Things change with time and it's fine

You know how sometimes you just take a step back to look at your life and realise that five years ago, if someone had told you that you would do some certain things that you do today, you would have never believed it, well I had one of those today.

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Earlier today, my neighbour had knocked on my door, asking me if I wanted to have a taste of the beans he was about to cook. This wasn't a new thing or a surprise to me because we happen to share a lot (especially when it comes to food) at my hostel. But you see, just after I had agreed to him giving me some, I kinda had a flashback to back in the day when I was a kid and my dad never allowed us to eat anything we got from people outside the family.

I remember back then, my dad would always make sure that we never ate anything that was given to us by our friends or neighbours, not because those things were spoilt or anything like that, but because we Nigerians are very superstitious and we believe so much in witchcraft and people flying at night (because they're possessed) so he always made sure that we never ate outside and in cases where we had no choice but to accept the gifts/food, we ended up throwing it away immediately we got home.

But you see, I never for once blamed my parents because this was (and still is) an African mentality and I understood it perfectly, maybe due to the many Nigerian movies that I've seen that also depict the same picture, telling us that there's a high possibility of us getting initiated into witchcraft when we eat food given to us from our neighbours.

Now I know that might sound like rubbish to many of you in the western countries but witchcraft (and voodoo) happen to be a huge part of this part of Africa and it's something many of us will keep on believing in.

Anyways, with all that in mind, I've always made sure not to take anything from my friends or my neighbours, even when I got to school. But you see, it didn't take long for me to realize that I couldn't really survive on my own over here, because my family wasn't exactly the rich kind and during my time in school, there had been times where I had to depend on other people in other to have something to eat.

One time my dad had called to ask how I was faring and I remember telling him that my neighbour had given me some food to eat, expecting him to get upset but instead, he had told me to be careful with the kind of people I take food from before ending the call. I guess he too realized that we can't always do everything ourselves and would occasionally need help from other people to survive.