On making comparisons, examples: Ghana Vs Nigerian Jollof, PHP Vs JS, African Americans Vs Africans 🙄

The first time I came across white corn was during my national youth service corps program in Ebonyi State. After the three weeks camp, I was posted to a Women Development Centre in Afikpo. I lived with another friend I met in camp who got a great living quarters in the hospital she was posted.

My friend worked as an assistant for the hospital administrator, and as such we made friends with the doctors, nurses and sisters who lived on the premises too. This was a Catholic hospital and they had a convent on site as well.

I was visiting a resident doctor one day who had never travelled to the west of Nigeria before, and he offered me corn. It was white and I asked him, “why is this corn white?” He was surprised at my question and asked what colour the corn should be? I responded that it should be yellow.

He was amazed as I was, and noted that he had only seen yellow corn in books, and he thought they painted it yellow to give it some colour. I told him, all the corn back home was yellow. And this was my first time seeing a white corn.

You must wonder why I’m talking about this corn story from 10 years ago. I ate corn yesterday, and remembered the lesson I learnt from that experience, and thought to share with you.

Don’t ever for one moment think you know everything, and that this world is meant for only one group of people, one way of thinking, the world is small, yet big. You have not seen it and or experienced it all.

Let us be open minded always and be humble enough to learn. A lot of us are guilty of thinking, “we do this better where I come from”, “our way is the better way of doing things”, etc. This is a close minded mindset, an ignorant and negatively proud one too. Instead of thinking, “mine or ours is better”, ask why and open your heart to understand why. Think collaboration and ask how can I be a better human!

Respect other people’s way of life and be kind.

We must also realise that, the idea that; my skin is better than your skin, my hair is better than yours, my food is better then yours, my colour is better than yours, my country is better than yours, my family is better than yours, this programming language is better than that one; are mostly born from our desire to seek validation from our society, we want to be seen to belong.

We forget, people, you and I make up the society.

We want to live by some unspoken rules of society. We want to identify with society and its existing terrible stereotypes, sometimes subconsciously. We are all guilty, most, more often than not, but we also all have a choice as adults to “Do Better!“

This is not to say there is no good in the society, of course there is, there are lots.

But remember, just because you don’t know about something, or haven’t experienced or tasted it, does not mean you can condemn it, when you condemn, you are simply being a jerk. Even if you know about it and you don’t like it, learn constructive criticism or keep walking 😊

P.S: These do not apply to inherently terrible ills, harmful behaviour towards other humans and especially children, and bad behaviours that exist in our society, examples; pedophiles, murderers, rapists, etc. Do not walk past those, call them out 🗣️🔊

Let’s try to be better humans, kind to other humans.

Just imagine if I had said white corn was terrible and looked bad because it wasn’t what I was used to? That would have been ignorant 😌!