This post is a review of the book from my perspective as a Nigerian living in Lagos, Nigeria.
Characters and Plot
The Wikipedia entry on We the Living already contains the plot for the book.
The three main characters are: Kira Argounova, Leo Kovalensky and Andrei Taganov.
The book starts off with Kira on a train with her family returning back to Petrograd.
It describes the living standards in the country at the year 1922 and how bad things were in Russia.
The Proletarian are the bottom class before the revolution but after the revolution become pushed up the ranks.
Kira falls in love with Leo but when he falls sick and is nearing death, she has to go to Andrei who is a party member and a member of the secret police and becomes his mistress.
The book take you on a journey detailing how the world around Kira crumbles until finally, she loses everything
In desperation, she tries to escape Russia and is shot at the border.
Nigerian Context
This book mirrors life in Nigeria at the moment.
This year, the government closed the border and the prices of food stuff when up.
The quality of life went down.
Seeing similarities with Russia at the time helps you know that the world moves on.
Impact
During the course of reading the book, I would fall into despair.
However, as the book progressed, I realized that unlike Kira who wanted to become and engineer, I was one.
Unlike her, I wasn’t locked in.
I could travel.
Most importantly, I had the web.
Conclusion
As the future of Nigeria becomes in doubt, most people will be looking for how to escape.
This book showed my how bad it could get but filled me with ideas on how to protect myself in the years ahead.
It is sort of a requirement to have finished the Digital Currencies course in the group although not a hard one.
The success of the group in getting people into this course was one reason for the large number of Nigerians that would take the course as seen from the image below:
Student Demographics MOOC 12
So I would start the course with all the excitement I needed.
Burial
My Grandfather Burial Poster
My grandfather had died in June this year. However, despite the fact that my mother was his first child, the burial couldn’t hold until the month of September when his first son (her junior brother) had given his approval.
The stress and strain from that period would make me regret signing up for the course.
However, I couldn’t withdraw from the course without losing face so I made a decision to stay.
By the end of September, we had concluded the funeral which would put a deep hole in the pockets of all the members of the family.
In my culture, its the grandchildren that bury the grandfather.
October
In the month of October I would finish up from work.
The coding program where I was teaching would be rounding up.
I was tired and needed time to recover from a stressful September.
Grief affects everyone differently. Until my grandfather’s funeral was concluded I was fine.
The finality of it all really got to me.
November
In the month of November, I would really zone in on the course.
I was way behind so I had to take time off work. I didn’t leave the house for most of the month.
It was a time to mourn and drown myself in work.
December
The month of December would start with me fearing that I would fail the course.
This is due to the large amount of materials that had to be covered.
I could only go over the materials once.
Being a perfectionist, this would leave me jittery.
I would write the final exams exactly 3 months after I started the course on December 9th.
Once I was done, I would have to wait for the results.
Seeing the results brought me joy.
I had passed with a score of 78%.
Could I have done better?
Yes.
But I am grateful that all that work was not in vain.
Conclusion
Being successful with the course, I have a chance to do a Masters with the University of Nicosia.
