The African Rain Dance – Things are not what they seem!

Copyright @ January 14, 2009, (Edited January 18, 2011) by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

Well a sucker is born every day...so the saying goes...now all the suckers are grown!!! And its payday for all the few thieves out there.

When I started my PhD, one of my PhD professors once said to the class, and to me in particular ....”it’s so silly that some African tribes believe in the rain dance”. Since I was the only “African” (although I am Zimbabwean) I asked him what he really meant. He explained that Africans believe that if they dance the rain would come, and it’s really so silly if they understood weather science,  they would know that dancing does not bring rain, that’s why WE have meteorologist in the developed world.  

First I smiled to hide my boiling blood! At this post graduate level of study I was used to this condescending attitude in higher education driven by ignorant superiority complexes, I had also been run out of another PhD Program years before for being “unrestrained in my ‘passionate’ opinions” (which meant I did not know “my place”) that was 1995.  However, in 2001 I now knew how to manage my academic politics!

With my smile  still on my face,  I  calmly explained to him that “It’s interesting that you thing its  “silly”, but I don’t think It’s silly at all...if you lived as one with nature – like most Africans do, especially rural dwellers, you would know that when rain is coming, the earth smells of water, the dust feels damp and the birds start chipping excitedly and the chipping frenzy gets more excited as the rain day gets closer and approaches, they  may not know  exactly what day of the week the rain is going to actual fall, but they just know with certainty it’s coming soon. Because of all these natural weather signs and the people know they need to prepare it may take a few days or a week or at most two week but the rain comes sooner than later! So they dance in celebration because they rely on the rain for their agricultural crops to grow and thrive. But if you are not in touch with the way of nature and have no clue about these signs, you will think the dancing is silly because you are disconnect from your universe and there is no instant gratification of the meteorologist feeding you the information.”

 He was staring at me as I continued...”However, what I really think is more silly is the obsession with the revered stock market dance where people are expected to be dancing for YEARS for the pot of gold that may/or may never come and if it does come you are right where you would have been if you could have just put all that money under your mattress little by little and not having to pay someone to keep it for you!!! It was his turn to smile, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to get an A grade or D that semester! I got an “A”. He stood corrected after all!
 

The following African parable underscored for me the Stock Market rain dance philosophy and why I do not buy into it.  I think every culture has its rain dance; the difference is the high stacks associate with each and the margin of futility from stupid!

"Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each." The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars. They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you have a better understanding of how WALL STREET, its CEOs and Banks got us in this recession ditch and this real estate mess!!!!

• Recommended reading: The Poison Wood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver -The Poisonwood Bible (1998) by Barbara Kingsolver is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River. (The nearest town, an impossibly long journey away, is Bulungu.) The Prices' story, which parallels their host country's tumultuous emergence into the post-colonial era, is narrated by the five women of the family: Orleanna, long-suffering wife of Baptist missionary Nathan Price, and their four daughters – Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.(Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonwood_Bible)