On 7-Apr-14, at 9:22 AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> He was proudly shown it by the owner: in his house containing the
> family's clothes etc. It was the best bit of furniture they
> possessed!
Thanks for that Chris. Living in Nigeria for 2 years we saw lots of
examples similar to this. The comments on quality workmanship on
this thread are also right on as the artists (carvers, woodworkers,
metal workers, weavers and many others) do fantastic work with only
the basic tools, many of which they made themselves. There would be
no need to import first world hives into Africa, just adapting first
world ideas to convince craftsmen of the reasoning to do things
differently. While there is a lack of cash at the people level,
there is no lack of skill and ingenuity.
We had a couple of guards hired by the company to make us feel safe,
24 hours per day, more than to actually protect us because there was
no danger where we lived. The day watch became our fifth kid who
would go and poke the others when they were doing their school work.
I have a series of slides of him and several friends extracting honey
by squashing the combs(black) with their hands and running the honey
off their elbows into bottles. They did this at night under the
string of lights on our patio, using twisted grass torches to burn
the bees off the combs. There was a lots of yipping and yelping and
running around as a result of the stings. While I had been in
Nigeria long enough to know not to taste the honey, I am sure that
the word quality could not, in a positive or negative sense, be used
to describe it. But why should they listen to a Bature (pronounced
ba tur ay, Hausa for whiteman) like me who isn't smart enough to move
from Canada, where we can't go outside for 8-10 months a year(no
wonder you're so pale), to a paradise like Nigeria where you can get
your food out of the trees 12 months.
Bob Darrell
Caledon Ontario
Canada
44N80W
formerly New Bussa, Niger State
Nigeria
10S4E
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