My Family Culture

Facing a major catastrophe in my country that faces me to relocation to another country that is providing refugee will be very difficult. Leaving all my personal belonging and having to pick up and leave would make very sad. Seeing that it is important to save the lives of my family and myself, I would leave right away. Three items that I would take with me is a photo album, tawa and my country's flag. I have chosen these items because they mean a lot to me in order to maintain my family culture.

The flag for me is a symbol of my birth place, and what my countries represents. The flag has five colors that hold symbolic meaning. The green represents the land, the white represents the waters of the country (Guyana is known as the land of many waters). The yellow represent the mineral wealth of the country, the black represents the thrusts that the people have continues to go through to create their independent country. Red represents the zeal and dynamic power of the country to continue to build forward into the future.

The tawa is a piece of cooking equipment. The easiest way to explain it's purpose, is for toasting. It is very similar to a toaster as it purpose it to cook dough. My son and my husband love to eat roti, bake and dumplings which is a main dish for them throughout their daily lives. I could not imagine not having them fulfilled with a reminder of sweet Guyanese style food.

The next item would be a special photo album that I have maintain during my youth. I have pictures of all my family members and I hold this book to be very important. I created this book so I could show my kids their past generation of families. It is important for my kids to know who and where they came from. I also feel it is important to remember what our relative looked like because children's features can be so different or similar to their parents. In my family my son looks like his father but he has a slight resembles to his cousin that he has never met yet. I love to look at old photos and remember how everyone lived at different times and to see how our family tree has grown and developed over time.

Arriving at this unknown place of refugee, and having to face another dilemma of giving up two of my items. I would feel horrible but I honestly believe I would keep my photo album because of it's importance to me and the generations before me. I would have to do my best to adapt to the new country. During this exercise I have begun to think about the value of items in my life. It makes me think of people that lose their homes and all their personal belonging to fires. They have to start over and they do, they build their house again to make new memories. The most important thing to me is having my family around me and that is my culture. Spending my day making my husband and my son happy brings me great joy and gives me my identity as the type of person I want to be seen as. A loving wife and mother , who is full of compassion. I love children and I hope throughout my life I can continue to be a significant figure in the field of early childhood education.