THE DEATH OF FOLKLORE DIDACTICISM AND IT’S REPLACEMENT

 


    Night time, meant dinner time, rest time, mat under the moon time with the lantern close by where we dip our little index finger in its oil container to drip our soaked finger on the stinging budge of the soldier ant’s kiss if we are lucky we can see them before they disappear into the shadows if we raise our mats quick enough and bring them to hell before they leave this world, by roasting their crackling exo skeleton on the hot lid of the lantern. Our burnt fingertips is al discounted when compared to the squirming hellish pain visited on our aggressor

Then we yawn, hungry for a story, a mat time story, under the moon in the cricket singing summer night of August 2004, with no phone in sight no facebook notification to check or twitter spat to finish off, Instagram video to smirk at or newed picture to see. Our local fables pouring like a river out the aged mouth of elders were one of the places; we got our morals our sense of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and camaraderie. Our mothers and grandmothers taught how to reimagine life and learn through fables the joyous call to the path of the right justice, fairness and hopeful living

I have forgotten many of them now sadly, and the sweet songs that usually accompany a lesson or two jingling in our brain as we walked to school the next morning, These songs remind us steadily of the stories and the morals and didacticism that accompany them So if I ever have a child that child have automatically lost a huge part of what makes me the man I am today Numerous then, were  the story of the tortoise, the hunter and the sweet singing bird, the tortoise and the king, the pig, how it got It’s broken shell and so on. They almost provided a cosmological approach to the world around us, giving this animal life, and personalities and how much we can learn from their mistakes. Imagine my bemusement, when at primary four at  the Omot Presevaton center and  I happened at my first tortoise which was obviously frightened by our poking glares and how quickly it hid it’s head and all I could say at such a reflexive behavior was “look he so wise, Look how he quickly hide himself he just too wise!!! Ignorant I know, but I Imagine my alacrity and empathy were fueled by the fables of yester nights created in an inquest into their way of life and consequent preservation Something most people today seem to be lacking, since they consider all wildlife and animals to be walking meat, running far from their destined pot of soup

This refers to a society that has gradually lost what it means to be human as the guardians of this planet and people who see all animals as fillings at the back a gullet. Thankfully, in details however is a book of Yoruba fable which I read in secondary school called Ijapa ti Iroko Oko Yanibo

Where the author wrote a lot of stories detailing the tales of the amazing tortoise, however my loss is the peculiarities of the stories according to ones dialect the onomatopoeias, glottal and peculiar nature of these tales in our own song and how it became lost to us, because of the chiasmic change in our way of life, the regurgitation of the stories and the potencies of they carry under the canopy of the dark and moon is sadly a lost memory we strain so hard to remember. There are no folklores to teach our children with, or should I say the internet and our phones don’t allow us enough time to have the interpersonal interaction of passing down stories from mother to son, to daughter,  Nor do we even have lack of a distraction to enjoy the tranquility of the moon and dark and the rhythmic chirps of the cricket as they hang on the door hinges to listen in tandem.

The level of education have also become so bad that I can say that most children are rarely acquiesced or familiar with fable didacticism or have an inclination towards the preservation of nature, Expatiating further will only waste our time The death of a sense of justice come  from the cyclical malady of our media and social media ensuring a life that sentries likes and retweet, stupid songs an debauchery as the goal of existence

I was not really surprised  when the children in the movie “Nobody knows saw a dying flower and said “kawai so ni” which roughly translates to “You poor thing” and took some of them to plant in their balcony  I seriously doubt many children here would do that, or even give a dying flower a second look, but it points to the type and death of education in our country and this translates to the death of natue infused ables that give life, meaning and even elevate the simplest things to the role of teacher showing how much we can learn from the strength of a flower that cracks a cemented ground or a hen protecting its young.

Which brings me to the solution or replacement of folklore and our local didactism, for as the time change so should we, and safe to say there is a replacement with the constant sun of our phone screen  in our eyes, it seem hard to truly behold the moon in its majesty. Or convivialate in the warmth of darkness, crickets seem to be a thing of the past in our vast modernized world and I haven’t been stung by a soldier ant in years now.

As a replacement Animes will serve as the perfect solution to this dying moral and fairness ingrainer in our children and ourselves, anime especially Japanese’s whose code are Friendship, Loyalty and Justice still possess some of the old truths that our mother and grandmother taught us, It will help revitalized the sense o wonderment in our mind people and environment. It could replace the death of folklore and fable didacticism that is missing in our younger ones, and make them more empathetic to the world they find themselves and to their fellow other

It can soften the mind the of most them teach them to care for animals in this anthropogenic age of dramatic climate change As we become more advance technologically, forging new style of families, livng, parenthood and even jobs dinner time aren’t going to be necessarily at night under a moon a mat but on a diner at a restaurant and between your stressful job and social media life, we may have little time for our children all round and particularly affective development and lull them to sleep with a night time didacticism for their subconscious or fuel is their sense of right and wrong




Amines on a tablet can do justice to that

When your child see a young dog protecting a shop that once belong to its owner, and seeing Luffy having a conversation with it and acknowledging it’s fervor he also might bend down and talk to our dog too, learn a thing or two from them, and find it hard to see such a dog or any animal at that as just filling for our stomach. With animes and their passionate path to the sense of justice, we as modern parents can rest easy knowing that our children might be advanced but their advancement is cloaked with the old loins of justice, truth and age long morality that have made us who we are today and as we pass on we know we left behind a soldier of truth and justice, not just an abraded pebbles of modern societal greed.

 


-Victor Samuel

Comments