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.

The hawk always spreads its wings to the fullest.

Ògèdèm̀gbé always performs his rituals in the open.

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.

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]