Learning from Africa

Last time, I was discussing culture and the borrowing thereof and was about to get stuck in to the really African stuff as follows:

From my African cohorts I have learned that all African people regard themselves as a sort of extended family. At its best, this can be very beautiful: only imagine! All older men and women are addressed as ‘father’ and ‘mother’, and people of your age or younger as ‘sister’ or ‘brother’ etc, etc. If you buy into that … that… mindset, then surely it must bring one to treat all humanity with respect. Its not just a matter of language usage, its an ideal. A philosophy. ‘Ubuntu’ – brotherhood. Like all ideals it isn’t often lived up to, but you have to admit: it’s a fine one. I think I'd like to live up to it: the ultimate in caring.

I’ve also learned to understand some things that might seem strange to a more Westernized mindset: like the bride price.

The logic is this: the family have invested time, love and money into producing an accomplished, remarkable young woman, who helps the household in a variety of ways. If she marries, her contribution is lost. It is only respectful for the man who takes her to wife to compensate the family in some way for their ‘loss’ of a productive member.

To be honest with you, I think that’s much more liberated than the not too historically distant idea of a dowry, where the bride’s family, instead of receiving compensation for their ‘loss’ of a daughter, had to pay up for the gentleman to take their daughter ‘off their hands’.

In this country, white people often complain because ‘black people talk loudly’. The truth is, that there is a traditional distaste for gossip, even the idea of gossip. One speaks loudly to show that one is not hiding anything. This is ‘good manners’. I don’t know if I’ll adopt this particular one, but its food for thought nonetheless. One shouldn’t say anything one’s ashamed of, should one?

I learn every day. The more vernacular languages I learn (and forget, and get mixed up... we have eleven official languages by the way), the more I begin to understand the speakers. Not in the conventional sense - it’s the way you put words together, how you express ideas - then you begin to see a new perspective.

I learn from the people I work with and have worked with on farms for the last twenty years or so. On one of them I had a hundred staff and only four of them had a language in common with me. One gets by. One begins to understand. One is lead to think. One begins to love. It was fun. It is fun. I’m still learning from all sorts of people, I’m enjoying the ride. Sometimes, I even learn something from the more ‘sophisticated’ ones.

Today's pic: An old and talented friend who has taught me an African approach to music.