Exchange Is Not Robbery by John M. Chernoff

Author:John M. Chernoff [Chernoff, John M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Black Studies (Global)
ISBN: 9780226103549
Google: v-fAwAEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 977524
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2005-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8 VILLAGE COMEDIES

The Sense of Villagers

Introduction to Western Civilization

A Strange Case at the Chief’s Court

How Children Get Sense

Good and Bad Strangers

Special Tea

Pro-pro Ghana Babies

Papa and the Tigernut Lady

Special Agent

THE VILLAGE IN BURKINA FASO

The Sense of Villagers

Yes, my people are very funny to me. When I go there, and I see them like that, I used to say, “Ah! Did God make these people? Or did they make themselves?” I don’t understand how they were made, because anything that they do, it’s something I didn’t hear or I didn’t see before. Anything! So it used to make me wonder. It’s very funny. Some people used to think that you have to travel to see something, but this is my own village. Yeah, sometimes I used to think, of all the places I have gone, I think that our people, we are to-o-o much the last people who don’t have understanding. Their everything is different from everyone. They are very foolish. All! They do things as if they have sense: if someone’s doing something, you will think he’s sensible. But what the person is doing, when I look at it, then I think, “This is foolish.” For what should this fellow do that? But as for him, he doesn’t think, “What I’m doing is foolish.” He thinks, “I’m doing something good.” And he doesn’t know. I have met many people, and I think they are a little bit sensible more than my people.

You know, everywhere they have villages. I used to go to small-small villages, too; especially in Ghana, I used to like villages. When I am in Kumasi, I can’t stay in Kumasi for three months without going to a small village. But I don’t see such things like they have in my village. Yeah. And Togo, too, I went to many villages of Togo. Dahomey, the same thing; I have seen many villages of it. But I didn’t find any place that is difficult like my village. Maybe I don’t understand in those places, but I can hear the languages of all these places—Ashanti, Ewe,1 and I understand Mina2 small-small. But even if you don’t understand a language, and then you stay in a village to see some things like their life and their playing and all this, you will understand something. You know, always villages are very small. If you stay in a village about two weeks or three weeks, if they do something, you will hear some hint of it.

If I’m with my people, sometimes, I used to think funny things: “Should I call all these boys and girls, the young-young ones, and give them a lecture? Or what?” Ha-ha! Because I don’t understand them at all. Sometimes—tsk—I look at them. And then one time I asked my brother, “So, how you people are here, did somebody used to give you people advice?”

He said, “Yes!”

“What kind of advice did they used to give you people?”

He said, “Ah, sometimes if you sit with an old man, you know.”

Sometimes these grown-ups used to sit outside the house to take a rest.

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