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Bunkering
12019-05-01T12:04:22-07:00Kiisha Hilliardd91712a2483a528aa121e75983c3454ac050719f105811plain2019-05-01T12:04:22-07:00Kiisha Hilliardd91712a2483a528aa121e75983c3454ac050719f"The term bunkering encompasses all acts involving oil theft, including diversion and smuggling of oil and unauthorized loading of ships. One common process requires tapping into an oil pipeline and transporting the oil elsewhere to be sold internationally or refined locally." - From the Council on Foreign Relations
Nnedi Okorafor’s story “Spider the Artist” found in her collection Kabu-Kabu focuses on an oil village where pipelines run throughout the area. The main character identifies the residents of the village as “pipeline people” because the influence of oil is so strong in the village.
While oil plays an important part of their culture, the residents living in the village are not able to access the oil. Western oil companies worked with the government to control the resident’s access to the pipeline to deter them from bunkering (link). The problem that emerges is that these western oil companies are colonizing the pipelines which are not theirs.
The ownership of the pipeline belongs to the villagers because they have lived with the oil pipelines for generations. These companies coming in to take control of the oil screams colonization because they are taking the resources from the residents and denying access to them. The government and western oil companies take it further to secure that the power stays with them by implementing the Zombies to “combat pipeline bunkering” (104). These bots are like the officers or military regime left in place to keep the villagers in line. The main goal of the bots is to keeps the locals away from their indigenous resources so that the foreigners will continue to have access to it. As time goes along, the main character Eme begins to establish a bond with one of the bots. Readers can begin to see that using enforcers on the ground does not always because face to face interactions with the locals can break the othering that the western companies rely on to fulfill their mission.
It is easy to take over someone’s land or resources when you view them as savage, uneducated, or believe they do not know how to use them. However, it becomes harder to persuade someone, or in this case something else, to take someone’s resources when they have an in-person connection. The othering that Western oil companies rely on to make people view the locals as inadequate for controlling their own oil is broken down.
When the bond is made between Udide, the bot, and Eme the foundation is created for a duo that will fight back against the colonization of resources. It also shows that othering a group of people can only be successful when the dominant group is present to continually spread the stereotypes or false information about the group to the greater population.
