Africa, except for the Muslim north, did not know writing, and history here is an oral tradition, legends passed from mouth to mouth, a communal myth created invariably at the base of the mango tree in the evening’s profound darkness, in which only the trembling voices of old men resound, because the women and children are silent, raptly listening. That is why the evening hour is so important: it is the time when the community contemplates what it is and whence it came, becomes conscious of its distinctness and otherness, defines its identity. It is the hour for conversing with the ancestors,
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