This past week, we reflected on the amount of information that we learned in class over the semester. One of the most influential short stories that I read during this time was the “Spider the Artist” written by Nnedi Okorafor.
I found this work to be particularly interesting because of my experience on the continent of Africa. This work is an accurate description of how the first world views Africa and in the event, an accident was to occur in Africa it would not be worldwide news. The stories around the world would not even mention Africa because the rest of the world views Africa as somewhere they can exploit and use as a dumping ground for items they do not want. However, the part of the story that was even more indicative of the developed world’s relationship with Africa was the description of how the Nigerian government sold out their own people for their own monetary gain. One of the quotes that I found intriguing was, “The government came up with the idea to create the Zombies, and Shell, Chevron and a few other oil companies (who were just as desperate) supplied the money to pay for it all.” The zombies were creations that were killing the people trying to break into the oil pipeline to earn a living. The zombies were seen as the enemy in the Nigerian villages and were the causes of destruction. These inventions were created by the Nigeran government, with the urging of the oil companies, to kill their own people just so foreign oil could be protected. The very institution that was supposed to be protecting their constituents and their interests were the ones funding a project that was leading to the death and destruction of their own.
I found this story to be refreshing because it is not something that is written about very often. People living in first world countries typically only care about African countries when a war or a terrible tragedy occurs. The story of exploitation and destruction often goes ignored and this story shed light on the real events happening in African countries. The quote that was interesting to me was, “You should also pray that these Zombies don’t build themselves some fins and travel across the ocean.” This quote really struck me because at first, it seemed like she was warning us about the technology that could wreak havoc on the United States, but what she actually was warning about was preventing this news from spreading across the world because then the first world nations would be held responsible. Moreover, the news would finally make the nations exploiting African countries explain their action and what they were doing in these countries.
