Alien - Dicembre 1996

English

Africa, where is your culture?

The most interesting thing is man's needs and wants. To some people the need and wants are referred to as basic human needs. The basic human needs are food, shelter and clothing.

Clothing is termed or grouped into three. People put on clothes for identification, ceremony and fashion. One might ask what fashion might be.

Fashion is the current attire which people are preferably putting on. The fashion keeps on changing from time to time. In several occasions one might discover different types of fashion in certain occasions.

Something surprising is that the Africans don't have any fashion attire. Any fashionable attire comes from the western countries. Anything that comes from the western countries is always good to the Africans and can be emulated by the local people.

Most people prefer to put on different designed dressing as fashion. Today many people put on clothing which is either female or male but termed as fashion.

For quite a long time women have been following up the men's dressing in terms of fashion that is putting on dressings meant for men. Why on earth should a woman put on a trouser? Doesn't it mean the women are eager to become men?

Our tradition doesn't allow women putting on men's clothing like the trousers. What does it look like when a woman walks step by step with a man, both on trousers?

Is there any sign that men are also planning to put on design of dress that is yet to come to enable the men to be in the same footing like women? Has culture and tradition lost meaning in today's world because of what is called civilisation?

Bravo! Put on the fashion and explain the meaning and the use of that particular fashion. Does it mean putting an earning for the man's fashion?

Where are we heading? Does civilisation going forward or backward? I understand that things were put on centuries back by our ancestors. Here it is now that we are putting on rings yet again. People in Africa have been thinking that anything coming from Europe is best thing and more civilized than what is in Africa.

I would like the teenagers, who feel to be most civilized persons, to think twice before engaging themselves in anything that comes from Europe. Europe is one part of the world with a culture that suits them.

Africans, what is your culture? Has our culture been imitated by whites in terms of civilisation?

I'm appealing to our youths to have their own principles before taking any steps in terms of European civilisation, or else our culture will perish and have no tradition for our future generations.

Patrick Evans Okello

Alien - Dicembre 1996