When Veronica’s best friend was going to the big city to become a famous doctor, she could have gone as well but she refused. She refused because she had ‘no qualifications’ and she said ‘The city is for you’, because Veronica was a woman she didn’t have the same opportunities that Okeke had. She was socially conditioned, she believed that because she was a woman she had a responsibility to stay with her family, no matter how badly she was treated.
Veronica’s best friend Okeke was born in the same village, Okeke had a better chance in life because he was male. Okeke lived in a hut with his parents and an uncle which stayed there, when Okeke first started secondary school at the age of twelve. Okeke wants to become a doctor but first he needs to get a scholarship. After years of hard work and studying he does finally get his scholarship and settles in the city.
After years of war’ Okeke returns to the village to see Veronica. He was appalled of the village, as he has been living in relative luxury. Veronica had a baby in her early twenties and married a man from a different village, she says ‘you don’t know him, he is not of our people’. She is squatting over a smoking fire as the baby is tied to her back. She is alone as she tells Okeke ‘you heard that my parents died?’ and her brothers and sisters having gone too. She is like an outsider to the rest of the village but proud. Okeke realises how different they are, and how lucky he is. Okeke has not yet married because ‘all the other women are only interested in money and cars’. Later Veronica’s baby died and so did her husband and not long after so did she. Veronica’s life was a terrible existence, Okeke couldn’t help her because she was stubborn. ‘There is nothing left for me in this world’ Veronica accepted a women’s role in society. Her “spint had been broken” by the life she has lived, and was exhausted and worn out after all them years of hard work
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I think the writer is trying to explain how hard it is to live in a third world country as a woman. He shows the brutality of living in a poor part of a third world country. A man has more of a chance of getting qualifications and a better job than a woman because a man has less responsibilities.
Okeke’s life compared to mine has been terrible, he had to go through a lot of pain and had to fight continually for his right to go to college. He has seen his best friend being brutally beaten by her father, and has also lived in extremely poor conditions, Which we do not encounter very much in England. The thing that shows Okeke’s life is so much different than mine, is that he has been through a barbaric war and he has seen his family and friends die one by one. Yet within his country he is considered well off because he has moved away from the village and become well educated. Even within third world countries there’s a huge gap between what is considered luxurious there and what is considered fairly normal for us here in England. Even very poor people in England can be educated and so on because our society usually doesn’t insist that women stay in the home. He also heard on the news that his best friends husband had been taken away by rebels and viciously beaten up.
My conclusion is that the village that Okeke and Veronica live is completely different to the way city people live now. There are many differences in different country’s some are first world and third world for example Africa and England.
By Robert Carter
