Blog number 349 **** 01 December 2009
In the book, "The Old Way" by Elizabeth Thomas about the pygmies of central Africa, the author tells about the time she was trying to determine the ages of the children, and since the bush people do not pay any attention to the number of years that people have been alive, she wanted to look into the mouths of the children so she could determine somewhat, their ages.
She said she didn't have any trouble with any of the children, who opened their mouths willingly, but one child objected, so she squeezed his cheeks in order to get him to open his mouth and he grabbed hold of a poisoned arrow that had carelessly been left leaning against a tree by a person getting ready to go on a hunt.
The author quickly backed away and the child's older brother knocked the arrow out of child's hand. Nobody said anything to the child, but there was a definite uncomfortableness to those who happened to see the incident. Elizabeth said it wasn't exactly like this, but this was as close as she could get, she said it was like when a person farts and nobody says anything for fear of embarrassing the miscreant. The child looked unhappy at the ostracism he was given. Everybody ignored him with perfectly blank faces.
One time a child wanted to go hunting with the father, who refused and the child threw a tantrum. This was the first and only time Elizabeth had seen such a thing and it was so unusual that the parents didn't know what to do and looked beseechingly at the others for help. The "others" didn't know what to do either, so they pretended they had important chores that needed done right away.
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