How do Africans manage to maintain their cultural identity? Essay

This alliance between Ibo and Yorubas is especially apparent in the relationships between the women. For instance, as a new wife in Lagos, neighbouring women show Nnu Ego the best places to market for cheap, fresh foods. When Nnaife loses his job after his British employers abscond due to World War II, the neighbouring women help Nnu Ego find cigarettes and other goods to stock a roadside retail stand in order for her to earn extra money. Also, as according to cultural customs, the women help one another deliver their babies. The women especially rely on each other when the men work away from home and when they are drafted into the British army. With Nnaife away, Nnu Ego has the help of neighbouring women to feed her children and as an overall support system. When the British army commanders force her to leave the quarters, Cordelia helps Nnu Ego move her children and belongings into new housing. Unable to read English, Nnu Ego relies on Mama Abby to read Nnaife's letters from the army and deposit his allotment checks into the bank.
Nnu Ego and her fellow neighbours experience the vicissitudes of a changing society without losing the essence of their traditions. While the Africans are buffeted about by the overarching turmoil and conflicts of the British, the Germans, and the other Western states, the Africans manage to maintain their cultural identity. As dictated by the rules of imperialism, the Africans, especially those most vulnerable like Nnu Ego and her children, suffer economic hardship and nearly starve to death most of the time, without knowing what the conflicts of the 'Western powers' are about. Nnu Ego asks her friend, "But, Ato, on whose side are we? Are we for the Germans or the Japanese, or the other one, the British?" Ato answers back, "I think we are on the side of the British. They own Nigeria you know." Nnu Ego responds back, "And Ibuza too?" "I don't know about that," Ato confessed. The implication of this exchange demonstrates that while the British have imperialistic economic power over the country, the cultural essence of the people can remain untouched.
In his critical work, Decolonising the Mind The Politics of Language in African Literature, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o posits that language is the conveyor of culture within a society. Having made the personal, artistic socio-political decision to only write in his native African language, Wa Thiong'o theorizes that the enculturation of English on African citizens is symbolic of the state of neo-imperialism, and that the 'peasantry' or 'proletariat' class is the keeper of traditional values. It is for his need to communicate with the masses that Wa Thiong'o decided to write in Gikuyu. Yet, his position raises the interesting point of how imperialized countries can reconcile having the younger generations raised as English writers and speakers while trying to recapture the cultural purity of the past. Also, others would question the feasibility of removing English on the grounds that the world is now an even