Guns and Power

This week we began to read the collection of stories by Chimamanda Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck. Each short story in the book reflects an individual experience or tale in the British colony of Nigeria in its colonial era. In the story "The Headstrong Historian" an African woman of slave descent by the name of Ayaju has very modern ideas about the white people who were able to take over their region so easily. She believes that unlike how they would have people believe, The British were not able to conquer because they were a better people, but because they had better guns. This continues to support a theme this year of knowledge and advanced technology leads to power. Ayaju believes the British system is not better, but they have the superior weapons to back themselves up so it has become a region ruled over by the Europeans. She wants her own son to learn about this system and receive a European education because then he will know their language, and how their system works so he can beat it.