USADIO ZAHARRAK

April 16, 2010

When did “civilized” man lose his contact with nature? When did the huge explosion of our bound that connected us to the circle of live occur? When did we move from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic or what is the same, when did man stop being a nomadic hunter and gatherer to become a pastor, rancher or farmer. A few weeks ago while I was channel hopping, I came upon an incredible documentary called The Lion Hunt with the Bow. It explained how hunters from the Gaos´s tribe, located in the region of Yatakala, Nigeria hunted lions with the help of a bow, arrows and the Nadyi, a powerful poison that attacks the nervous system. Throughout the documentary they narrated on how they produced, all by hand, everything needed for this task. The bows were made of Farev´s branches, a kind of African bush, the arrows from rush wood, while the village’s blacksmith forges the tips with an amazing master, drawing series of spirals so that the poison would adhere better to it. The poison is obtained by cooking the fruit of a tree called Nadyinya. The making of this poison itself is considered very “serious” for them, produced only every 4 years. To do so they head into the savannah, far away from the village, because the “poison” is an evil thing. The people of the tribe responsible for making this poison carries out a series of rituals so that the evil will not affect then or stay joined to them and they can return to be normal men. It’s striking that what for us would be pride to own and to use this, for the people of Gaos the Nadyi is something evil, terrible, something that embodies almost the forbidden. How many customs, atavistic rituals that bounded us to our mother Earth, showing respect has been forgotten. Today, this is a type of current or a new awareness that fosters a spiritual return to our roots, the truth is that we have it a bit complicated but we are obligated to take this into serious account.

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