https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/mother-of-invention-a-new-short-story-by-nnedi-okorafor.html

Ethics of Care

Anwuli’s neighbors, family, and friends treated her like an outcast, because in their minds she wore a Scarlet Letter, due to her affair with a married man, which subsequently led to a pregnancy. They went out of their way to ignore her. The gentleman who was jogging, sped up when she called out to him and her family blocked her on social media. The father of her baby had proposed to her, but called it off later, telling people she led him astray, not the other way around. Her neighbors should have been more neighborly and caring, rather than judgmental.  They could have helped her carry materials into the house, carry bags from the shopping, helped her prepare for the impending storm, and/or helped out when she went into labor. Her family and neighbors did not act in a caring way, instead, they treated her in a way they felt was justice for her wrongdoings.

Anwuli’s fiancé (ex) should not have deserted her during the 9 months of her pregnancy. Obviously, he should not have left her high and dry for the 9 months of her pregnancy. He should have come clean to his wife and dealt with the repercussions, in order to take responsibility for providing care during Anwuli’s pregnancy and support the child they created together. If he didn’t feel like he would be able to tell his wife about the affair, he should have done his part to check in on Anwuli throughout the pregnancy to make sure everything was going well or if she needed anything, to include money for doctor bills and help during her medical issues or any home issues that may arise. He may have also been able to persuade her to move to a safer environment/location due to her allergies, given that her house is mobile.

Anwuli’s ex-fiance had many moral failures regarding his treatment of Anwuli. He had failed to foster mutual interdependence with Anwuli; which is shown through his abandonment of her without any money or supplies. The only thing he did for her gave her the house yet cut her out from his life completely. He had also failed to foster any mutual flourishing by abandoning his relationship with her and cutting off all contact with her until the end of the story when she was giving birth. 

Obi 3 caring-like attributes mirror Anwuli’s pregnancy, in that Obi 3 is building a safe and sustainable environment for Anwuli to live and survive due to her severe allergies, just like Anwuli builds a caring and safe environment for her fetus. When a woman is pregnant, she usually takes good care of herself, making sure the fetus has everything it needs to grow and flourish inside the mother. As Anwuli was preparing for birth, so was Obi-3. The A.I. also encouraged her to rest and sleep.

In the story, Obi 3 showed Anwuli a documentary about the history of the New Delta. There is a violent history of oil drilling in the Niger Delta. All of that oil drilling had turned the Niger Delta into a hellish, fiery swamp, yet the landscape was forever changed by the invention of periwinkle grass, a GMO grass created in Chinese labs by Nigerian scientists. The production of “peri” had changed New Delta’s landscape from swamps to grassy plains and changed the area’s exports from oil to grass. This is a major change from the violent clashes between oil drilling companies and the ethnic groups that lived in the area, as the people that had disregarded the environment for oil then, now tirelessly work to preserve it for “peri” production.