Comparisons

I probably shouldn’t but I can’t help comparing Nigeria with Ghana. Granted, I’ve only been in Nigeria for a week now and I spent several months in Ghana so I don’t have a really clear picture, most likely not of either country.

But thus far I found Lagos to be similar to Accra, in size, in some foods, in buildings – at least from looking out the car window. I’ve only been in one neighborhood and explored around the part of Lagos referred to as ‘the island’ but there’s a slight difference here than in Accra. In Accra, new wealthy houses surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire, are built right next to small, rickety, poor housing with open doorways and windows, and little or no evidence of electricity let alone water.

In Nigeria, the class lines seem to be more segregated like in the u.s., where entire sections of housing are either full of huge mansions and stores; or neighborhoods of street vendors and small structures that optimistically can be referred to as shacks.

The food here seems to be much healthier with a greater variety of vegetables, legumes, and beans.

Sadly, the presence of armed guards - skinny men in military garb and black steel-toed (maybe) boots dangling long, ugly weapons across their bodies - is much more prevalent here than in Accra. These guards make it obvious where the money is lurking, as they are outside certain gated neighborhoods or 'fancy' restaurants and ostentacious buildings

Even here, 60+ years after liberation, 500 years after european colonization, looting, enslavement and genocide, the structure of the conquerer stands and dictates as thoroughly as if the English were still perched in their castles directing the flow of oil, gold, every other resource still laden in Mother Earth here.

How do a people recover - let alone Mother Earth - from such devastating violence and indoctrination? Especially after the sweet trick of winning liberation, only to be swiftly shoved back into the grip of colonization through either bribery or murder of such leaders.

England would have never given up their source of great wealth without ensuring they had set up a more covert method of control of those resources.

But western powers have had centuries to hone their destructive, violent means to wealth, superiority, and domination; to respond with greater inhumanity and force to humans fighting to regain their liberation and humanity.

And despite this psychopathic configuration, there are still beautiful souls who see clearly and will never give up the fight to create the world where everyone and everything are valued, protected, honored, and cared for.