Part 5: On consistency; honesty, openness, plain speaking, reliability

Gb

One performs one's great feats in the open; if a horse dies, one buries it in a wide open space.
(One should not attempt to keep weighty matters under wraps.)

The hawk always spreads its wings to the fullest.
(Whatever one has in mind, one should lay it out fully in the open.)

Ògèdèm̀gbé always performs his rituals in the open.
(A great person need not hesitate to do whatever he or she has a mind to do.) [17]

We all agreed on a hundred and twenty cowries as the value of the bush rat; when the value changes to a hundred and forty, we must all know about it.
(No sub-group has the right to alter in secret decisions the whole group has arrived at.) [18]

17. Ògèdèm̀gb;e was the late nineteenth-century Ìjèṣà warrior during the internecine Yoruba wars of the period.  [Back to text]

18. Cowries were the means of exchange before the arrival of the Europeans. The amounts stated were considerable before the English colonizers imposed their currency and also a conversion rate that drastically devalued people's wealth.  [Back to text]