00:06
Q – CAN YOU TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?
My name is Oyinyechi Judith Onyia, from Nigeria, the Igbo States precisely in Nigeria, and I am a mum. I’m married with just a daughter and I came to UK to do my master’s in public health. So that’s all about myself now.
00:42
Q – WHAT INFLUENCED YOU TO MOVE HERE FROM NIGERIA?
I came because I came to study. Yeah. It's not just moving. I came to have my master’s in public health, yeah. So that is what motivates me coming down here.
00:57
Q – WHAT WAS IT LIKE GROWING UP IN NIGERIA? YOU SAID YOU HAVE A BIG FAMILY, DID THAT MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT?
Yeah, Nigeria is a nice place to be because we live in a communal environment where you have your grandparents, you have your parents, you have everybody around you. So it's not just where you live in isolation. So, I think Nigeria is a nice place, I'm actually missing Nigeria right now.
01:29
Q – WHAT WAS THE TYPICAL DAY LIKE GROWING UP?
Growing up in Nigeria, yeah, I'm not going to say is easy. Likewise in every other places because growing up you face challenges in growing up, but having your parents around you makes it easy, all like, as we are here now, we are just with our, maybe our spouse and children, no one to take care of kids. Growing up, yeah, I enjoyed it in Nigeria because you have your younger ones to direct you when you go astray, or when they think that you are not doing it right, they draw you back and caution you to make it right.
02:22
Q – YOU MENTION THAT THERE’S A STRONG SENSE OF COMMUNITY, HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE IT TO COMMUNITY IN WALES?
Actually, I'm not from Wales so I can't say much about their community. (INTERVIEWER: WHAT YOU’VE EXPERIENCED LIVING HERE). You can’t compare to Nigeria, you can never, never compare with Nigeria, maybe because I'm not from here. In Nigeria you can't turn around without seeing your neighbour every morning. Wales is so… you can't even go knocking somebody's house. But in Nigeria, before you wake up your neighbour is at your door knocking to know how you are faring, your sister, your brother want to know whether you actually woken up. So, Nigeria you can’t compare it to Wales at all.
03:18
Q – HOW IMPORTANT IS FOOD IN NIGERIAN CULTURE?
Food? Actually, because Nigeria is a diverse place, we have different ethnicity, Nigeria, we have Yoruba, we have Igbo, and we have Hausa. So, me I’m from east part of Nigeria, that is Igbo, so our food is different from the south. So I'll just talk about my own, that is the east part of Nigeria, that is in Igbo State. We have so many delicacies. Like, in my place, if you want to come to my place, anybody, any foreigner that want to come to my place, there is this special delicacy I would make for them that we call ‘abacha’, that is African salad, that is what we call it. So, you garnish it with some vegetables like garden egg leaves, garden egg, seed, fish, what’s it called, there’s another one, ‘ube’, I don't know, maybe you guys might not know about it, they garnish it with cheese and smoke fish, that is the first delicacy we give to a visitor. Then there is another one we call ‘okpa’, it’s called in English, they call it bambara nut… they prepare it as a meal, also as snacks, we serve special proteinous (full of protein) food for our people and it's so delicious that you can’t stay or you come to our place without knowing about it.
05:07
Q – WHAT WOULD YOU SAY YOUR FAVOURITE TRADITIONAL DISH IS?
It’s called abacha and okpa and bitter leaf soup, and nsala soup.
05:27
Q – HOW DO YOU MAKE BITTER LEAF SOUP?
We use coconuts. Coco yams, sorry. We use coco yam. And bitter leaf. The leaf, we wash it, we always use our hands to wash it, to make it fresh. And… we also put it to make the aroma so nice. And some dried fished that you put inside, you put stock fish, you put dry fish… any protein that you have, makes it nice.
06:11
Q – YOU MENTIONED BEFORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL PERIOD. CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE MASQUERADE?
Ah, we have in my place, August is our festival. Everybody comes back home during that festival because it’s a holiday period. So, wherever you are, you always, we hope to go back home for that. And where we go home, you see your grannies and you see everybody around and by the period masquerade comes… and as a lady you are not supposed to see masquerade face to face. Is meant for men, and not just in men, not just men, it’s men that have been initiated into the ‘manhood’ to be precise. So, if you actually want to see the masquerade, you'll be hiding or maybe going through the windows just to view the masquerade, so it’s not something that you just come out to see the masquerade, because it's not meant for ladies to see face to face. Yeah, so it just makes it fun.
07:30
Q – SO IS TRYING TO SEE IT PART OF THE GAME AND PART OF THE MASQUERADE?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah… That just makes it fun because they don't want you to have face to face contact with it, is against the tradition of the land.
07:47
Q – DO THEY HAVE SOMEBODY TRYING TO STOP YOU FROM LOOKING?
No, nobody would try. You will be hiding your face or be indoor because they won't come inside your house. You will be indoor peeping from the window to see them. But people know that we peep but because we are not physically coming to see them, they won’t do anything.
08:09
Q – WHAT IS IT THEN? IS IT A PARADE WEARING MASKS? WHAT DO THEY DO?
They wear costumes. They wear costumes so you can’t see their faces, you don't know. And in our culture, they see them as preacher men. So it's not something that a kid or anybody who just come and see them like that, so just those people that have initiated to it, that understands their language, understand their gestures, understand how they do their things, so that's how they live.
08:41
Q – YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU HAD A CHRISTIAN UPBRINGING, WHAT WAS THAT LIKE?
Christian upbringing, Yeah, I'm a Christian, I mean Catholic by birth and is nice being a Catholic. We go to churches every Sunday and we have a baptism, and that’s just about Christianity, yeah.
09:09
Q – SO, WHEN YOU CAME TO THE UK, WAS THAT FAITH SOMETHING THAT HELPED YOU KIND OF FIND A COMMUNITY HERE? COULD YOU GO TO CHURCH HERE?
Yeah, there’s churches here, there’s one in Treforest there and there's another one in Porth. There are so many Christian churches around. Even if you can’t go to Catholic you have other Christian churches around where you can still worship.
09:42
Q – YOU ALSO MENTIONED THAT THERE’S A BIG SENSE OF RESPECT IN NIGERIAN SOCIETY. CAN YOU EXPLAIN A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THAT?
Yeah, in Nigeria, we respect elders to be precise, yeah. You can't see an adult and just pass by. You have to, whatever you see an elder, you have to bow down to greet an elder. Wherever you are, you are sitting down and enter, you have to stand up to greet an elder because that shows respect, that you know, that this person is actually your elder. So, we have serious respect for elders, yeah.
10:33
Q – DID YOU WATCH NIGERIA, FOOTBALL?
Yeah, sometimes I was Nigeria, Liverpool, but not always. Yeah… I know, you know that they just played a match yesterday, so, Nigeria is a very nice place for football, yeah.
11:04
Q – SO, SPORT IN NIGERIA, ARE THERE SPORTS FOR GIRLS AND THINGS THERE THEN, LIKE NETBALL OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?
We have so many sports in Nigeria not just football. We also have female team in football, in volleyball, so in schools actually there are also small activities.
11:34
Q – DO YOU KNOW JJ OKOCHA?
Yeah, I know JJ Okocha. He lives in Enugu, so that's why I know him very well. He lives in Enugu and he schools in Enugu.
11:49
Q – IS HE YOUR FAVOURITE FOOTBALLER?
Yeah.
11:56
Q – THE WEATHER IS DIFFERENT FROM NIGERIA ISN’T IT?
The weather in Nigeria is better than here... because here is very cold, but Nigeria is sunny. When you really want is cold, before you know it the sun will come out and we enjoy our atmosphere, is very nice in Nigeria, yeah.
12:21
Q – WHAT DO YOU MISS MOST ABOUT NIGERIA?
I miss most about Nigeria, I miss the weather, I miss our food and I miss my family.
12:35
Q – SO YOU SAID THAT IN NIGERIA YOU TEND TO HAVE ALL THE FAMILY AROUND YOU – ALL LIVING IN THE SAME HOUSE?
Not actually… in a festival period, we come in maybe, where we call avillage where your grandparents are or your mum, your mum will take you to your grandparents then we'll stay together and… just for that period. And after it, everybody maybe you will go to where you are residing for a while. But why I say these are, that we live together is not just maybe living in the same house but it's just your brother can stay by you every morning, or maybe every day you always come to check and know whether you are feeling OK. So that's what I mean by living in communities. Yeah.
13:46
Q – DO YOU HAVE BEACHES IN NIGERIA?
Yeah, we have beaches in Nigeria. So many different places, yeah. Is a nice place to be, I wish you can just have it all day one day.
14:01
Q – SO WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT YOU GO OUT TO DO STUFF, WHAT SORT OF STUFF DO YOU DO AS A COMMUNITY OUTSIDE?
The sun is always there, there is no there is no particular day that you say ‘we are expecting sun’, like here, no. You can even rain today, now, and in the next 5 minutes you see sun every day so is something that is always there. There is no special day for sun or anything, no.
14:25
Q – SO YOU SAID YOU CAME IN TO DO PUBLIC HEALTH, WHY? WHAT SORT OF PUBLIC HEALTH?
Yeah, it’s just a master’s in health, knowing the well-being of people around, and it’s just a course and it's just a research also that's help us when we get that information, we can be able to use it when we are out of here.
14:54
Q – SO WHAT RESEARCH ARE YOU DOING?
I'm doing research of five ways to well-being, to know whether people knows the five ways to well-being, whether they are familiar with the five ways to well-being, how they also apply it in their daily activities every day because there are some people that they will, if you ask them, they might not be able to apply these five ways to well-being on their daily lives. So, we are doing this research to know their knowledge, how far they know that these things exist… because you can just be living without applying these five ways to well-being in your life, because it helps where you can able to know that connecting with people is something that helps your mental distress. Being active, not just stay in one place and… if you can able to know these five ways will be you can help you expand your life expectancy.
16:04
Q – WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE THING ABOUT WALES?
Actually the people I’ve met, they are nice, and I think that is what I have to say. We are working, they are treating me fine, so I will say that they are nice people. But the weather, no, I’m still trying to manage the weather. But they are nice people.
16:38
Q – PUT YOU ON THE SPOT, WHAT ARE THE FIVE WAYS TO WELL-BEING?
Ok, we have being connected, being active, learning a new skill.
16:59
Q – SO, HOW THEN DOES WALES DIFFER TO NIGERIA IN THOSE WAYS TO WELL-BEING? IS IT EASIER TO DO THOSE THINGS IN NIGERIA THAN IT IS IN WALES?
Yeah, it's easier to do it here because here there is so many things around, compared to Nigeria, but… and you know, the level of development here is not like Nigeria actually. That's why we come here, where we learn, we can be able to go home and transmit this information to them so, that’s particularly why we’re here, the knowledge that we are coming to get and when we get the knowledge and… these five ways to well-being developed here. It starts from here, I think it starts from Wales here, so is something that we are not much aware in Nigeria, so, coming here to learn about it will help us also as a student and when we get home to be able to integrate it to our peoples mind so that they will know that applying these five ways to well-bring in their daily activity will actually help their mental health.
18:20
Q – SO IS THERE SOMETHING THAT YOU’VE LEARNT ALREADY THAT YOU CAN TAKE BACK TO NIGERIA?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:29
Q – WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER WHAT ACTIVITIES DID YOU DO IN NIGERIA?
When I'm young, there are so many things to do… what brought me through, the organisation that's called me for this interview, is our cultural dance. When we are younger, we always participate in activity of dancing. You dance when you get home, where you are in the village you dance and people will come and watch you. When they're doing festivals, you dance. There are also… in the night, children come out in the night and play together in the sand, it’s not like here. So, there is this, what we agree you know, you can't just be in your house, no, you play with other children and you are learning from them.
19:35
Q – DANCE COMPETITIONS, YOU MENTIONED CHILDREN’S PARTIES, DO YOU WANT TO TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT HOW IMPORTANCE DANCE IS TO NIGERIAN CULTURE?
Dance is a culture that cannot die because we use it as an entertainment, we also use it as fun, and also as competition. So, it's not just something that you just… in an occasion like this… may have different groups that they belong and they would just come and do as a competition and they win something. So, it's not just having fun sometimes, it also motivates kids to continue to know that… it’s also as I said a way of well-being.
20:30
Q – SO, DO THE KIDS DO TRADITIONAL DANCE AS PART OF THAT OR IS IT A DIFFERENT SORT OF DANCE?
It’s traditional dance, they do traditional dance, they also do western dancing.
20:44
Q – HOW TO THEY JUDGE THE COMPETITIONS?
Yeah, the elders, they sit together, they know better than us, so we don't know how they judge us.
20:43
Ok, wedding parties, you know Nigerians, we actually believe in our culture, and yeah, we do white weddings, but also hold our traditional weddings. They believe that that is the key to when it comes to marriage. So, they believe so much in doing the traditional ceremony. White wedding, they see it as a blessing, because you have to go to church to do that one. But the main traditional, you come to your village and the elders who give you palm wine. There's something we call palm wine, I don't know whether people have had it. So, it is when they give you that palm wine and you can be able to show your community or show everybody that, yeah, you have to use the palm wine to show them that this is the man that want to come and marry you. And you can’t just carry the palm wine, you have to kneel down to present the palm wine to a man that comes to marry you, and presenting the palm wine, your husband-to-be will now raise you up and carry you to your parents for blessing, so that blessing is very, very important and they have to pay your dowry. The dowry is not just money… is not big money to be precise, depending on the family or where you're getting married… but they must surely pay a dowry to show that they have come to pick a bride from this family so it’s a great occasion. In African culture and Nigeria to be precisely, so we cherish it a lot. Even when you're in UK, if it's a family that's hold tight to their tradition, you must go home and show your parents the man that wants to come and marry you and they will have to put that blessing before you can go ahead to do any marriage, that is our culture, our traditional culture. That's why we always during that period, you will see our brides, they would dress from head to toe with our beads, our head tie, and from head to toe to show you that this Nigerian bride, maybe it’s from either Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba.
23:35
They eat rice. There is no wedding or any occasion you will go to Nigeria that you not see either white rice, jollof rice. If it is in Yoruba, you will see… amala. And if you see Igbo, you will see akpu, it’s a strong… it’s made of cassava… you also see different kind of soup as I’ve said, then you see...
24:30
Q – SO THE FUFU THEN, THAT’S MADE FROM CASSAVA? IS IT GROUND CASSAVA?
Yeah, when you have cassava, yeah brown long… then they have to peel it, then they cut it and soak it for some days, and it will ferment. When it ferments it will be easy to now sieve it. When you sieve it, you will now put it inside a bag and tie it. When you tie it you leave it for some days to ferment very well, then you bring it out and start cooking it. They pound it, it’s not just cooking.
25:17
Q – HOW DO YOU COOK IT THEN?
When you want to cook it, you have to roll it when you bring it, you roll it. After rolling it you put it inside hot water. Inside the hot water it will, boil, and you now use more time to pound it... you have to pound it… So you know in our places you see that it is men, people that are men that are pounding it because it's so hard to pound. After pounding it you use any kind of your favourite soup to eat it.
25:52
Q – IS THAT BREAD THEN?
No, it’s white, it’s whitish in colour like eba, I don’t know whether it’s like eba, but this one is specially made, not just garri. But also we have garri that’s also made of cassava, that one is prepared in a different way. Yes, garri is also made of cassava, but that one you also ferment it, but this one, that one, you fry it. You use your pan… after you ferment it you sieve it, then you use your pan to fry it… on hot fire.
[OFF CAMERA: With cassava you can make it different with garri.]
26:56
Q – I’VE SEEN IT IN THE SHOPS, IN TESCO, AND I’VE ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT TO COOK WITH IT. COULD YOU CHOP IT INTO CUBES AND PUT THAT STRAIGHT IN THE GARRI OR WOULD YOU HAVE TO FERMENT IT?
You have to ferment it. There are some that where you bring it as it is you can also cook it and eat it as snacks with coco yam.
27:12
Q – BUT IT HAS TO BE FERMENTED THOUGH?
No, you cook that, when you cook it you’ll still soak it inside water, maybe for two days, so that it will make sure that the ‘usi’ inside it has gone out before you now use cassava, starch inside it, because it has a lot of starch.
27:36
Q – YOU WERE DESCRIBING THE THING FOR THE WEDDING, THAT YOU PRESENT, PALM WINE? IS IT ALCOHOLIC?
Yes, but it’s natural one.
27:52
Q – WHERE’S THAT FROM THEN?
It’s from the palm tree the topic from the palm tree. They tap it from the palm tree, no additives, just naturally… it is very sweet, when you're taking it is just natural, is very sweet.
28:16
Q – DO A LOT OF PEOPLE COME TO YOUR WEDDINGS?
Yeah! Because we connect both the bride and the groom's family and friends, so, it's like a big occasion for us, it’s very big. Yeah, very big celebration… because you can’t restrict anybody, you can't. That's why if you have your mummy's family, your dad’s family, your friends from where you are, staying where you are residing, so it's a big occasion, yeah.
ENDS