Dialectical Anthropology (2007) 31:253–262
Springer 2007

DOI 10.1007/s10624-007-9017-6

Flora Nwapa and Oguta’s Lake Goddess

Artistic Liberty and Ethnography

SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN
New York, NY, USA (E-mail: [email protected])

Abstract. The home of Nigeria’s renowned Marxist anthropologist, Ikenna Nzimiro,

and of the country’s ‘‘first lady of letters,’’ Flora Nwapa, is Oguta, a sprawling com-
mercial centre situated on Oguta Lake near the confluence of the rivers Niger and
Urashi. Both authors have described their home town in their own diverging perspec-
tives. While Nzimiro’s account focused on the town’s political organization and ques-
tions of state formation and authority, Flora Nwapa was a novelist concerned primarily
with women’s issues. She engaged her home town’s custom and religious beliefs centring
on the pre-eminent lake goddess, Ogbuide, in her quest to champion womanhood. This
paper examines how the novelist took certain artistic liberties and critically decon-
structed local custom in her cause to promote women. While Nwapa’s primary concern
was women’s reproductive rights and welfare, she also cherished Oguta culture, voiced
her critique with caution, and was increasingly critical of foreign intrusions.

Keywords: Flora Nwapa, African literature, African women, African religion, Fiction,
Ethnography, Nigeria

Introduction

I am offering this paper as a tribute to the late Ikenna Nzimiro, author

of several sociological and anthropological studies of his hometown,
Oguta, whose political organization he described as one of ‘‘Four Niger
States.’’1 Nzimiro, like Flora Nwapa hailed from Oguta, and with this
presentation I am honoring both the late scholar and the late novelist.
They shared the same cultural background, albeit interpreting their
hometown from different angles and taking to different forms of
expression.
Flora Nwapa, Nigeria’s ‘‘First Lady of Letters,’’2 was born and
raised in Oguta3 and revealed much about Oru-Igbo custom and beliefs.
An insider educated abroad, the artist and novelist had her own agenda.
She valued African culture, but also expressed doubts and concerns
about her own society, its beliefs, and values. Nwapa’s attitude towards
her own culture was dynamic and her views on local beliefs and their
significance for women have changed throughout her life and oeuvre.4
254 SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN

Oguta’s preeminent lake goddess Uhammiri/Ogbuide and her

importance to women figure prominently in much of Nwapa’s work. In
her early novels, Efuru and Idu, she refers to this goddess as ‘‘woman of
the lake.’’5 Moreover, the author may have questioned the goddess’
power to give to people what they desire most – children – and instead,
celebrated women’s economic empowerment. Later in life and especially
in her last manuscript, The Lake Goddess, Nwapa became increasingly
critical of foreign intrusions and their detrimental impact on the African
family, identity, and womanhood.6

Nwapa’s Attitude Toward the Lake Goddess’ Preeminent Gift – Fertility

Ogbuide, the goddess of Oguta Lake – is the major reference point in the
daily life of Oguta. She is the mythical mother of the Oru people. Their
farming cycle and the timing of their cultural activities revolve around
the flooding and receding of the lake and its adjacent rivers.7 The water
goddess assumes an important position in the pantheon of Igbo deities
described by Chinwe Achebe and others.8 The related ideals of balance
and a structured equilibrium of gender as fundamental to life, are
locally expressed in the notion of the divine pair Uhammiri9 and Urashi.
In the belief of the villagers, the lake goddess and her husband give
children and wealth. Nwapa, a highly educated urbanite, questioned
customary beliefs and the equation of children and wealth in her earlier
work, but later in life widened the scope of her concerns for women.

Flora Nwapa’s Ambivalence Towards Uhammiri and Her Gifts

In her first novel, Flora Nwapa depicted the lake goddess and the
significance she held for her people, particularly women, in a slightly
different character than that endorsed by the locals. Nwapa’s decision to
digress from traditional views was certainly not based on ignorance, for
she was well versed in the beliefs of her people. Nwapa voiced a highly
educated10 critique of local custom.
The heroines of Efuru and Idu were wealthy and either childless or
had only one daughter. With the exception of her last manuscript The
Lake Goddess,11 and of One Is Enough,12 all of Nwapa’s novels focus on
highly successful women, who accumulate wealth other than offspring.
That in itself is an issue among rural peoples whose deepest desire,
greatest pride, and wealth is having many children. In this agrarian
 FLORA NWAPA AND OGUTA’S LAKE GODDESS 255

society, children were regarded as congruent with wealth, and both gifts
were equally credited to the lake goddess.
We must understand Nwapa’s artistic choices in connection with the
established norms and values of Oguta society and the extent of their
contradiction to modern/Western standards – standards that Nwapa
had come to appreciate. Even today, there is a lot of pressure on Oguta
women to get married and bear as many children as early as possible,
before considering money making, entering a business venture, or
starting a career. This mind-set continues despite modernization and
education. The childless heroines of Nwapa’s early novels faced difficult
lives despite their wealth and successes in business. Their problems
resulted from the traditional child-oriented mind-set. Moreover, these
women were plagued by unhappy marriages and circumstances beyond
their control. In their despair they turned to Uhammiri, a source of
consolation and empowerment.
Some readers have interpreted Nwapa as suggesting that either having
children, or economic or professional success, were necessarily opposite
goals for Oguta women – as they are in Western society. Furthermore
these interpretations13 suggest that Nwapa described the devotion to the
lake goddess as necessarily contradictory to motherhood; that
motherhood and personal success were mutually exclusive; or that the
goddess might even take children away. None of this of course is true.
• First, wealth and children were traditionally conceived as one.
• Second, in ordinary Oguta life, not only possessed priestesses but,
above all, inherited male priests, addressed the goddess and prayed
for children.
• Third, Nwapa ultimately did not wish to support the missionaries’
attempts to demolish Oguta’s revered lake goddess.

The Church Versus Pagan Gods and Goddesses

In her first novel, Efuru, Nwapa portrayed the goddess herself as childless
and, as a result, perhaps unable to grant women children. But we must be
very careful not take Nwapa’s message at face value, because the novelist’s
art is fiction, her message highly codified, and her criticism aimed at the
values inherent in the gendered power structures of Oguta society. To this
end, Nwapa deconstructed the image of the lake goddess.
Ironically, Nwapa’s deconstruction of Oguta’s lake goddess echoes
the preaching of missionaries and evangelists, who insist on their – male
256 SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN

– God as the only one and who, moreover, aim at reducing and
demolishing pre-Christian religious beliefs, such as in the mother water
goddess, through refutation and derision.14 V.I. Mudimbe observed
that: ‘‘We have three moments, rather than types, of violence in
missionary language. Theoretically they are expressed in the concepts of
derision, refutation-demonstration, and orthodoxy-conformity.’’15
Nwapa’s first novels voiced her critique of local beliefs in the form of
doubts about the lake goddess’ connection to fertility. In her children’s
book Mammywater,16 Nwapa went a step further, telling us that the
lake goddess ‘‘takes away children.’’
Demonizing the Other is a known twin to the colonial tactic of deri-
sion.17 The dangers emanating from such tactics are evident in incidents
such as the ‘‘mermaid scare stampede’’ at an Enugu school, where nine
children died, in 1985.18 Nwapa – perhaps unknowingly – played with fire
when she undermined the lake goddess’ life giver and protector qualities
and, perhaps unintentionally, corroborated the efforts of missionaries to
subvert indigenous admiration for the divine woman believed to grant to
people their utmost desire – offspring – and instead, emphasized women’s
personal success, and demonized the water goddess.
Yet, while Nwapa’s ideals of Western-style female empowerment
primarily via monetary success may be indebted to her Western education,
the novelist did not champion Westernization at the expense of the values
dear to her people. Nwapa’s heroines were empowered by a goddess who
supported her followers beyond – not instead of – childbearing. In an
interview recorded in 1988, Nwapa asserted that ‘‘water is the life-giving
thing.’’19 Furthermore, she was horrified by the words of her parish priest,
who attempted to discredit the goddess Ogbuide as a savior in times of war
to whom the people expressed their gratitude.20 Nwapa’s deconstruction
of Ogbuide’s gift – fertility – must thus be read with utmost caution.

Nwapa’s Caution

Efuru, in the novel of the same name, apparently believed that

Uhammiri did not have children of her own, and at a superficial glance,
she may have even doubted the goddess’ ability to give children to
humans. But it is also conceivable that Efuru – and by extension Nwapa
herself – doubted the sole benefits of the divine gift of fertility to
women.21 What she really questioned was the widespread, albeit faulty
charge that successful, wealthy women are necessarily childless.
 FLORA NWAPA AND OGUTA’S LAKE GODDESS 257

Flora Nwapa had her own concerns and agenda, particularly on

women’s issues. In pursuit of her cause, she played with, deconstructed,
and challenged the basic tenor of local beliefs. Yet, by questioning the
child-giving aspect of the water goddess/woman, she implicitly also
questioned the benefits of children to woman herself – an absurd idea to
both Christians and worshipers of Ogbuide alike. Nwapa pointed out that
pursuing both children and a business, or a career poses a serious dilemma
to modern women worldwide.22 She ended Efuru as follows: ‘‘She dreamt
of the woman of the lake. ...She gave women beauty and wealth but she
had no child. ...Why then did women worship her?’’23 With these words,
Nwapa actually corroborated indigenous views of the lake goddess who
can give to humans even more than children, such as in the words of an old
ferry woman ‘‘Uhammiri gives children and everything else.’’24 Most
importantly, Efuru’s dream and pondering urge the reader to ask: ‘‘Isn’t a
woman a valued human being by herself, an asset even without a child?’’
A stout promoter of women’s rights, Nwapa at times challenged and
deconstructed local beliefs for her own ends. However, we must be
careful not to take this rhetoric at face value, for it would indeed be
highly simplified, if not preposterous, to assume that worshipping the
goddess Uhammiri required a woman’s childlessness, or that ‘‘in Igbo
cosmology, the deity Uhamiri can grant women wealth but never
children,’’ as suggested by Gay Wilentz.25
Nwapa was initially somewhat ambivalent on this issue:
• First of all, Efuru’s vision of the childless divine woman was a
dream.
• Second, Efuru never explicitly stated that the goddess prevented
her from conceiving.26
• Third, Nwapa voiced her skepticism of the lake goddess’ gift of
fertility with caution. The doubts and allegations against the
goddess Uhammiri and against her heroine Efuru – a successful
childless woman – were voiced by a liar, a malicious, and deviant
character. Efuru’s enemies – like evangelists and the parish priest –
condoned the goddess and her worshippers, and charged that only
barren women worship Uhammiri. When Efuru chose to follow the
lake goddess, some women gossiped behind her back,27 but Nwapa
cautioned against adopting their statements at face value and
introduced doubts:
• First, the very character voicing charges against Efuru was quite
negative, in contrast to the positive heroine, who was now worship-
ing the lake goddess.
258 SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN

• Second, Omirima, the woman who disputed Uhammiri’s power to

give children, and who condemned Efuru for worshipping her, was
the same person, who later wrongfully accused Efuru of adultery
and thereby destroyed her second marriage.
• Third, after the death of her child from the previous marriage,
Efuru’s second marriage was her last and only acceptable chance
to conceive again. Destroying that marriage also destroyed soci-
ety’s hope for another child.
• Fourth, Omirima, who was malicious and not highly respected,
accused the heroine Efuru of something she did not do. By exten-
sion, the woman equally wrongfully invented a conflict of interests
between motherhood and a woman’s success in life.
• Fifth, this faulty dichotomy was paired with wrongful accusations
against the lake goddess Uhammiri of not having or not giving
children, causing childlessness, or even killing children – all
negative ideas introduced and promoted by foreign evangelists.28

The Issue of Marital Strife Versus Idealized Balance

Nwapa acknowledged that all Oguta people were the goddess’ children,
when she told us in Efuru: ‘‘Uhamiri, the most beautiful woman, your
children have arrived safely, we are grateful to you.’’29 But then, the
novelist immediately introduced doubts, as this greeting was offered by
travelers in the wrong place: not on the Lake Uhammiri, but instead, on
the River Urashi. The river god is the lake goddess’s husband, and
according to Nwapa, the couple was constantly quarreling.30
Here again, Nwapa’s story differed from her culture’s ideals. In both
Igbo and Ibibio cosmologies, as in many other African traditions, the
notion of balance and the structured opposition of gender equilibrium
were important. Oguta’s divine pair of water deities embodied the ideal
of conjugal harmony and the power of procreation – not the destructive
forces of marital strive.

Expanding the Issue Beyond Local Custom

In her later work, Nwapa explored the entwined themes of women’s

personal conflicts and their wider struggles, under the goddess’ auspices.
In Never Again,31 the lake goddess saved the people of Oguta from
complete destruction by the invading Nigerian soldiers, a belief locally
 FLORA NWAPA AND OGUTA’S LAKE GODDESS 259

upheld to this day.32 The heroines of Nwapa’s postwar novels, One Is

Enough and Women Are Different,33 again were true daughters of
Oguta’s lake goddess, set to accumulate wealth and take control of their
own lives. Ona, the heroine of The Lake Goddess, is aided and
empowered by Ogbuide, like the heroines of Nwapa’s earlier novels. But
unlike Efuru and Idu, Ona has many children who live on.
The wider conflicts of women who cannot live up to society’s expec-
tations and must chose between either wealth and a career or children, are
only dawning in Efuru and Idu, novels set in an historical time when – at
least theoretically and according to local ideals – wealth and children were
still one and when a woman, who could not fulfill society’s expectations,
was not only unhappy, but also perceived as a potential threat.
But then, even an unusual woman, whose reproductive behavior
contradicted the norm, could still find a niche in society and worship the
goddess without being declared ‘‘mad.’’
Yet, the smoldering conflict of interest between localized individuals and
imposed global power structures soars beyond gender in The Lake Goddess.
Here, women’s fertility versus childlessness is no longer the main issue.
Nothing is normal any more. The issue of women’s potential personal
conflicts, of childlessness versus customary reproductive norms has shifted
to the issue of an existential and identity crises affecting everybody and
threatening people’s state of mind. The heroine is no longer extraordinary,
but crazy, and society around her has also gone mad. This madness clearly
is a result of foreign intrusions, undermining local custom and the economic
and emotional foundations of people’s lives.
To fully devote herself to the goddess, Ona – like Efuru – must finally
abandon her husband and live in celibacy.34 Here, Nwapa again took an
artistic liberty: neither was celibacy nor abandoning one’s spouse a
requirement for worshipping Uhammiri.35 Nwapa’s assumed require-
ment of ritual chastity must be contextualized with Catholicism, and as
yet another allusion to a world gone mad as a result of conflicting
religious and behavioral codes.
Ona’s father, Mr. Mgbada, represents customary order against the
disruptions and uncertainties of foreign intrusions, beliefs, and social
change. He is the only person, apart from the goddess, who never ceases
supporting Ona – and by extension African women. He does not regard
her as ‘‘mad,’’ but rather as gifted. Even before Ona was born, he
discovered with the aid of a diviner that Ona herself was a gift of
Ogbuide, and named her Ona, ‘‘gift of the goddess,’’ – as in a song
during the deity’s worship.36
260 SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN

Conclusion

Ona/woman herself – and her fertility – is a gift of the lake goddess; she
is not ‘‘a problem.’’37 Nwapa’s message is clear: The lake goddess has
endowed Ona/woman with many children, but also with special gifts
besides fertility: the potentials of wealth and the powers of prophecy
and healing. She – Ona/Ogbuide/woman – may independently succeed in
life, and she is a source of healing and inspiration to all human beings
suffering from the ills and madness of modern society worldwide.
In the changing world of contemporary Oguta, the goddess – and by
extension (African) woman – is constantly pushed back and encroached
upon by alien ideas, problems, and forces. Nwapa accounts for the
destructive forces of globalization, the onslaught of foreign powers and
their religions attempting to push Uhammiri’s children into the abyss of
derangement, to rob the deity of her benevolence, and to deny her
people both children and wealth.
Nwapa has throughout her oeuvre invoked the goddess, Ogbuide. In
The Lake Goddess, she finally reemerges in her original glory. Her
powers and mysteries shine, once again, to brighten women’s path. Yet,
when the lake goddess finally appears with her image fully restored in
Nwapa’s last novel, the messenger, who invoked her, has left the land,
crossed the river, and joined her ancestors to live on.

Notes
1
Ikenna Nzimiro, Family and Kinship in Ibo Land: A Study in Acculturation Proc-
cess. Cologne, Germany: University of Cologne, 1952. Ikenna Nzimiro, ‘‘Oguta.’’
Nigeria Magazine, 80, March 1964, pp. 41–43. Ikenna Nzimiro, Studies in Ibo Politi-
cal Systems: Chieftaincy and Politics in Four Niger States. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1972.
2
Flora Nwapa was first recognized as ‘‘Africa’s First Lady of Letters’’ by Ada Eg-
bufor in African Profiles International. March/April 1993: 34.
3
Oguta is a commercial and administrative center located in Imo State. The people
of Oguta identify themselves as Oru-Igbo, and with Onitsha and Omoko, as a sub-
division of the Riverine Igbo.
4
Lesleye Obiora corroborates Nwapa on dynamics of Oguta custom. Lesleye
Amede Obiora, ‘‘Reconsidering African Customary Law.’’ Legal Studies Forum 17
(3), 1993: 217–252.
5
Nwapa referred to the goddess as ‘‘Woman of the Lake’’ in her early novels and
in personal communications. Sabine Jell-Bahlsen, ‘‘Interview with Flora Nwapa,’’ In
Flora Nwapa: Emerging Perspectives. Edited by Marie Umeh. Trenton, NJ: Africa
World Press, 1998: 633–654. Flora Nwapa, Efuru. London: Heinemann 1961; Flora
Nwapa, Idu. London Heinemann: 1966.
 FLORA NWAPA AND OGUTA’S LAKE GODDESS 261
6
Flora Nwapa’s paternal clan belongs to Oguta’s wealthy upper class whose wealth
is founded on a palm-oil-producing plantation and trading relations with John Holt,
the major international corporation operating in the area, since the beginning of the
British Protectorate. Flora Nwapa was among the first of her town to enjoy an over-
seas education as a benefit of this wealth, but throughout her life and career, also
struggled with the mixed blessings of Westernization, positioned as she was, cultur-
ally in Oguta, and socially within Nigeria’s Christian elite.
7
See also Jell-Bahlsen, Owu: Chidi Joins the Okoroshi Secret Society (video).
8
Chinwe Achebe, The World of the Ogbanje. Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers,
1986; Sabine Jell-Bahlsen. The Water Goddess in Igbo Cosmology: Ogbuide of Oguta
Lake. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press (in press, 2007).
9
Nwapa spelled Uhamiri with one ‘‘m,’’ while this author is following local transla-
tors, such as the late Chief Francis Ebiri, who spelled the water goddess name with
‘‘mm,’’ as in water, mmiri (Oru-Igbo/Oguta dialect), or mmili (Onitsha/standard Igbo).
10
Flora Nwapa was trained at the Univerity of Nigeria in Ibadan, but also attended
university in Edinburgh, Scotland.
11
Flora Nwapa, The Lake Goddess. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press (in press).
12
Flora Nwapa, One is Enough. Enugu: Tana Press, 1981.
13
For example Gay Wilentz. ‘‘Flora Nwapa, Efuru.’’ In Binding Cultures: Black Wo-
men Writers in Africa and the Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1992.
14
V.I. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowl-
edge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1986; Fabian Eboussi-Boulaga. Christian-
ity Without Fetishes: an African critique and recapture of Christianity. Translated from
the French by Robert R. Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984.
15
Mudimbe, 1986: pp. 51, 52.
16
Flora Nwapa, Mammywater. Enugu: Tana Press, 1979.
17
Mudimbe, op.cit; Eboussi-Boulaga, op.cit.; Obodimma Oha,. ‘‘The Rhetoric of
Nigerian Christian Videos: The War Paradigm and the Great Mistake.’’ Nigerian Vi-
deo Films, edited by Jonathan Haynes. Ibadan, Nigeria: Kraft Books Ltd., 1997: 71–
82.
18
The Guardian (Lagos), Vol.3, (No. 863: Friday, Nov.1, 1985): 1, 2.
19
Jell-Bahlsen, ‘‘Interview with Flora Nwapa.’’, p. 647.
20
Flora Nwapa, Never Again. Enugu, Nigeria: Nwafime Publishers, 1975; Jell-Bahl-
sen, ‘‘Interview.’’
21
Efuru, pp. 208, 281.
22
Jell-Bahlsen, ‘‘Interview with Flora Nwapa.’’
23
Efuru, p. 281.
24
Madame Nwammetu Okoroafor, interview at Nduka’s house in Abatu village,
Oguta, on April 14, 1989. Translation by Chief Francis Ebiri.
25
Gay Wilentz, ‘‘Flora Nwapa, Efuru.’’ In Binding Cultures: p. 16. One may wonder
what ‘‘Igbo cosmology’’ Wilentz is citing, and who informed her, when she suggests,
‘‘Ironically, although Uhammiri brings fertility to both land and water, she is unable
to bring fertility to women.’’ Ibid.
26
However, when she finally devoted herself as a worshipper of Uhammiri, Efuru must
abstain from sexual relations every fourth day. This practice would objectively reduce
her chances of conceiving. Flora Nwapa. Efuru. London: Heinemann. 196, p. 207.
27
‘‘Do I hear that she now has Uhamiri in her bedroom’’? Omirima sneered. ‘‘That’s
what I hear. She and her husband plunged into it. I was not consulted.’’ ‘‘She has
262 SABINE JELL-BAHLSEN

spoilt everything. This is bad. How many women in this town who worship Uhamiri
have children? Answer me, Amede, how many? Your daughter-in-law must be a fool-
ish woman to go into that.’’ Nwapa, Efuru, p. 203. Worshippers of Uhammiri place a
clay pot with water from the lake in their room as a shrine. The priestesses also keep
the pots of those who cannot take their pots home because they live in a faraway
city, or abroad. For the installation of a clay-pot shrine inside of the house of a new-
ly initiated woman, see: Jell-Bahlsen, Mammy Water (video).
28
Obodimma Oha, op.cit.
29
Nwapa, Efuru, p. 256.
30
Ibid., pp. 156, 157. Nwapa also portraits the lake goddess and her husband as con-
stantly quarreling in Mammy Water. Nwapa, op.cit.
31
Flora Nwapa, Never Again. Enugu: Nwafime Publishers, 1975.
32
An elderly Oguta woman, Madame Nwammetu, confirms this view on camera
in: Jell-Bahlsen, Mammy Water (video). Local beliefs in the lake goddess as a
savior are so strong that they threaten the superiority of Christian clergymen who,
as a result, have brandished the idea. See also: Jell-Bahlsen, ‘‘Interview with Flora
Nwapa.’’
33
Flora Nwapa, Women are Different. Enugu: Tana Press, 1986.
34
Real-life worshippers of Uhammiri and Urashi must abstain from sexual relations
only on certain days, but not permanently. They are African priestesses, not Euro-
pean nuns; Nor are they social outcasts, as Nwapa implies in The Lake Goddess.
Some real-life priestesses have once suffered from mental disorders and may position
themselves outside ordinary social norms. But others are highly recognized, despi-
te—or because—of their special social position. Nwapa’s Mr. Mgbada says: ‘‘Women
are better than men in keeping the numerous taboos of our Mother. They are
endowed with great patience, and remember, priestesses of Ogbuide must abstain from
sexual relationship with men [Emphasis added].’’ The Lake Goddess, p. 216. Total
abstinence directly contradicts custom in a society where the notion of celibacy
makes no sense. Nwapa’s words thus seem to reflect largely European-catholic doc-
trines of chastity, and perhaps a fantasy about the lake goddess’s worship. See also:
Jell-Bahlsen, Mammy Water (video).
35
Most of the goddess’ contemporary priests and priestesses are married and have
children, although some are widowed, separated, childless, or may have lost all of
their children.
36
Songs recorded by the author on October 15, 1988. Translations by Augustine
Onowu.
37
The divine woman unlike Eve who committed a sin and her gift of fertility contra-
dict the fear of overpopulation projected by the West. The notion of ‘‘woman as a
problem’’ relates directly to Christian ideology and influences as in the biblical notion
of Eve’s responsibility for man’s sin and the couple’s expulsion from paradise. The
Western world is also obsessed with fearing a threat to its resources emanating from
the fertility of indigenous women. The discourse on ‘‘overpopulation’’ is
nearly always focused on Africa and ‘‘third world countries,’’ while Europe and
America, which consume most of the world’s resources, are rarely described as ‘‘over-
populated.’’