A different perspective...

Hi classmates,

I’m going to start by saying why did I choose this theme… Actually, it is pretty simple and the main reason is because I have always thought about it and it is really fascinating to imagine how human beings for all times have tried to dominate others, which is reflected in how Europeans colonized Africa. But … what is colonization? I believe most of you know it, however I will leave you this video to make the concept clearer (just in case) 

    

Africa lost its traditions, customs, change its way of living, since people who have never taken care of them arrived to the territory to change something that has been already formed, as well as what happened here in our continent, where people who believed themselves as superior (whites) expropriated the resources and what’s more important, expropriated people´s life, only with the purpose of increasing their capital.  If we think about it, take this and relate it with all the content we have covered, we can come up with the idea that everything is based on CRISIS… why? Because of the simple reason that when this people came to this territory change indigenous way of living and those alterations forced by whites made feel people lost, in view of the fact that  new conceptions were imposed.

Obviously, power countries are the ones that create an image about the underdevelopment countries, due to the simple reason that with that they can say “ohhhh they need help, we should help them…”.Basically, everything is a perfect show.

Moving on, I started asking myself what about present? Are we still being colonized? Let me tell you, that yeees, nevertheless the term has changed and nowadays is called neocolonialism, which has to do with the existence of a domination regarding economics and cultural aspects from the power countries to the underdeveloped countries, maybe we can call it like the modern way of dominating.

Now, the question that comes to my mind is the following: has been a full decolonization? Maybe, even though we do not see on streets people with arms trying to take over us, this domination is invisible, unseen, for instance it is known that our country depends on other countries, such as EEUU, to develop and increases economically, and this has been a strategy from the powers to handle all.  Furthermore, one clearer example could be that so many people in our country celebrate several holidays that are not ours as Halloween, which is a festivity of EEUU.  Therefore, people imitate other things from other parts forgetting about their roots and nationals customs, lamentably we are being dominated unconsciously and as a consequence everybody do the same things and we lose our identity!!!

To wrap up , from my point of view thanks books like Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe , which, by the way, is still popular and attractive, we are able to do this sort of analysis and think about this kinds of situations.

Also, it is quite relevant that we, as future teachers, think about our educational system and try to add to our teaching more contents from our roots, for instance many students do not feel represented by the English culture or even are not interested in learning the language, however, we can change that by combining the language with our own context and with that, there will be a meaningful learning.

As  a final thought  :) 

“The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now, he has won out brothers and out clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have falln apart. ” 

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart