Weep Not, Child

9 Pages 2249 Words

ya rising up to demand that the settler occupation of the land, lack of opportunity, and increasingly high taxes cease. The main complaint of the Kenyan’s was that Britain was reserving all the rich, fertile land for their own use leaving the natives with little land of their own to farm. Ngugi relays this sentiment clearly in the beginning of his book when he talks about the “green” land which the white settlers inhabit. In doing this they were causing the British to become uneasy, especially because a faction of one of the tribes, the Mau Mau, had become the leaders in this attempt at independence. Weep Not, Child is the story of Njoroge, who is a young boy growing up in Kenya. He is growing up in the midst of the Mau Mau rebellion which took place between the Africans and the British colonials who ruled that nation. While fighting a guerilla war with the Mau Mau, the British decided to put the colony of Kenya in a state of emergency. In doing so the British applied a firm grip to the throat of the uprising. Even thought the British were able to stop the Mau Mau rebellion, they were not able to stop the tide of nationalist and independence feelings among the remaining tribal groups in the Kenyan colony. The winds of change had begun, and the British would now have to address the concerns of the African tribes and create a more equal society.
The economic conditions in Africa during British colonialism were very unfair. The wealthy, powerful leaders of the African tribal groups would join with the settlers in the hopes that they would be remembered by the colonial government. They sold out their own people and made it clear that money and control was more important then being true to their people. When this occurred, the poor African communities ...