My Unit Plan Website Link

Sorry guys! Here is the link to my unit plan on African Literature. Feel free to download any or all of the documents. If you have any issues downloading them, I can also email them. Enjoy!

http://sites.google.com/site/africanliteratureunit/

For our African Lit class, we do explorations. I just looked at some African art online and here is the art I created afterwards. Enjoy!

Here is the link if you want to check out the original art.

Ways we can help...ways others are helping

To be honest, I wasn't going to find anything new to bring to class today about helping in Africa. However, last night I decided to look at the Kalamazoo Gazette and found, to my surprise, an article about World AIDS Day, which was yesterday. The article is similar to an argument and talks about how much money should be given to stopping AIDS and how much certain organizations are spending on AIDS instead of working on stopping other diseases like pnueomia. Check out the link above to read the article online. I'll bring the paper copy to class today.

The reason I wasn't going to do anything for class today was that I had written my second paper on World Vision, an organization that works through sponsorship and other means to help impoverised people around the world provide for their needs and bring justice to those who can not help themselves. If you are at all interested in finding out more about this organization, click on the link. World Vision offers a multitude of ways that we can participate in helping people around the world, plus they offer information on the countries that they are working in such as history and social life today. Very interesting.

The Language of Johnny Mad Dog

As I've read through Johnny Mad Dog, there have been several passages that have caught my attention and I feel have helped me to understand the main characters better (Laokole and Johnny).

The first passage is used is by Johnny after his fellow soldier Gator was killed by their Commander, Giap. Giap had just chosen the 4 division leaders of the Commando units and Gator thought that Giap should monetarily reimburse them for their time and effort. Gator tried to begin a revolution, however, in order to deal with the disrespect, Giap shot Gator. In response to the killing of one of his best friends, Johnny says , "Really, people are awful. They have no heart." (p 44). From reading others' blogs about this book, it seems like the general concensus is that Johnny is ignorant and prideful, however, this little comment made me see him as real, a real boy with real genuine feelings.

Later on, this same comment reappeared. This time it is said by Laokole. Johnny's fellow soldiers have just taken over the 4x4 of Melanie's family and were chasing the refugees. One of them had seen a little boy with gun and they stopped to get the gun from the boy who they thought was a Chechen. When they stopped, they shot the boy while Laokole and her mother were hiding behind a wall or flower hedge. Just as Johnny was torn up by the killing of Gator, Laokole is devastated by the death of this child that she didn't even know. She repeats what Johnny said, "Really, people are awful. They have no heart."

I just think it is interesting that these two sentences are repeated in the book and I'm wondering if they are repeated at all later on in the book. I guess I'll just have to keep reading.

Johnny Mad Dog

I was hooked on Johnny Mad Dog right away. I had been warned that it was told through two different narrators. However, that is the part of the book that I really like. Having the story of Johnny/Matiti Mabe alongside Laokole is really great.

One thing that I didn't catch right away was that Laokole is a girl. I didn't realize that until she was talking about the things she was planning to bring with them on the exile from their home because of the soldiers invading for the looting.

I decided to look up a little on Johnny Mad Dog and found that it is also a movie. A clip on You Tube is available for the movie.

Endangered Animals - Just Africa

So I was going to look up endangered animals from all over the world, but when I started doing my research, I found out that that would be way too much to tackle. So I just looked at the endangered animals in Africa.

The first animal that I found that is endangered in Africa is the mountain gorilla. It lives in East Africa (Rwanda, Uganda & Zaire). It is the largest and rarest of the three subspecies of gorillas at an average of 6 ft. tall and 400-500 lbs. These gorillas also live up to 50 years. Right now, there are only about 650 mountain gorillas in existence.

Another endangered animal in Africa is the rhinoceros. There are 2 species of rhinos in Africa. One is black and the other is white, and both have horns. They range in weight from 750 to 8,000 lbs. and are 4.5 to 6 feet tall. Currently there are 2,400 black rhinos and 7,500 white rhinos. They can live up to 35 to 40 years.

The african wild dog is also endangered. They are about the size of a medium dog and can live up to 10 years. Between 2,000 and 5,000 remain in the wild. They are only found in Africa south of the Sahara.

100,000 to 200,000 four feet tall chimpanzee's remain in the wild. They can live up to 50 years in the wild and are found in 21 African countries. They prefer to live in dense tropical rainforests and habitat destruction is the greatest threat to them.

A final endangered animal in Africa is the zebra. There are two species and one of them is endangered. There are only 600-700. They live on mountainous slopes and plateaus and feed off a variety of grasses.

The Bleeding of the Stone

When I first started reading this book, I was worried it would be a boring read. However, after I stuck it out for a while, it started to get pretty good. Asouf begins to tell his story and the visitors arrive.

I was curious about the place where all of this happened. The map on the left is of Libya and I'm guessing of the area near where this book takes place.

After reading about the waddan and the goats, I began to wonder what they looked like. Here is what I found: The picture on the left is of female moufflon and the one on the right is a male.












As I was looking for pictures of the moufflon, Darius suggested that I look for pictures of moufflon meat, which is what Asouf's dad was killed trying to get. I'm not sure that this looks very appetizing, but I guess if you were living in the desert and were hungry, it would taste good.

I also began to wonder about what the desert looks like in Libya where Asouf lives. I looked up some picture of Libya.

Waiting for an Angel

After reading Waiting for an Angel, I decided to find out more about college in Nigeria.

However, as I began my search, I found an article that shows pictures from an oil pipeline explosion in Nigeria. It was quite disturbing and I think gives a good image of what life is like in Lagos where the main character, Lomba, went to school. I couldn't help thinking that this is the kind of town he lived in. It amazed me, too, that this is similar to the picture I had in my head when he was describing Lagos.

I did also find pictures of colleges in Lagos. I think I tried to mention in class that the picture of the college I had in my head as I was reading was different from Western; very simple and sparce. The pictures here again kinda represent what I was picturing in my head. The first picture is of Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.

The next college I found was Freedom Bible College and Seminary. It sounds like they do prison ministry there. One thing that shocked me about this college was the extreme difference in the cost of college. Without textbooks, the cost for an entire Bachelors Degree is only $300!

The final college photo from Lagos that I found was Bowen College. It sounds like this is a newer college that is only in its first phase and plans on expanding.

Political Prisoners & Waiting for an Angel

So as I was reading Waiting for an Angel, I was amazed that Lomba had been in jail for 2 years as a political prisoner without a fair trial. It made me wonder how many other people have been in prison for political reasons and have been denied a trial.

Wikipedia tells us that political prisoners are those who are held in prison or otherwise detained for his or her involvement in political activity.

Wikipedia also says that there is an organization that works for political prisoners as well as philosophical or religious prisoners called Amnesty International.

I found another website that has political prisoners and POWs in the US. It is interesting to look at the names of the prisoners. It also lists those who have died while in custody and those who have been released.

As I kept searching for more information, specifically about political prisoners in Nigeria, I found an article that said that Nigeria freed 47 political prisoners. The date on the article was 1999. The interesting thing is that I found an article from a year before, 1998, which said that Nigeria was supposed to release all of its political prisoners

The Effect of Oil in Africa

After surfing the internet for different topics for my last few posts, I began to find a lot of really interesting articles from online newspapers from all over the world on the general topic of the effect of oil in Africa. The first one that popped up in Google Web was a series of articles from the Boston Globe.

The first thing that in the series is an audio slideshow about the relationship between America and Africa over oil. I wasn't able to upload it to the blog, but it is interesting.

The second item in the series is an article about oil spills in Nigeria. The article is really interesting and tells the story of the people effected by the spills. It also has a some interesting charts that show where Nigeria stands in the production of oil. According to the chart, Canada is the top producer and Nigeria is 5th, under Mexico, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

The third part of the series is an article about how profitable oil is in the Congo and begins with this picture about the fisherman in the Congo. It is interesting to see how this article connects to what we talked about in class today. The Congolese government actually made money from this deal even though the oil was being sent to the United States. It would be interesting to find out more about the oil policies in different countries and how they differ. Maybe the Congo has a better policy than Nigeria....

The final article listed in the series is about Angola. Like much of what we have talked about in class, the article talks about how the people in Angola are not benefitting from the oil wealth. Instead it says that there is a legacy of war and corruption that should not be there. This would be another interesting read.

Voter Fraud in Africa

I decided to look up voter fraud in Africa because of the upcoming elections here in the U.S.. I found an interesting article from the New York Times about how opposition in Ethiopia stopped inquiries into voter fraud there. After reading the article it sounds like there was a lot of violence both on the part of the political parties involved and the police that were trying to investigate the actions of the political parties.

I found another article about voter fraud in Zambia from the Fairfax Digital and the Sydney Morning Herald. This article mentions the opinions of voters in Zambia and tells about their suspicions that the police are involved in rigging the elections. The article also talks about the fears that people in political parties have about what will happen when the polls close, fearing that there will be violence. It alsos quotes one of the men running for office and he says that he will not accept a loss if he suspects vote fraud.

A final article that I found is about the elections in Zimbabwe from CNN. It has pitures of the current president (on the left) who has led the country for nearly three decades and those running against him: his former finance minister, Simba Makoni (second image on left); and Morgan Tsvangirai (bottom right)of the Movement for Democratic Change. After explaining Mugabe's position in Zimbabwe from the time that it was called Rhodesia, the article then continues to talk about how Mugabe plans to rig the election so that he can stay in power until he dies.

*If you want to see Mugabe on the campaign trail via CNN, check out the video.

Polygamy and Ancestor Stones

Because Ancestor Stones tells the stories of several children who had the same father with many wives, I was interested in finding out more about polygamy in Africa. I ended up finding a really good article through Google Scholar about Polygamy and its relationship to HIV and AIDS in Africa. I was surprised to find that the article at the beginning says that "regions with high rates of polygamy have significantly lower rates" of HIV and AIDS. It seems that it would be higher because the man is having relations with more women, however, if the families are loyal because of their religious reasons, like we saw in Xala, then it does make sense. The article says that the areas with the the greatest number of cases of HIV and AIDS are in the urban areas and then spread to rural areas. Another interesting thing that the article mentions is the different ways that HIV and AIDS are spread in patterns. One pattern talks about the spread being from homosexual or bisexual men, while another way is through heterosexual relations.

The article also has some really interesting graphs and graphics that I couldn't post up here because they are part of a PDF file, but they are definitely worth checking out. There are maps that show the spread of AIDS and HIV in certain areas and among certain tribes, and also a chart that shows the number of women affected and the number of men affected, with the number of women being much greater than the number of men.

Because I couldn't upload anything from the PDF file, I decided to find another source that shows the impact of AIDS in Africa. I thought this one was good.

I would definitely suggest checking out this article to find out more about the topic. I know that I learned a lot in the little bit that I was able to read and feel that I could learn a lot more if I was able to read it all.

African Women as portrayed in "Ancestor Stones"

As I started thinking about the topic of this blog being about African women and how they are portrayed in Ancestor Stones, there was a certain part of the book that caught my attention again, like the last post, and made me think more about African women and what they deal with.

Here is what stood out to me this time: Mariama is talking about her mother's illness and the effect it had on her family. She makes this comment:

"When a person dies our people cry and sing. The drums sound. The house is home to many visitors. When my mother went away there was silence. My father's house was still. The silence slid down the mud walls. Great drops stretching slowly down the eaves, smothering the thoughts that hung in the air. I clotted every crevice. It rose in the back of my throat when I tried to ask about my mother, and threatened to make me retch. It filled the house until we could no longer open our mouths for fear of drowning in it."

This quotation really made me consider for the first time how African women felt. I felt that Mariama felt like she wasn't worthy to talk about her mother, not only because she was a child, but also because she was a female. The "father's house" really made me think this. I also think that she wasn't allowed to talk about this because her mother's illness was rare and considered as embarrasing.

The descriptive language in this paragraph also caught my eye. The description is rare and unique and helped me to understand the situation. I could almost see the scene and feel the frustration of wanting to talk about a hard situation and not being able to.

It is interesting, too, to think about the difference between the relationships of the daughters to their fathers and their mothers. Here, Mariama is definitely frustrated with her father and I think that she has the right to be. It is interesting to look at her relationship to her mother as well because she held great respect for her even in this time of her illness and especially when others lost respect for her mother.

Dissecting a line from Ancestor Stones

So far I really like Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna. I like the different perspectives that each chapter are written from and I'm excited to get to know how the characters fit together and what their story will be.

One quote that has kept me thinking is this one from page 21. Asana is describing the new job that her father has and their new village. At this point she is talking about the people who are beginning to arrive in the new village. She mentions the blacksmith, the carpenter, te herbalist, the coffee harvestors and growers. Then she says this and I am still wondering what the significance is:

"A big man casts a long shadow and many people build their lives in the shade."

At first I thought she was talking about the blacksmith, but then I realized that she could be talking about any of the others who joined the village. Then as I'm writing this I wonder if maybe it's her father. He is supposed to be the leader of the village and maybe she is talking about his shadow or governance over these people. This seems to make sense to me. In order for his business to grow and flourish, he needs all of the other villagers, especially the workers to harvest and plant.

I never thought I would think so much about one line in a novel, but it's good to identify these challenging lines because they can hold so much information. It just takes a little time and a little thought, and for me, the chance to write a little, because it is then that I can begin to really understand something.

Xala

Literally meaning the curse, the reader who knows this term would be much more enlightened going into reading this short novel than the reader who doesn't know.

As I began reading Xala, I was shocked at the content. From announcements in class, I knew that this novel was about polygamy, but I never would have guessed that it would have been about the impotence of a man with several wives.
When I began looking for more information on Xala for this class, the first thing that came up on a Google search is the Wikipedia page that tells about the movie of Xala. Talking to another student in the class, we decided that it would be interesting to watch because now we know the content, which we both decided is quite uncommon and would probably make an interesting film.

I decided to look at the author of Xala, Ousmane Sembène. Wikipedia says that he grew up in Senegal, learned three languages (French, Arabic, and Wolof) and served in the French army, among other things.

It was interesting for me to learn about Sembène so that I could understand more about him as an author. When I know more about an author, it helps gives validity to his work and helps me to better understand when there may be significant information in a work. For instance, in Xala, it is important for me to know about his experience with the languages of Senegal and his experience in the army for me to understand why some scenes are more important than they seem at face value. One particular scene was the one where Rama is pulled over by a police officer and she speaks to the officer in Wolof while Pathe speaks to him in French.

"Dzimba dza mabwe"

I thought it fitting to welcome you to learn a little bit about Zimbabwe before I tell you about its anticolonial struggle. The title of this blog is actually what the name Zimbabwe means which is "great house of stone" in the Shona language.

Located in the Southern part of the African continent, Zimbabwe is home to many different species of animals including elephants, lions, giraffes and zebras, and is also the where the famous Victoria Falls are located.

A quick history of Zimbabwe is necessary before I tell you about the anticolonial struggle in Zimbabwe. Originally named Zambesia, the name changed in 1895 to Rhodesia because of Cecil Rhodes' colonizing efforts there. The name then changed to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland when the British combined the two colonies in 1953. Shortly after this due to strong African nationalism, the British dissolved the Union and it was divided into 3 separate colonies.

In 1963, the anticolonial struggle began. The Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, declared Rhodesia independent from Britain in a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). The United Kingdom (Britain) saw this declaration as an act of rebellion but didn't try to take back control.

All of this quickly led to a civil war in Rhodesia. In 1970, the white minority government led by Smith declared Rhodesia a republic while the black majority through guerilla warfare against the UDI.

In 1978, Smith finally signed an accord with three black leaders and elections followed in 1979. The United African National Council won the election and Abel Muzorewa became Prime Minister. Muzorewa changed the name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe Rhodesia. In this new government system, whites were still in control in a power-sharing arrangement which did not reflect the majority. In 1979 the civil war finally ended with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement.

In 1980 another election was held and the Zimbabwe African National Union won. Mugabe became the ruler and a peace accord was signed in 1987.

Since then, Zimbabwe has dealt with land issues and, most recently, an economic and food crisis.

Effect of Colonization to Education in Africa

As I read through the article, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney, this caught my eye:

"Among the Bemba of what was then Northern Rhodesia, children by the age of six could name fifty to sixty species of tree plants without hesitation, but they knew very little about ornamental flowers. The explanation is simply that knowledge of the trees was a necessity in an environment of ‘cut and burn’ agriculture and in a situation where numerous household needs were met by tree products. Flowers, however, were irrelevant to survival."

It was shocking to me to find out that this was reality for children in Africa. Yet at the same time, I could understand this to be true. How many of us would learn about things that we didn't need to know in a time of desperation where survival was the only aim? I know I wouldn't. However, this is also interesting because this took place before the colonization of Africa because it says that the education of the African people grew out of the environment.

It would be interesting to find out more about the effects of colonization on Africa. I need to keep reading to do that. Yet, as I did more research on the effects of colonization in Africa to education, I found three really intereesting articles that talk about the effect of colonialization even today. One is from Ghana, another from Zimbabwe, and finally, the last is from Namibia. From reading these three articles, I was shocked to find out that the effects of colonization are still affecting the countries mentioned above.

Connecting Achebe and Heart of Darkness

Do you ever read a story and the descriptions are so vivid that you can picture the scenery and the characters? These are the best stores ever...

Achebe says that the most interesting and revealing parts of Conrad's Heart of Darkness are his descriptions of people. I agree and I would add the setting. Conrad gives precise details like the ones that we discussed in class on Tuesday.

While the descriptions sometimes are confusing and it is hard to distinguish what he is talking about because of the difficult language, they are still, I think, the best part of the novella and I think it is essential to think of Heart of Darkness in this way rather than looking at it solely as a difficult text that is hard to decipher. Here is an example that I like:

"...It was paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with persperation; that ad faces like grotesque masks - these chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to look at..."

While it may be hard to sometimes understand the signinficance of what descriptions Conrad decides to include and expound upon, one thing I noticed is that his descriptions of the native Congolese are the best. I think this is essential to accomplish what I think his goal is...to expose the situation of colonization in the Congo.

Heart of Darkness

As I read through Heart of Darkness, I was amazed at the tone of the narrator. He speaks in language that seems to me to reveal the situation in the Congo at the time. The writing is many times written awkwardly, or at least it seems that way to me. It is often unclear exactly what is happening, who is present, and why it is happening.

An example of this is in the second section of the story when Marlow tells the story of what he overheard on the steamboat. As he is lying down, he hears the manager and one of his nephews talking and begins to listen in. He figures out that they are talking about Kurtz and then later about someone who supposedly was with Kurtz. He grasps on to their feelings about these two persons and he decides to keep his curiosity to himself.

I think this obscurity of language aids Conrad in portraying the darkness that is eluded to in the title. As a reader of Marlow's tales of his journey, I am brought into the situation with the infrequent dialogue and sometimes careful descriptions of the surroudings. I think it helps me take on the feelings of fear, mistrust, confusion, etc. that Marlow was feeling. And as much as I don't like this style of writing, I do think it is genius on Conrad's part for taking the reader into the story of such an awful time in the history of Africa.

Going Against the Grain!

As I was reading the chapter David and Goliath in King Leopold's Ghost, I was so excited that a hero finally arrived! E. D. Morel appeared to at last give a voice to the Congolese people, a people that lost their voice to a greed-stricken group of Europeans, specifically King Leopold II.

I was amazed that Morel had such an influence on King Leopold from London and that he never left home; he received all of his information from reporters and missionaries and others who returned home to Europe from spending time in the Congo. I wanted to laugh at Leopold for thinking that he could stop all of the bad publicity from leaving the Congo....his biggest critic lived all the way in London and never even traveled to the Congo.

It intrigued me and encouraged me later on when I found out that Morel didn't stop speaking out for important issues. He took up issues in his own country when war was threatening and took up action again. Here is a document that I found concerning Chapter 18:

I hope that more of us can be like Morel. I hope that we can be enactors of change and work for the good of all people. Today in Allen's class and afterwards, we were talking about the power of words. I think that Morel is a prime example of how powerful words are and what we should do with them.

I give Morel credit for leaving his job and taking on full force the defense of a people he had never met. I don't think I could have done that.

Stanley

As a soon-to-be teacher, I can't help looking at situations with those eyes. Besides that I just came out of a very passionate class where we were discussing students situations and fostering them....aka, I'm still wound up and Stanley's character has had me thinking for a while.

Hochschild tells the story of Stanley's early life. He is born a bastard child to a mother who doesn't seem to care about him because as a newborn, she leaves him with his uncles and grandfather. What kind of life would that have been for him? No caring, or at least not a whole lot, and living with people who believed that a boy needed a "sound whipping" if he misbehaved. Not only that, at five years old he was passed off to another family who also got rid of him by lying that he was going to visit "Aunt Mary," when in reality they were going to leave him at a workhouse!

I have constantly been amazed that a child like that went on to become a great explorer, successful in his choice of occupation. However, this also came about through lie after lie and disappointment after disappointment. He changed his name countless times and then when he desired to marry (after he had been sexually abused as a child), his fiances would take off on him and marry someone else!

I am also amazed that he wrote for the newspaper, yet constantly remind myself of the lies that he kept up, even when a good many people doubted the truth of his claims. So why wouldn't he be able to tell a story well enough to have it published in the newspaper.

I mentioned at the beginning that I look at this from a teacher-like perspective. I guess his story encourages me. Even when I have students who come from the worst family situations and maybe don't make the choices that I think are appropriate or even correct in society, that even these people can go on in life and be successful and amazing people. Stanley became a great explorer that was noticed by people in high places (Ruler of Belgium, King Leopold!!).

And then it makes me think to myself that I can do with life what I want, in a sense. Stanley decided that he didn't want to live the life that he was expected to because of his childhood. He decided that he wanted to be successful and do something exciting and new with his life. And when at first he didn't succeed, he tried again and again and made his life something that others read about.

Now I don't know if he was ever a real person, but his story can still inspire us all to do what our hearts desire and to become what we know we can be. We shouldn't ever let the world hold us back, because Stanley showed us that even the seemingly impossible can happen if we work at it with all of our being.

P.S. As I was looking for information to link to this blog, I found a blog that is maintained by a class of students in New York who read some of King Leopold's Ghost and had a few questions of their own to ask to the world.

Dutch & British Slave Trade

From the information I have found, it seems that the British were first attracted to Africa because of gold and ivory, not slaves. the Dutch followed them to Africa for this reason, as did many other nations such as France and Sweden. However the Dutch were more assertive than the British and made their way into the slave trade more quickly.

According to a JSTOR article on this topic, the Dutch slave trade in reality only consisted of about 5% of the total Atlantic slave trade and spanned over three periods of time from 1600 to 1800. During the first period, the slave trade transported the most slaves, apparently because the French and the English had not established their own slave trade.

In the beginning, the Dutch used larger, older ships to transport the slaves which resulted in large numbers of slave deaths, however this fact changed once those ships were banned and better ships were implemented to reduce mortality. Not only was the change in the ships responsible for reducing the morality, they also shortened the middle passage.

In Africa, both the Dutch and the British built forts. The Dutch were first with their fort at Elimina in 1642 and the British followed them with their fort at Kormatine in 1651 and ten years later another fort at Cape Castle. Constantly at war, the Dutch destroyed the British forts, except the largest one at Cape Castle. This didn't discourage the British, however, who were attracted back to Africa becuase of profits from the slave trade.

Yet even in this crazy fight for Africa, the British had their own problems back home. The public was astonished at the inhumanity of the slave trade and had it abolished in 1807. Yet this didn't end the British presence in the slave trade, only private companies. The British government was still involved.

The interesting thing that I found is that in February of 2006, the Anglicans apologized for their role in the African slave trade. They say they recognize that they were responsible for what happened to many slaves because they were at the heart of what was happening in Africa during that time.

Exploring the Village of Umuofia

During my first visit to the village of Umuofia, I was struck at the differences in the buildings in the village.

The first building I went to visit was the Meeting Hall. It appears like it was built by the people and was made with materials that were native to the area. I remember the book saying that the weather there was hot and dry for a portion of the year and rainy for another portion, therefore it makes sense that the building would be close to the ground and have such a large covering.

I decided to enter the Meeting Room and was amazed at how detailed it was compared to the appearance of the Meeting Hall from the outside. The Meeting Room has intricate painting on the walls and what I am assuming are gods in the center and corners of the room. It also appears like there is seating the the people who come to meet.

I then thought it was interesting to view the Christian Mission. It is built with different materials and has walls on the sides. It also has a front section with an overhang which I assume is the entrance. The building seems to have a solid foundation and more diversified construction than the Meeting Hall. As I thought about these differences, it made sense to me that this building would be different than the Meeting Hall because the missionaries arrived a long while after the Ibo people had settled and probably brought their ideas about the construction of buildings with them.

The final building that I looked at was the District Commissioner's Headquarters. This building, to me, seems the most advanced. It has two levels and a staircase. There are square windows and pillars to support the building. The thatched roof is still present, but that is about the only thing that truly signifies that this is a building in Africa.

Things Fall Apart

When I began reading Things Fall Apart, I started to dread the assignment. The simple language and the diverseness of the culture (many hard-to-pronounce names), as well as the slow plot, signaled a slow read for me. However, as I trudged on in the book, the plot got better and I found myself curious to find out how the story would end.

When I reached the second half, I felt like there was a sudden turn. The Christians arrived and the Ibo people were all shook up. As a Christian myself, I was curious how they would be portrayed and how the Ibo people would react. I wasn't surprised when the Ibo people began to resist their arrival, nor that some of the Ibo people broke from their villages and families and converted to Christianity.

I did not suspect, however, that the ending would occur as it did. Things truly did fall apart for the family of Okonkwo and the Ibo people. Even though he had received help from friends and neighbors to change his life earlier, in the end he made choices that he later regreted and I think it finally hit him that he never would be the successful man he dreamed of, not with 2 murders to his name.

Because the arrival of the Christians changed the tone of the novel, I decided to find out more about the Christian missionary influence in Nigeria. Apparently Christianity was introduced by Catholic priests who arrived with traders and officials at Benin along the West African coast in the 1800s to serve the Portugese community and a small number of African converts, but left when the Portugese did and then was reintroduced later by the British Church of England Church Missionary Society and were followed by other Christian groups.

I was also amazed to find in my search a blog about 2 missionary families that had to leave Nigeria in 2006 after having been there since 1920 because the people there threatened to kill them and ended up destroying their village and killing many of their people.

Languages of Africa

While I was studying in Spain this summer, I realized yet again how important language is to understanding a culture and a people. I am sure this is true in Africa as well. For this reason, I was interested in learning about the different languages that exist in Africa.

According to Wikipedia, there are an estimated 2000 languages spoken in Africa and they are divided into four linguistic categories: Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Khoe. The map on the right shows these linguistic categories. Another website called the Living Africa has links to explainations of these four linguistic categories as well.

Individual languages exist in Africa as well. These include: Arabic, Swahili, Hausa, Amharic and Yoruba.

Africa also has sign languages and other languages that can be whistled so that people can communitcate over long distances.

Because of the great number of languages, language policy is a major issue in post-colonial Africa. The focus right now is on multilingualism. In order to validate languages, each one is considered a part of the African Union.

Lots of information is available about the specific languages of Africa. The Travel and Language Center lists the languages of Africa by country and tells you how many people speak them and other details such as location and whether or not they are official languages of a country. Other websites, Nations Online, PanAfriL10n and the InterSol, Inc. Global Advisor Newsletter, have similar lists.

We definitely have a lot to learn about the languages of Africa!