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"One subject we harkened back to again and again was whether there were tigers in Africa. Some argued that although it was popularly assumed that tigers lived in Africa, this was a myth and that they were native to Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Africa had leopards in abundance, but no tigers. The other side argued that tigers were native to Africa and some still lived there. Some claimed to have seen with their own eyes this most powerful and beautiful of cats in the jungles of Africa.

I maintained that while there were no tigers to be found in contemporary Africa, there was a Xhosa word for tiger, a word different from the one for leopard, and that if the word existed in our language, the creature must have once existed in Africa. Otherwise, why would there be a name for it? This argument went round and round, and I remember Mac retorting that hundreds of years ago there was a Hindi word for a craft that flew in the air, long before the aeroplane was invented, but that did not mean that aeroplanes existed in ancient India."

[Nelson Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom, Abacus, 2004 (1994), p. 511]

Nota: contribuição conjugal para o Ma-Schamba.

publicado às 23:19


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