Is There A Difference Between 'Knowledge' And Wisdom? (4)

When the hunter returned home that evening, the sight that met his eyes was very dismal indeed.

Instead of the cheerful boy who smiled broadly on seeing him return safely home, he saw his son sitting on the bare floor, his hand on his cheek and presenting a most forlorn picture.

There was no food laid on the table for the hunter, as usually happened.,

Indeed, the fire in the hearth in the kitchen had gone out.

“Why, what's happened?” the hunter cried in anguish, as he threw his load of meat on the floor and clutched his little boy in his arms.

“Stop crying!” he told the boy. “Whoever messed with you will have me -- band my gun -- to answer to. Just stop crying.”

The boy allowed his father to wipe the tears from his face and then began his story thus::

“About three hours after you had left, I was busy in the kitchen when I heard a loud bang on the kitchen door. My heart jumped! What could that be? Before I knew what was happening, the kitchen door was ajar. And out there, behind the door stood a....a....a … .a....leopard! A fully-grown leopard.!”say a fully-grown leopard?”

“”WHAAAAAAT?” said the hunter. “Did you just say a fully-grown leopard came here?”

“Yes!” said the boy. “He said he wanted to kill me because you, my father, had killed all the animals in the forest that he, the leopard, feeds on”

“My word! And what did you say to him?”

“I said that you only killed enough animals to feed the two of us, so if the animals were getting scarce in the the forest, then it couldn't be your fault. This annoyed him. He said he didn't like being contradicted when he spoke. He asked me if I didn't known that because of his bad temper and ferocity, many kings of men named themselves after him to frighten other chiefs – he, Kurotwiamansa, who was known to be capable of finishing off all the people in a whole nation.

“I told him I was too young to know about such things and that I had only told him what I knew to be the truth. He then changed tack. He became conciliatory and asked me, “Ei, is it true what they say about your father, that he has a special room in which he keeps the skulls of all the animals he kills?” I wanted to deny it, but I realised he might break down all the doors in the house in order to satisfy himself that I was telling the truth. So I said yes, you had such a room full of animal trophies.

“He then ordered me to go and bring all the skulls from the room and assemble them on the floor. Next, he asked me to name each of them. I did as he asked....”

“You didn't? You didn't name the leopard whose skull is in the room with the others??????” The hunter placed his hand on his heart in anticipation of the answer his son was about to give him.

“No!” the boy e said”. The hunter heaved a sigh of relief.

“No!” the boy continued, “when I reached the skull of the leopard, I said that you hadn't told me what animal that was. The leopard asked me why. I said that you has told me that some animals were the sacred totem of my mother's clan, and that if you killed them and told me about them, I would meet with a terrible misfortune when I grew up. So you hid the skulls of such animals from me. But (I said) since Mr Leopard was so interested in finding out what that particular animal was, I would ask you when you came back home, and Mr Leopard could come back tomorrow and hear what it is.

“The leopard then swore me to secrecy, saying I shouldn't tell you that he wanted to know the name of that particular animal from you so that I could tell the leopard, but that I just wanted to know to satisfy my own curiosity.. So I swore that I would not reveal anything about his visit here today to you. He was pleased that I was playing along with him. We parted as friends.”

Now, you would have noticed that the boy had embellished the story of his meeting with the leopard quite a bit. He had no qualms about ding this, for he wanted his father to thunk him very clever – just as all little boys do!

Having heard his son out, the hunter told the boy “So the leopard said he'd be back tomorrow, did he? Okay, when he comes, pretend that I refused to name the skull for you. Its reaction will let us know whether it was bluffing or not.

The next day, the hunter went into the forest as usual, leaving his son behind. The boy was incandescent with fear, but he decided to stay and see what would happen.

At exactly the same time as it had done the previous day, the leopard appeared. And it took the boy through the drill of naming the animals' skulls again. Again, when it reached the skull of the leopard, the boy stalled the leopard, saying, “I told my father to tell me what animal it was. But he said that it was the sacred day of that particular animal and that if he mentioned its name to me , both of us could die.”

”What? Is he that superstitious? He goes into the forest with a gun and is such a coward that he uses the gun even on such a small animal as a squirrel. Yet he is afraid to name an animal on a particular day, because he is afraid of the ghost of than animal! Who told him we animals have ghosts? All right – I shall come back tomorrow. And I shall accept no excuse then – no excuse. If you are unable to tell me what I want to know, I I shall bite your head off.” The leopard tried to smile at the implied joke, but the intended smile turned into a snarl. It is difficult to change one's nature to make it fit into one's moods.

When the hunter returned from hunting that evening, he found the boy was beside himself with rage.

“What at all have I done to you?” he asked his father. Must you expose me to such a hideous creature twice in a row? When it speaks, it is as if a covered dead body had been unwrapped! Its breath stinks. And it never stands still, so you never know whether it is going to spring at you and make short work of you or not. Well, I don't want to go through it all again. He says that as for tomorrow, he will bite my head off if I am unable to name the animal he wants me to name. So please tell me what you intend to do about it. For if you cannot prevent the leopard cutting my head off, then I shall have to move from this cottage and go and live elsewhere, wherever that might be.”

The hunter said to the boy, ”Don't worry.” And he went into the bush and brought some herbs, leaves and roots with which he “bathed” his gun, whilst murmuring some incantations which the boy didn't understand. He then told the boy: “”Tomorrow, when the leopard comes, there are just two things you have to do. Do tell him that the name of the animal is the leopard. But as soon as you do so, don't wait even for half a second, but move away when you hear me whistle. Stand aside very very quickly and make sure you don't stand where the leopard will spring from – his left side.. Have you got that?” The boy nodded.

The next morning, the hunter made all his preparations, as if he was going into the bush to hunt, as usual. But instead of going into the forest, he walked a little way out of the cottage and then circled back to hide behind a tree from which he could see the entire cottage within his gun-sights. He hid behind a tree. He put some extraordinarily powerful bullets in his gun, cocked it, and put it beside him. Then he waited.

The hunter did not have too long to wait. Very soon, the leopard arrived. It went through the drill of asking the boy to assemble the skulls on the ground and naming each animal in turn.

In due course, the skull of the leopard came up.

And the boy named it! He said:

This is:

Gyahene! [King of Fire] Etwie [The one who can scratch you to death!] Osebor! [The one who can deliver a death-blow!]

The leopard growled as if he was about to attack the boy. But he felt like memorising the words the boy had uttered in praise of leopards, so he said: “I only heard what you said with my left ear. Say it again so that my right ear too can hear!”

The boy did as he was told.

As he was finishing the sentence, the leopard moved leftwards, into its springing position.

At the same time, the hunter whistled to his son, “ Twe wo ho!”(Move aside!)

The leopard hesitated for just half a second to adjust his position, as the boy moved.

The hunter had been anticipating this and aimed his gun at the springing leopard:

“TENGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!”

And the leopard fell in mid-spring, dead at the feet of the hunter's son.

It was from that day on that hunters began to take their young boys with them into the forest, to apprentice them in the craft of hunting. For they heard from the hunter in this story, how he left his son alone in his cottage whilst out hunting, and nearly lost his dear son to a wicked leopard.

What is the moral of this story? It is that when it comes to the security of ourselves and our families, we should not hesitate to think ”out of the box” and use our God-given intelligence to ensure their safety, instead of following our own predilections. By leaving his son in the hut alone because of his own fears, the hunter nearly lost the boy for good – to a ferocious, merciless leopard which would have unjustly killed the boy for something his father had done, not what the boy himself had done.

Talking of security, I am incredulous that the Parliament of Ghana has, so far, not found it necessary to discuss the issue of the two ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees,whom the Americas have sent to Ghana for resettlement. The action of the Ghana Government, in accepting the detainees, has placed Ghana on the enemy list of Al Qaeda and its terrorist branches, as a “partner' in America's self-declared “war on terror” against Al Qaeda and Isis.

Yet Parliament has not discussed the issue, but has, instead, been busy vetting new Ministers,who will serve in a Cabinet that the President can ignore on serious matters of national security. What mandate are our MPs going to give to these Ministers, regarding how they should behave, if the presidential presents his Cabinet with unreasonable fiats-accompli and/or fiats? If the President's action on the Gitmo-2, is illegal, as the NPP says it is, is our Parliament going to condone such illegality on the part of the President, by keeping mum about the illegality?

American Senators for their part, have not hesitated to insult Ghana by suggesting that Ghana's prisons are worthless and that $10 million should be cut from US foreign aid to Ghana for each ex-Gitmo detainee that Ghana is not able to incarcerate securely. Whilst the Senators rubbished our prison system, their Government did not care to defend Ghana! And the Senators didn't care a hoot about whether there could be “diplomatic consequences” as a result of their insulting another sovereign state.

Why did the US Senators do that? They did it because they are not afraid to carry out their duty of representing the interests of the people of their country, as they see it. They do what they believe is in the interest of the people of their country. Can't our Parliamentarians at least learn something from the action of these US Senators?

Our Parliament is full of people who have been “educated”. Many of them possess qualifications relating to the acquisition of 'knowledge' in all manner of subjects. But do they also have wisdom?Could they explain their inaction, vis-a-vis the Gitmo issue, to the people who created the folk tale I have narrated in this article, and who voted for these “educated” people to represent them in Parliament?

My late father, for one, would write me off if I behaved like our MPs. He would say to me: “You educated people are clothed in the skin of human beings, but you act as if you do not have the brains of humans.”