In this blog I will be responding to the African Proverb below. I will explain the meaning of this quote to the best of my understanding. As well as evaluate the truth behind this quote.
This Ewe-mina, an African tribe, proverb refers to the unknown part of the struggle between the victor and the loser.
"Until the lion has his or her own storyteller, the hunter will always have the best part of the story." -African Proverb
If we hear only one
side of a story how will we ever know the truth behind it? If we want to be
objective, as humans, we should seek both side of a story. But what happens when one
side is voiceless, weak, or absent? The quote above reminds me of a
similar quote by the influential Winston Churchill "History
is written by the victors." Both quotes tend to
build on the same ideology that only one part of the story is heard;
that of which is usually the stronger and vocal side of the story versus the
weaker and the voiceless.
I
believe the African wisdom that formed this proverb picked a strong and a
physically superior creature, such as a lion, to contrast it with
an intelligent creature, such as a human hunter. This contrast
will untimely result in the hunter being the victor and surviving to tell
a story that glorifies the hunter and makes he/she shine.
Do we actually know what happened in
the forest while the hunter was hunting the lion? Was it pure luck,
or pure skill? Was the lion even awake? Will we ever know the lion's side of
the story? I guess we'll never know the answer to any of these questions. We
will continue to focus only on the hunter's side of the story because it is
more glorifying to a fellow human being and more entertaining to us.
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