This line of thought on thrift began as I watched a young man who was painting the interior of the little house in San Antonio.
Taler is the son of a farmer in the Edo region of Nigeria. He handled paint carefully. When he was finished with a bucket, it was dry.
He was not stingy with paint. He was careful. How you paint a house is, in an unspoken way, an ethical matter.
I'm sure you know this but the Edo region has its own language and, in fact, a number of the slaves who were brought to the United States spoke what slave holders called "Edo." I don't know if the language has another actual name. I know nothing about the language but those who spoke it were obviously intelligent enough to learn English and probably still used Edo to speak with their countrymen.
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