Skywalker

I was at the British Museum yesterday & my blood boiled nonstop throughout the 40 mins experience. Before I share my experience with the Nigerian section, let me tell you about the most chilling view that upset me the most. This is the tree of life and it is from Mozambique 🇲🇿 The Mozambican Civil War, which started 2 years after they gained independence from Portugal was a 15-year conflict that occurred between May 30, 1977 and October 4, 1992. Although masked as an internal civil war, it was in fact a proxy war between the Soviet Union and the United States. This war claimed over a million lives. After the war, a project called "Transforming Arms Into Tools" launched and it was aimed at incentivizing citizens who had arms from the war to lay them down, in exchange for tools for farming. Over 600,000 weapons got collected and dismantled. So, 4 artists took parts from all of these dismantled weapons and weaved it into this 3-metre standing "Tree Of Life". Somehow, it got "installed" in the British Museum in 2005. Relics and symbols of cultural heritage that shouldn't have left our homes - sit in glasses as attraction latches, for a show to the same people who came raiding. This should not have left the soil of Mozambique - it is a symbol of pain, agonizing deaths. It has the fusion of a million blood enmeshed in these arms. This doesn't belong here.