ABSTRACT
As I am from Africa, where our heritage is one of story-tellers, it is appropriate for me to start by relating a story to you:
The story has to do with a female American cultural anthropologist who was studying the Beng culture in a rural West African village on the Ivory Coast. The Beng are a little known ethnic group who appear to understand best those things which are invisible. Every morning, the cultural anthropologist went out with them to study their work habits, their farming, their social organization and their cosmological systems. Her husband, who was an aspiring writer, would take his typewriter, pens, pencils and papers, and sit at a small clearing in the village pulling his beard, rubbing his chin, waiting for inspiration for his work. During the course of his work, he would continuously be distracted by people coming over to touch his hair, and whispering among themselves in groups gathered around him. He made his annoyance at such distractions known, until one day an elder visited him at the small clearing where he worked.
