When I read Nnedi Okorafor’s short piece “Spider the Artist,” I found myself thinking back on my experience in South Africa. One of the major issues that I had when I was in South Africa is that I would talk to people from home and they would constantly ask “How’s Africa?” I would instantly get irritated because it was indicative of the way that the Western world views the continent of Africa. I would become annoyed because if I was studying in Spain, people would not ask me how studying in Western Europe was. Every country in Africa typically falls into the “generalization” of Africa instead of the unique individual nations. I thought that this idea rang true in Okorafor’s piece as well.
When she discusses how the robots are in Nigeria to patrol the oil pipeline, even though the pipeline goes through Nigerian people’s yards, it made me think about the history of many African countries and how they have continuously sold themselves to the Western world and the result has always been disastrous for the African country.
I think this cartoon depicts the way that South Africa have sold themselves to China. China has been and continues to be the most significant trading partner with South Africa, and China has approved a 1.2-billion-dollar investment into Johannesburg. However, the development investment has had some pushback because China is using this to mask the fact that they are getting millions worth of raw materials from South Africa in return. Okorafor’s story rings a similar note but instead it uses U.S. oil companies and their transgressions in Africa.
I think that the story is partially a statement about the history of African countries being exploited by Western countries. One line of the story resonated with me and caused me to reconsider its true meaning. She wrote, “You should also pray that these Zombies don’t build themselves some fins and travel across the ocean.” I thought initially that this was the idea that the robots defending the pipeline could come over and wreak havoc on the American people, but then as we discussed in class, I felt like it was more of a warning of do not let the news of the devastation and the bloodshed get across the ocean. I think her message gets back to the central idea that most of the time we have no idea where our food, oil, and materials come from and what it took to create the commodity. Many people do not realize what happens to the indigenous people when the major corporations go into the country and transform the landscape. However, that is often glossed over when we are buying the materials and is not even on our minds. I thought Okorafor made this message clear when she referenced the government and the fact that many of Nigerian people do not trust their government because they sold out their people for the benefit of their own profit margins. The story did a great job of not just saying the issues that she had straightforwardly, but rather used fiction to help the reader arrive at their conclusion and to see the point she was trying to illustrate the entire time.
