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

Odot

The stew is delicious, the stew is not delicious; the pounded yams meal is completely gone from the dish.

One conducts affairs with one's kin with forthrightness; one enters into covenants (with non-relatives) in secret; as one attends to one's secret compacts, one should also attend to affairs with one's kin; on the day one dies it is one's kin who attend to one's funeral.

The path of deceit soon ends.

The sage asks for information; Àjàpá the trickster asks, “About the person who was killed yesterday, is he already dead?”

“This matter does not hurt me”: stating it only once suffices.

Secret matters have open exposure as their ultimate destination.

The matter in question does not make a noise.

One's enemy never kills a huge cane-rat.