The white men had quietly snaked through our homes. They waved their Bible in the air, a white flag of 'peace'. It was all a lie. From the very beginning.And I should have done something. Okonkwo, "a man of great action", my closest friend, had tried. He dreamed for war against the white men. Despite being one of "the greatest of men", a true warrior, he had lost this battle of power. Losing it, Okonkwo could not stomach it. He hung himself.
But what of our own people who are following their way? How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man "has put a knife on the things that have held us together and we have fallen apart."
Before, the harmony of our world was in place, the reality of our beliefs remained throughout the tribe and our father Chukwu, and most of all, the men and woman of Umofia were fighters, strong fighters. Now decades of tradition, knowledge and power from out ancestors have cracked. They've been turned to dust, blown away by this new lunatic religion, Christianity. It has broken us apart. It is forcing us to bow down. It is our destruction.
We underestimated them. They were smart and strategic in their moves. Although Mr. Brown was a gentle and curious soul, he used our religion against us. Using our flaws to give the outcasts hope. We no longer faced them as a unified front and this made opposing them that much harder. The white men did not try to eradicate us by force yet, they preached on our village walkways, promising happy lives and afterlives, and by fraternizing with the untouchables of the clan. Our community was lost.
How easily they stripped us of our power and bent us into submission through their promises of religion and education for our sons and daughters. What we didn't realize was that this education they were offering was simply to shape and form us into mere cogs in their large machine. Only to serve for their needs.
They promised us salvation and gave us destruction. Things have fallen apart.
No comments:
Post a Comment