"...for at the mention of a low-voiced 'Sir', his ears, of which one would have expected to be too weak to respond to any form of environmental sound stimuli triggered his senses that his head turned towards quickly towards my direction...."
Read and see if you can attempt the question at the end of the post. (Questions are to be answered in the comment box. Just click comment, choose your I.D (google, name, etc.,) before putting in your comment or submitting it.)
The question of what do our beliefs tell us, how does it frame our minds and how are we able to react to situations concerning cultural differences, has been a great ground created for discussion.
What do we make of various reactions emanating from personal beliefs, sentimental reasoning and recurrent judgements that claw every surrounding belief that contradicts what has been held as unique, true by another belief?
Here is an instance:
I knew it was the best thing to do. A short visit to a place of history, a time far beyond the run-arounds of my time, to a place slightly away from modern madness. So I had decided to embrace that opportunity to get into the venue as a result of my everyday tight work schedule. I couldn't afford myself exhausting another hour in my office looking at large files and painting the papers inside with my pen again, and...and again...!
For a long moment I stared at these two graphical beings placed on the brick walls of the National Museum of culture and tourism. They were items that depicted a unique distinction from two far off but similar things. One of these items has gone or was gradually going into the boat of forgetfulness, where it would sail on the river of time till it would become a thing of the books and the other, which was the reason for the first to have the description I had given, came as a result of a long time invasion participated by those who for years and for a long time would still determine the way our lives were to be lived, for as even our being dependently independent in 1960 only placed us in a refurbished chains of slavery in 1963; after all, our freedom was said to be a free doom of gift by those who have held us captive for years and are still are in terms of our economy, politics and mode of reasoning.
I waited patiently as a wombless woman would for the fruit of the womb. I waited and waited for moments those questions that ran through my mind giving me aches and it was then I noticed that it was a beating of my dead horse, that no one man could pounder on it and then conclude with an answer without seeking outside opinions.
I walked up to the man who was some two... three... steps away from me. He was sited on a white plastic chair and had a wooden table set before him and his two legs sank into the space provided by the tables' four long legs on which he also placed his two age clothed hands. He had some few books on it which included a book similar to that of the visitors' register, the very one I had entered my details into at the entrance to the museum before making my way through the slim short path leading to the main aspect of the museum. He was so busy, and was deeply engrossed in what he was writing inside this same book. His hand danced back and forth with the pen as he wrote profusely from one end to the other, that I began to wonder, even though it was no business of mine, what he was penning down with questionable enthusiasm. But this engrossment did not, however put his consciousness to bed, for at the mention of a low-voiced 'Sir', his ears, of which one would have expected to be too weak to respond to any form of sound related environmental stimuli, triggered his senses that his head turned quickly towards my direction, almost after the last letter 'R' was pronounced.
He must have expected me to wait for him to speak first before producing another word from my thirsty tongue, but the exploding rooftop fire that was burning inside of me, breathing out smoke of anticipation and mind-twistedness could not allow me to bow to that supposed mindset of his. I spontaneously merged my question with the call I had earlier squeezed into his ears. He looked at me with a subtle smile on his face, staring intimidatingly at my face. I thought he was never going to stop staring at me, until he finally spoke.
'Young man.' He said, ' If I may ask, what prompted such a question?'
I brought my hands forward, and rubbing one palm against another as a man would do after setting his eyes on a bowl of pounded yam, ready to pounce on it after consuming so much of indomie and the likes in the past. I paused for a moment before attempting to answer his question, for sometimes the elder's words are deceptive instruments; one must answer calmly.
'Sir, I just wanted to know, why as a child, my mother and my father would always deny my siblings and I a single glance at the activities of the masquerades that periodically came around to display on the streets during traditional festivals. He would say with a resounding stress that they were fetish and would flog us if he discovered any of us had peeped from the window. But surprisingly, he would pay for the church's Christmas celebration where Santa Claus would appear to us in some red and white attire and said he was from a faroff land and had come on the back of some group of deer to celebrate with us and give out gifts. I had the notion that he was a spiritual being sent from the sky, as that was what I was made to believe. Also a child still growing, I had believed that masquerades were real ancestral spirit beings that came to celebrate with the earth-dwellers, but I was shamed when I discovered they were humans in costume. But something came to my mind some weeks back which had prompted me to specifically picked the museum as my place of visit and it was the realisation that these two beings had the same characteristics. Santa was no spirit being after all, and masquerade was not free of this too. Santa covered his face, the masquerade does the same, Santa is a representation of a spirit being, masquerades also are the same, Santa made sounds, the other does the same, Santa scares children that they run with tears in their eyes, and the latter does the same. Now, the question is, what makes them different? Why would my dad tell me not see one and encourage the other? Why would he say one is fetish and the other Holy.'
The man after listening then began to give answers to my question.
NOW IF YOU WERE THIS MAN, WHAT ANSWER WOULD YOU GIVE?
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