A Few Images of Precolonial West African WomenBelow are some images Sugabelly put up on FB a while ago that I’m reposting here with her graceful permission. While writing about Nigerian historical dramas, I thought the point I was trying to make there would go down better if everyone saw actual images of African women from the precolonial days. Not everyone (Africans included) has seen images of those who were here before us depicted in a positive manner. After seeing this, you’ll understand why I was upset that the women in Apaadi did not have the kind of badass hairstyles shown in the images below.
I also had to include the inevitable images of women doing their hair,
Which reminds me I was debating with my fellow youth corpers yesterday and got into an argument with a man who claimed to know his African history but still opened his mouth to say that the first multi-storey house in Nigeria was built by the Europeans in Badagry. I vehemently disagreed with him and argued that Nigerians, West Africans and Africans had been building multi-storey houses before the Europeans even dreamt of building one here. The argument then changed to ‘yeah our ancestors may have built tall houses but they didn’t build stairs to lead up to higher floors’. How does that even make sense? How can someone build a tall two storey building and then forget to build a way to reach higher floors? *Shaking my head* I’ve concluded that there are different versions of history, everyone knows that but for the African, there is colonised history and uncolonised history. Learn your uncolonised histories please! Yes, Africans slept on beds before they were colonised. Yes, Africans wore clothes before they were colonised. Yes, Africans built multi-storey buildings before they were colonised. Yes, Africans had complex belief systems and religions before Islam and Christianity reached the continent, they were NOT worshipping any devils. And yes, Africans did crazy things when they fell in love before they were colonised.
