. Harare the capital city loosely translated "he who does not sleep" hustling, so you will always find us getting our own somehow. Our difficulties unite us in a way & we just try to see off the bad weather till sun shiny days. Respectful & polite as well, we have our faults just like anyone else.