Ways To Prove You Grew Up In A Nigerian Home

Growing up in a Nigerian home is sure fun. From greeting to cooking and other activities, we enjoyed ourselves. Here are some of the ways to prove you grew up in a Nigerian home:

1. You Greet With Your Knees On The Floor 

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In most homes, especially in the South West Part of Nigeria, we were taught to greet elders on our knees. While growing up, I saw this as being stressful but now I appreciate it more. Greeting especially with both knees is an important part of our culture, so we must learn to uphold it regardless. However, it’s important to note that greeting with respect is also essential. One must show regard to elderly people even while greeting them with rest. Like we Yorubas say, “Ikunle on shewa”. 

2. You Know How To Sweep

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As a Nigerian child, you need to know how to greet. Whether male or female, you need to know how to sweep. The first thing you should do as a Nigerian child when you wake up in the morning is greeted your parents. After that, you should proceed to sweep the sitting room, bedroom and compound. Essentially, you should be able to sweep with a broomstick. When sweeping, we’re advised to sweep with the side of the broom instead of the head so it can be clean. It’s actually fun to watch the lovely patterns sweeping with broom forms on a sandy floor….lol

3. You Know How To Wash Plates

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Whether plates, pots, spoons or cups, you need to know how to wash kitchen utensils. Sometimes, we might have to wash it by ourselves. Other times, we could wash them while our siblings rinse them. Most families with lots of children share plate washing schedule. The most popular local soap for washing plate is “Kongi” which used to cost between twenty to fifty naira. There’s also a particular type of leave called “Ewe Epin”, which we used to wash the outer parts of pots so the stubborn dirt can be washed off. 

4. You Know How To Take Garri

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There’s hardly any Nigerian home that garri is missing, even up till now. To lay more emphasis, I just took garri now with kulikuli…lol. In those days, taking garri with kulikuli was very popular among children and even adults. Sometimes, we took it with wrapped groundnuts sold for five, ten or twenty naira. It’s too bad you can only get groundnut worth of twenty naira and above these days. Nowadays, most modern Nigerian families now prefer buying bottled ground since it’s of greater quality than the ordinary ones. Also, they make taking garri classy by adding milk and chocolate.

5. You Know How To Take Pap

Some people hate pap as adults. However, they couldn’t refuse pap as babies or teenagers. A combination of this maize product and milk makes a perfect breakfast. Still, taking pap is not limited to the use of sugar alone. I crave taking pap with groundnut sometimes. Using moinmoin or akara to take pap is also a great option as we all know since it’s rich in protein.

6. You’ve Shared Meat With Your Siblings

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You remember those days we would sit on the mat in front of our homes to have dinner which comes mostly in form of swallows like eba, amala or semo? Those were the real fun days. Before we became adults that can’t take any food without a full piece of meat or more, we used to share meat with our siblings. The more the children in your family, the lesser the size of me each one of you get. Nevertheless, last borns suffered the most because they get the smallest piece of meat except they decide to eat with parents later and get more.

7. You’ve Rented CDs

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Before Netflix and chill came to town, the form of movie entertainment we were used to is home movies. In order to prevent us from going to watch movies in our parent’s place, our parents would give us money to go rent movies to watch at home. Still, some stubborn children would still go to watch movies at their friend’s place. Those were the type that got beaten in the middle of the night with no one to save them. 

In the days were plastic drinks were a rare commodity, buying bottled drinks with the intention of returning the bottles was very common in Nigerian homes. Returning empty bottle of drinks was stressful so we were only happy doing that if there’s change remaining and we were told to use it in buying pepper snacks or speedy biscuit.

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