Hello listeners and welcome back to the English with Neil Learn English podcast.
How's everyone doing today?
In this episode, we are going to talk about documentaries.
Documentaries.
Recently, I've been watching a lot of documentaries recently. specifically on Netflix.
And the documentary that I just finished up was about a queen by the name of Njinga.
She was a queen during the 1600s when slavery started in this area of Africa called Angola.
Now, the original name of angola wasn't angola.
I believe it was, i want to say, umbambe.
Forgive me if i'm mispronouncing this, but it was not called angola until it was colonized by the portuguese, But before Angola it was called something else.
And basically the story of Njinga was how she became queen of her area in Angola.
And how she rose to power and how she was able to fight off the portuguese um from enslaving people, because that's what the portuguese were there to do.
They were there to colonize the area.
So colonize means to take over, and it's kind of a a messed up situation.
It's it's basically like someone going into your home or your community and now calling it theirs.
Like can you imagine that you're just sitting at home, just relaxing, minding your own business, and someone comes knocking on your door boom boom, boom.
You open the door and they say this is my home now.
And that's basically what happened to angola and many parts of africa, but also many parts of the world.
I mean, this happened in america.
There were native americans there, but um, people came over and and called it their land.
So it was history, was very history, was very interesting and it just made me realize that i've i'm so lucky to be living now in 2023, like i'm i'm so lucky.
I think we're all very lucky because history was full of wars and confusion and bloodshed and there was a lot of misery and mayhem.
That happened before we were here.
So i think we should all be thankful for All of the sacrifices and all the lives that were lost so that we can live in peace now.
I mean of course there are still wars going on.
There's still a lot of conflict in the world, but i think we can all agree that things are much better now rather than 400 and 500 years ago.
I think we can all agree on that.
But going back to njinga, she became queen because her father was killed by one of his soldiers, and so actually before Njinga became queen, actually her brother became king.
But in jenga and her brother didn't have a good relationship and it was thought that njinga killed her brother so that she can rise to power because she was mentally stronger.
So in the documentary it shows how Njinga's brother had passed away and then Njinga rose to power.
She became queen and her life's mission as queen was to fight off the Portuguese, because the Portuguese were enslaving thousands and thousands of Africans at that time.
And Njinga didn't believe in slavery.
She thought it was 100% wrong.
And her life's mission was to fight against the Portuguese, to get them out of Africa, but also to stop enslaving Africans.
Now unfortunately, the Portuguese did end up taking over Angola, but while she was in power, The Portuguese had a lot of trouble enslaving Africans because of the hard work and the power and the military force that Njinga had over this area of Angola.
Her story still lives on in Africa.
And I, you know, I'm not a historian. i just watched the documentary so if you're from africa please forgive me if i'm missing a lot of information but i was really inspired by that story so i just wanted to talk about it today um so that was really um really a great story and i think it was story of women empowerment I think a lot of women would benefit from this documentary so if you're interested in history in African history and you have Netflix go ahead and check out the Njinga Or you can read about it online but the documentary was performed very well.
So I highly recommend that.
So I'm going to start leaving you with a question.
I highly encourage you guys to comment on these videos because I reply to all comments.
I want to communicate with you more and, even though you can't contact me directly, I do respond to all comments.
So if you want to practice your English with me, feel free to leave a comment.
But today's question is Are you interested in history?
And if you are, what history do you find interesting?
I'd love to hear from you everyone.
Okay, guys, that is it for today's episode.
Thank you for tuning in to the English with Neil podcast.
I look forward to speaking with you in the next one.
Take care, everyone, and talk to you soon.
Peace.
