The release of the movie 12years a slave, stirred unrest in the hearts of many African viewers including me. I couldn't deny that I hated the white race few minutes after the video came to an end, it was there I told myself I'm not marrying a white lady anymore, a future I have nurtured for myself since I was young, (thank God for my good thinking faculty sha) white preachers weren't saved from the feeling that took over my being, in fact it took me three weeks to be able to listen to any of them again.
During those week, I battled saving the names of those precious whites that have blessed my life so deeply, the like of Andrew Farley and Joseph Prince can't be swept out of my life because of an African slave video I told myself, with Pastor Prince it was until a month later before I forced myself to watch a video. The rest of the white preachers have not been considered till now, even though I have recovered from that state and my senses have been restored from that mental battle.
It was all because of Plat's boss, who would use the Bible to subjugate his slave every Sunday and give them inhumane treatment afterwards, my mind was bombarded with serious questions, what if that's what the whites are doing with our minds? What is it that they are preaching to us seeing that they could be this inhumane? I resorted to not seeing the movie again and till now, I have not, and will not!
The deep thoughts about twelve years a slave made me dive into research on the subject matter, in no time my mind brought intelligent questions whose answer made me recover quick.
Question like "How did they get these slaves?"
My mum told me Arochukwu couldn't be invaded by those British slave buyers because they invoked their long juju in defence, and it was the basis for another line of thought.
If the long juju helped the Arochukwu's why didn't the juju of other communities helped them?
This thought opened up suspicions against the African people, I found my mind was being toyed with, there is something African don't want posterity to know, all these hates they are trying to put in our heart against these whites needed thorough investigation not a hook line and sinker gulping. Indeed the mind game Africans play when it comes to toying with the emotions of her children with pathetic video won't work for long if only their kids will leave the media crave and go research themselves.
My research made me laugh at my stupidity in displaying such emotions when I was seeing the video. One time, our lecturer, trying to play the mind game again told the class how mean the whites are to our fore fathers, how they took able bodied men away from us to work on their farm, reducing drastically African's working age population, I was the only one that raised an opposing question.
"Excuse me sir, how do they manage to invade our communities and made away with our people without our consent?" I asked him.
The work of Trevor Noah, born a crime gave me a glimpse into South African's Apartheid and his work was handy in answering my mind's question on African slave trade.
The dear lecturer told me the whites will forcefully invade the land and made away with whom they want to anyway if the slave traders won't willingly sell to them.
I knew the instant he was talking that the reply was far from truth, basically it is a kind of cover up, so that the whites gets all the blame!
My mind won't take that, the analysis my mind came up with the evidences that backed it had me blaming the white just 10% for mal-handling their properties, but then, they are their properties, any need blaming someone for the way he handles his goods?
Apartheid was impossible in SA except for some greedy South Africans, who only cried foul when the merchants bit more than they were willing to give away!
Colonizing African communities were impossible except for some men who stood as middle men, some African men!
Who really should be blame if I give out my own for SLAVE and my own is maltreated?
And today, just the perfect material for this project I stumbled on.
Very detailed on the African Slave Trade.
The gist is, Slave trade was once a lucrative business amongst black Africans during the slave era, Africans abandoned agriculture to sell human beings for money! Just like oil is the major source of Nigerian's income today, selling human beings was an economy during the slave era.
Socio-cultural hiccups happened, parents could sell their own kids, and brothers could do away with their siblings for money. Not only money now ooo, human beings were exchanged for liquor (BEER) salt, ornamental goods etc.
Human beings could be exchanged for this, in the chain of sales, Africans were the sellers, the British were the traders, Americans were the buyers. (Oh Lord help me)
Until 1807 when the Britain abolished the trade, Africans made money from selling their own blood exchanging them for money.
Parents could give away their kids for salt and beer, wait, there was even a union, Association of Slave Sellers 😂, River Niger district of which our dear Nigerians were part of.
They were so involved into this that Britain had to set up Squadron to confiscate the ships that converged our own people by our own people.
It took the intervention of Squadrons for Africa to face Agriculture and leave selling their own people!
We are our own disease.
And tomorrow, somebody will come and say the whites should be blamed, the whites are wicked, and try to use a movie to play with our mind.
Until your bring a more convincing evidence, my stand on the issue remains, Africa was and is their own trouble. I have no ill towards those who bought, Africans were willing to sell, will their be a buyer without a seller?
It's me
Chines Zoe.
And this is an excerpt of the work I am on.
"My trouble with African Culture"
This will constitute Chapter one, "THE BLESSING OF THE WHITE MEN IN AFRICA"
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