Cultural competence isn’t a certificate you frame, a checklist you finish, or a phrase you drop into a diversity statement. It’s the slow, often uncomfortable practice of admitting how much you don’t know about another person’s interior world. In the Nigerian-British diaspora, we live this tension every day: we translate ourselves for landlords, for nurses, for school receptionists, for colleagues who mean well but ask questions that flatten us. I’ve come to believe that cultural competence begins not with knowledge but with humility, because humility is the only posture that leaves room for another person to correct you without losing their dignity.
This matters for anyone navigating migration, family obligation, faith deconstruction, or the quiet economies of care that run through Yoruba households. It matters for the British-born child who can’t explain why her mother sends money to a cousin she’s never met. It matters for the Pentecostal daughter who no longer believes the altar call but still feels the heat of it. It matters for the friend who wants to ask about your name but is afraid of getting the tone wrong. Humility isn’t weakness here. It’s the beginning of accuracy.
What Cultural Competence Is Not
Before I say what cultural competence is, let me clear away what it isn’t. It isn’t memorising the names of Nigerian soups. It isn’t knowing that àṣé is a Yoruba word for the power to make things happen, though that’s a beautiful thing to know. It isn’t reading one memoir and then speaking with authority about an entire continent. It isn’t the ability to pronounce ọ̀rẹ́ correctly while still assuming your colleague’s family structure looks like yours.
I’ve sat in rooms where people performed cultural competence the way some people perform prayer: loudly, with many words, and with very little listening. They asked me where I was really from, and when I said London, they smiled and waited. They wanted the village. They wanted the story that would make them feel like they’d travelled somewhere without leaving their chair. But my story is not a souvenir.
The Performance of Knowing
There’s a particular exhaustion that comes from being treated as a cultural informant. You’re asked to explain the bride price, the naming ceremony, the reason your auntie wears white to church on the first Sunday of the month. You become a walking glossary. And if you refuse, you’re seen as difficult. If you answer, you’re seen as representative. Either way, you’re not seen as a person with a specific, partial, changing relationship to your own culture.
Humility would change the question. Instead of asking, “What do Nigerians believe about death?” a humble person might ask, “How does your family mark loss?” The first question assumes a monolith. The second assumes a human being. That difference is the whole work.
Humility as a Method, Not a Mood
I want to be careful here. Humility isn’t about self-deprecation. It isn’t about saying, “Oh, I know nothing,” so that the other person is forced to comfort you. That’s another kind of burden. Humility, as I mean it, is a method. It’s a way of approaching another person’s culture the way you might approach a river you’ve never crossed: with respect for what you can’t see beneath the surface.
In practice, this looks like:
- Asking questions that invite correction rather than confirmation.
- Listening for the difference between what someone says and what you expected them to say.
- Noticing when your own discomfort is making you rush to a conclusion.
- Allowing silence to do some of the work.
- Being willing to say, “I got that wrong,” without turning it into a speech about your good intentions.
I learned this method slowly, and mostly through failure. I remember a conversation with a white British friend who asked me why my mother sent money home every month. I launched into an explanation about remittances, about the Nigerian economy, about the moral weight of being the one who left. I gave her statistics. I gave her history. I did not give her the truth, which was that I sometimes resented the money, and that the resentment made me ashamed, and that the shame made me defensive. Humility would have let me say, “I have complicated feelings about it.” Instead, I performed expertise. I did not let her see me.
The Cost of Being the Expert
This is the hidden cost of cultural competence without humility: it turns the person from the culture into an expert, and the expert is not allowed to be uncertain. But uncertainty is where the real story lives. The real story is that my mother sends money because her mother sent money, because her mother’s mother sent money, because survival in our family has always been a relay race. The real story is that I don’t always want to carry the baton. The real story is that I carry it anyway, and I’m still deciding what that means.
If you want to understand the emotional logistics of migration, you have to be willing to hear that the logistics are not logical. They’re inherited. They’re negotiated. They’re sometimes resented. A humble listener can hold all of that without needing to resolve it.
What Yoruba Oral Tradition Taught Me About Listening
My grandmother didn’t teach me cultural competence. She taught me how to listen to a story that didn’t go in a straight line. In Yoruba oral tradition, a story often circles its subject. It begins with a proverb, detours through a memory, pauses for a song, and only then arrives at the point. If you listen the way you listen to a Western lecture, waiting for the thesis statement, you’ll miss everything.
I think about this when people ask me to “get to the point.” The point is the journey. The point is the pause. The point is the way my grandmother would say, “Gbàgbé ọ̀rọ̀, kó o rántí ìtàn” — forget the word, remember the story. Humility in cross-cultural conversation means accepting that the other person’s point may not arrive in the shape you were taught to recognise.
The Proverb as a Door
Yoruba proverbs are not decorations. They’re doors. A proverb like “Ilé ọba tójó, ẹwà ló bùsi” — when a king’s palace burns, the beauty is revealed — is not a riddle to be solved. It’s an invitation to sit with a truth that resists paraphrase. If you try to extract the meaning too quickly, you’ll flatten it. The same is true of people. If you try to extract the meaning of a person too quickly, you’ll flatten them.
So when I say cultural competence starts with humility, I mean it starts with the willingness to sit in the smoke of a story you don’t yet understand. It starts with the recognition that you’re not owed a translation.
Pentecostal Faith Deconstruction and the Humility of Not Knowing
I grew up in a Pentecostal church where certainty was a virtue. We knew who was saved and who wasn’t. We knew which songs invited the Holy Spirit and which ones invited the world. We knew that doubt was a door the enemy used. I’ve spent years unlearning that certainty, and the unlearning has taught me more about cultural competence than any training session ever did.
Faith deconstruction is, at its core, a practice of humility. It’s saying, “I was so sure, and now I’m not, and I’m still here.” That’s a terrifying sentence. It’s also a liberating one. When you stop needing to be right about God, you can start being curious about people. You can listen to a Muslim friend describe prayer without mentally preparing a rebuttal. You can sit with a cousin who still believes and not feel the need to rescue her or condemn her. You can hold your own uncertainty without making it a weapon.
The Altar Call That Still Rings
I still hear the altar call sometimes. Not the words, but the rhythm of it. The way the organ would swell, the way the pastor’s voice would drop, the way my mother would close her eyes and sway. I don’t believe the way I used to, but I don’t mock the swaying. That would be its own kind of arrogance. Humility means honouring the part of me that still responds to the music, even as I question the theology. It means letting my past self sit beside my present self without demanding that one of them win.
This is the same humility I want from others. I want a friend to be able to say, “I don’t understand why you still go to church sometimes,” without me having to defend it. I want a colleague to be able to ask, “What do you miss about it?” without me having to perform a clean break. The questions that leave room for contradiction are the questions that build trust.
The Hidden Economies of Family Obligation
Let me talk about money, because money is where humility often fails. In many Nigerian families, money is not just money. It’s love, duty, guilt, status, and survival all pressed into one bank transfer. When I send money to my mother, I’m not just sending money. I’m sending a message about who I am, who I’ve become, and whether I’ve forgotten where I come from.
People outside this economy often misunderstand it. They see the remittance and think generosity. They see the pressure and think exploitation. They don’t see the middle space, where love and obligation are so tangled that you can’t pull one thread without unravelling the whole garment. A humble observer wouldn’t rush to name the transaction. They’d ask, “What does this money mean to you?” and then they’d wait for an answer that might take years.
The Cousin You Have Never Met
There’s a cousin I’ve never met who has received money from my mother for as long as I can remember. I used to resent this cousin. I used to imagine her as a drain, a name on a list, a reason we couldn’t afford something I wanted. Then I learned her story: her father died, her mother was ill, and the money my mother sent kept her in school. I still haven’t met her. But I’ve stopped resenting her. That shift didn’t come from learning more facts about her. It came from humility. It came from admitting that I didn’t know the whole story, and that my resentment was a story I’d told myself to make my own sacrifice feel more noble.
This is the quiet work of cultural competence. It’s not about knowing the right terms. It’s about catching yourself in the act of assuming, and choosing to ask instead.
Practical Humility: What It Looks Like in Daily Life
I don’t want to leave you with an abstraction. Let me offer some concrete practices, drawn from my own life and from the lives of people I trust.
1. Ask Questions That Invite Correction
Instead of asking, “Is that a Nigerian thing?” ask, “Is that something your family does, or is it just you?” The first question makes the person a representative. The second makes them a person. The difference is small in words and large in effect.
2. Notice Your Own Discomfort
When someone describes a practice that unsettles you — a naming ceremony, a prayer style, a way of mourning — notice what you feel. Do you feel superior? Confused? Afraid? That feeling is information about you, not about them. Sit with it before you speak.
3. Allow for Contradiction
People are not consistent. I love my mother’s church and I don’t believe its central claims. I’m proud of my Yoruba heritage and I’m critical of some of its gender expectations. Both things are true. A humble listener can hold both without demanding that I choose.
4. Learn the History, but Do Not Weaponise It
It’s good to learn about colonialism, about migration patterns, about the economic forces that shape remittances. But don’t use that knowledge to explain someone’s life to them. Use it to ask better questions. The goal isn’t to be right. The goal is to be present.
5. Apologise Without a Speech
If you get something wrong — a name, a custom, an assumption — say, “I got that wrong. Thank you for correcting me.” Then stop. Don’t explain how hard you’re trying. Don’t list your good intentions. Let the apology stand. That’s humility in action.
What This Means for the Diaspora
I write this as someone who lives in the space between two cultures, and I want to be honest about the fact that humility is not only for outsiders. It’s also for us. I’ve been arrogant about my own culture. I’ve assumed that because I’m Nigerian, I understand every Nigerian. I’ve assumed that because I’m British, I understand every British person. Both assumptions are false.
The diaspora is not a monolith. The Yoruba community in London is not the Yoruba community in Houston. The Pentecostal church I grew up in is not the Pentecostal church down the road. Even within one family, the experience of migration differs by generation, by gender, by birth order. My mother’s migration story is not my migration story. My cousin’s relationship to Nigeria is not my relationship to Nigeria. Humility begins at home.
The Question I Am Still Learning to Ask
There’s a question I’m still learning to ask the people I love: “What was it like for you?” Not “What was it like for us?” Not “What was it like for Nigerians?” But “What was it like for you?” That question is the seed of cultural competence. It’s small. It’s slow. It’s humble. And it’s the only question that has ever led me to the truth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does cultural competence mean in the Nigerian-British diaspora?
In the Nigerian-British diaspora, cultural competence means the ability to move between Nigerian and British cultural expectations without losing yourself. It involves understanding the emotional weight of family obligation, the role of faith and oral tradition, and the specific pressures of being a cultural bridge. But it also means recognising that no single person can represent the whole diaspora, and that humility is more useful than expertise.
Why is humility more important than knowledge in cross-cultural relationships?
Knowledge can become a wall. When you think you already know what someone’s culture means to them, you stop listening. Humility keeps the door open. It allows the other person to correct you, to complicate your assumptions, and to reveal the parts of their experience that no book or training session could have prepared you for. Humility is not ignorance; it’s the willingness to learn in real time, from a real person.
How can I practice cultural humility without making the other person feel like a teacher?
You can practice cultural humility by asking questions that invite personal reflection rather than cultural explanation. Instead of asking someone to explain their entire culture, ask about their specific experience. Instead of performing what you already know, admit what you don’t know. And when someone shares something vulnerable, don’t rush to relate it to your own life. Let their story stand on its own. That’s how you honour a person without turning them into a lesson.
What role does faith deconstruction play in cultural humility?
Faith deconstruction teaches you to hold uncertainty without panic. That skill transfers directly to cross-cultural relationships. When you can say, “I was sure about this, and now I’m not, and I’m still okay,” you become more able to listen to people whose beliefs differ from yours. You stop needing to win the conversation. You start being able to sit in the not-knowing, which is where real connection happens.
A Next Step for This Conversation
This article is part of a longer conversation I’m having on this blog about the emotional logistics of migration, the weight of family obligation, and the slow work of faith deconstruction. If this resonated with you, the next piece I’m writing is about the language of remittances: what we say, what we don’t say, and what the money carries. I’d also love to hear from you. What’s one question you wish someone had asked you, instead of the question they actually asked? Send it to me, and I’ll weave some of those questions into a future post. That’s how this space grows: not by me performing expertise, but by us practising humility together.
