CULTURE ISN’T A COSTUME. IT’S A CALLING.
Answer It With Pride
In an age of globalization, culture has often been reduced to surface expressions — vibrant fabrics, rhythmic dances, exotic foods — displayed like costumes on a world stage.
But culture is far more than spectacle. It is not a performance for approval.
Culture is a calling — a deep summons from the very soul of a people.
And the Prodigal African must recognize this: to come home is not to wear Africa; it is to become Africa again.
The Mistake of Wearing Culture Like a Costume
When we treat culture like a costume, we trivialize it.
We turn sacred traditions into entertainment, and in doing so, disconnect from the power and wisdom embedded within them.
Many Africans today attend “traditional weddings” wearing aso-ebi or kente cloth, yet their everyday lives remain governed by Western norms and mindsets. Others learn an African dance routine for social media, yet cannot name a single proverb from their ethnic group or tell the stories of their ancestors.
This dislocation is not accidental. As scholars like Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o explain in Decolonising the Mind (1986), colonialism was not merely the domination of land but the conquest of imagination and identity. Africans were taught to admire the colonizer’s way while despising their own. What we see today — culture as performance without deep ownership — is the delayed fruit of that conquest.
“The biggest weapon wielded… was the cultural bomb,” Ngũgĩ writes, “whose effect is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage, in themselves.”
(Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind, 1986)
Thus, the Prodigal African must understand:
Wearing African culture without living African consciousness is simply another form of exile.
Culture as a Living Calling
Culture is alive. It calls to us in the silence of forgotten songs, in the ruins of abandoned homesteads, in the half-remembered stories of grandmothers.
It beckons not just our fashion but our philosophy.
Not just our celebration days, but our daily decisions.
Culture is how a people define reality — how they perceive the human being, family, community, governance, nature, and the spiritual world.
It is encoded in language, in rites of passage, in architecture, in agriculture, in ways of mourning and ways of rejoicing.
As Molefi Kete Asante states in Afrocentricity (1980):
“Culture is a way of looking at, interpreting, and giving meaning to reality.”
(Molefi Kete Asante, Afrocentricity, 1980)
Answering the call of culture means more than dressing African — it means thinking African, governing African, educating African, loving African.
It means daring to believe that our indigenous systems of wisdom — in law, medicine, spirituality, and leadership — are not inferior relics, but foundations for a thriving future.
Reclaiming with Pride, Not Performance
To answer culture’s call, the Prodigal African must move from performance to possession.
We must:
- Speak our languages intentionally, recognizing language as a carrier of worldview.
- Honor our ceremonies not as “cute customs,” but as rites that hold generational wisdom.
- Build families and communities around African concepts of communalism and extended kinship, rather than Western individualism.
- Center African philosophy — such as Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) — in our education, governance, and entrepreneurship.
This reclamation must be done with pride, not apology. Not as an exotic ornament to a Westernized life, but as the bedrock of a renewed civilization.
“We are the dream of the ancestors,” Dr. John Henrik Clarke reminds us.
(John Henrik Clarke, Lecture Series on African World History, 1994)
We are not returning to Africa as beggars or tourists — we are returning as heirs and builders.
Culture Is Home, Not Holiday
Culture is not an outfit to be paraded on International Day.
It is the soul-cloth you wear every day, even when no one is watching.
It is the architecture of your spirit, the heartbeat of your purpose.
Answering the call of culture is answering the call of destiny.
It is standing where your ancestors stood, not in the dust of defeat, but in the light of dignity.
Culture isn’t a costume. It’s a calling.
Answer it with pride. Build with it. Live from it. Heal through it.
The Prodigal African does not just come home to Africa —
He comes home to himself.
References:
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.
- Molefi Kete Asante. Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. Amulefi Publishing Company, 1980.
- John Henrik Clarke. African World History Lecture Series. 1994.
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