The idea of an ehi, a personal god who is mine and mine alone, is so far from my way of thinking it’s hard to grasp.
Taler, a handyman who has been helping us with chores and helping me with this idea, is from the Ora culture, a minority group in the Edo region of Nigeria.
He says the idea that each of us has a little god who represents us in the spiritual world is ancient and almost universal in West Africa. He said that Christians and Muslims believe in the God of the great religions, but most also believe in ehi.
Some people talk to their ehi daily. For others, the idea is more abstract. Your ehi guides you. But there are many views about how that happens.
My questions puzzled my new teacher. He seemed amused at my attempts to pin down the idea.
It's not one idea, but many.
In his country, there are, by his count, 200 or 300 languages and cultures. It’s natural that such diversity would produce different ideas about ehi — and a lot of other topics. People in different cultural groups have different ideas about what counts as tasty food and what counts as just government. It’s only natural that people of one group would be curious about what people in other groups would think.
Taler is puzzled that so many Americans seem to think only about American culture, and don’t seem interested in the many peoples in the other 194 or so countries in the world.
It’s not a lack of knowledge or resources. It strikes him as a lack of interest, which is baffling for people who have so many resources that would help them learn.
His ambition is to save his money and travel to at least two new countries a year. He’s curious about what people in other parts of the world think. He yearns to find out —and to see different ways of life for himself. He's puzzled that some people do not.
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