Re: Mandella's son "Kicks The Bucket"
ob, until you have lived in a culture where things are so engrained through the years, it is very hard to understand. You can educate, and they will know, but deep down, they also know what their culture tells them is right. And when their families and friends are doing it, and giving them a hard time for not, it is very easy for culture to take presidence over education.<br /><br />A well educated lady, the wife (actually the second wife, he is married to 2 and has a concubine as well) of a very prosperous business man, will sit down and talk to me about snakes, and how there bones hold poison, so if you kill one, you must bury it. If you don't, you will step on it and die.<br /><br />She will tell me about people who were troubling them, and turned into snakes and came into their house to do them harm.<br /><br />She is afraid of wall jeckles (lizard type animals) because they are evil spirits that come into your house and spy on you. They will also enter your mouth when you are sleeping and kill you.<br /><br />Now, the educated part of her knows these are not true. I have show here scientic reports. But it is what her ancesters believed, so she must believe them also.<br /><br />Without a paradigm shift, education alone will not change the being. There must be a change of heart. A reason to believe differently. And family is so important, that death is better than to disgrace the family.<br /><br />Okay, I am rambling now, but I hope you see that education alone will not change circumstances. But there is hope! I have seen changes, and am seeing changes, in the lives of men and women on a daily basis (not a one time experience, but changes brought about over time). There is hope. Let us not get tired in doing what is right.
