Come All and Have Your Mind Colonized by Ngugi

          Good evening, fellow bloggers and readers!  Salama to you all!  I was unable to find the translation for hello in Gikuyu, an oral language of Kenya.   Not just any oral language, it is the same language that Ngugi wa Thiong'o speaks and works for.  The Kenyan author gave me fantastic insight on the life of Africans affected by white colonization.  Folks, what I'm about to discuss will shock and disturb you.  As an educated person born in the U.S., English has been my first language.  For the Africans, my language has caused pain and sorrow, on many levels.
         A recurring motif for Ngugi's writing has been the affects that white European colonization has on the minds of black Africans.  One example is how the Africans had to leave their home and travel to Europe to receive an education.  It wasn't an education pertaining to their society or language, but rather the white European society and their language.  It would be infuriating to me if I had to travel to some other country and learn their language, in order to be considered an accepted intellectual.  Many Africans learned English simply to try to create a new written language for their mother-tongue.  I had so much respect for them when I heard this!  I thought, "Way to stick it to the man!"  However, this education had a very negative, emotional impact on the Africans.  Ngugi once said:  "See the paradox:  the possibility of using mother-tongues provokes a tone of levity in phrases like 'a dreadful betrayal' and 'a guilty feeling'; but that of foreign languages produces a categorical positive embrace."  He later explains the colonization of the European mindset in these European educated Africans:  "The fact is that all of us who opted for European languages...accepted that fatalistic logic to a greater or lesser degree."  Did a chill go down your spine as well?  That's not even the tip of the iceberg:  at school, Africans would be beaten for speaking in their mother-tongue.  Now, knowing this, Ngugi takes on the colonial mindset and criticizes those who give in to such beliefs.
          I preferred Ngugi's story titled "Wedding at the Cross" for a few reasons.  I was able to see how people are often forced to live in synchretism (NOTE:  Having contrasting belief systems, yet believing both.).  Poor Miriamu watched her husband become a lost soul amongst the European's graveyard of Africans.  This reminds me of watching someone you love changing into a different person, right before your eyes, but there is nothing you can do to stop it.  Well, she tries by going along with it, which had to have been very difficult for her (psychologically).  I was very happy that she told Mr. Livingston no at the alter, freeing her mind from the looming threat of colonization!  I avoid threats of colonization that lurk in my Cosmo and People magazines:  those ever-thinning, cosmetic surgery, yes, Botox-fiending celebs of Hollywood!  Ahh!  
           However, I did find myself having more of a connection with Ngugi's "Minutes of Glory."  Beatrice and Nyaguthu both had many transitions dealing with who they are as a person.  I, myself, have done the same.  After I broke up with my high school boyfriend, I was just heading into college.  I had to stop grieving and evaluate myself, not all the memories.  What was I going to do now?  What career should I make for myself?  What kind of goals are important to me?  All of these things helped shape me into the (I would say good-hearted) hard-working person that I am today.  I have nowhere to go but up in this world and I wish that Beatrice would have given herself the chance to do that!  Seriously, she spit and was arrested, what an ending.
          Ngugi, you have opened my eyes to the struggles of the inner self.  How is that people so often form this power over others?  It is upsetting and I am glad you are writing about it!  I was a little worried about the gender bias that often left women in the story deriving power from prostitution, but it was an actual occurrence at the time.   I will continue to read your stories because I don't mind the positive colonization of my mind!