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Proverbs Exercises
by Thad Curtz

Part 1

Here are some Ibo proverbs, picked more or less at random from Achebe's No Longer At Ease (the second book in the trilogy which Things Fall Apart begins). We'd like you to see what you can surmize or guess or hypothesize about what the Ibo are like and how they live, just on the basis of these proverbs. Don't bring in anything else from the book in this part of the discussion. Work through the proverbs one by one in your group. Some of them may seem mysterious, so you may well have to make some guesses. Read each one aloud, and then give everybody a little time to think about the proverb on their own. Then talk together about it and see how much you can figure out about Ibo life from it...

1. The eye is not harmed by sleep.

2. A debt may get moldy, but it never decays.

3. Shall we kill a snake and carry it in our hand when we have a bag for putting long things in?

4. Wherever something stands, another thing stands beside it.

5. A bird that flies off the earth and lands on an anthill is still on the ground.

6. Book stands by itself and experience stands by itself.

7. When a new saying gets to the land of empty men they lose their heads over it.

8. Ours is ours, but mine is mine.

9. A man who lives on the banks of the Niger should not wash his hands with spittle.

10. If you want to eat a toad, you should look for a fat and juicy one.

11. Anger against a brother is felt in the flesh, not in the bone.