History has its own way of dealing with our mentality, orientation and beliefs. Many assertions that we have long been carrying in our heads like the real fact unknowing to us that in one way or the other, it has been tampered with just to be in the favour of whom the teller of such history wants it to favour or to ensure that they are able to establish that fact they are trying to put out to people.
We've seen history paving way and solutions to problems a family or generation is facing (like a Kdrama movie titled The Haunted Palace which would always make me pray to God never to make me suffer for the sins that I know nothing of) and we've seen history turning people's backs against themselves. We've heard of histories that we've been able to learn from and we've read and heard histories that looks more or less like cooked up stories of tortoise the legend.
However, history helps a lot because and it ensures that the incidents of the past that has to do with either family, origin, state, nation or a region never goes to forgetfulness. For this reason, history kept been said from one person to the other, from one generation to the other and as that process continues, omission and replacement also took place.
Just like a queue of people having loud headphone each playing loud music in their ears and the first person is shown a piece of paper with a word to describe to the next person only in demonstration without talking. Definitely, we all know that it won't ever be the same word again by the time it gets to the last person on the queue cos the first word would have turned something else entirely along the line.
Exactly is what telling history is and for this reason, the omission might not initially be an intentional act at times but because the real story line is lost and something else must replace to make a perfect story of the history. Just like my tribe people's proverb will say
Oro okere, Biko Le ikan a din ikan That is, something that didnt happen to you in person, if it is to be told then it will either reduce with 1 word or increase with 1 word. It won't be exactly the way it happened.
This made me remember one of the history being said about the southwest, the Yoruba land. Based on history, if I can remember well (just like what I mentioned before up there, forgetting some lines but still history must be told) it was said that Oduduwa as the first Man arrived earth using chain, with a snail shell having sand in it and that wherever Oduduwa goes to of which that sand touches, is where people will be to live as Yoruba land. It was also stated that Ile-Ife was where the breaking of the day starts from and till date, it remains the giant part of the Yoruba land that every other land must respect and honour.....
In as much as all these seems dramatic and favours the part where I came from as the gigantic part of Yoruba land of which most people who believes in history believes in and hold dear to heart, it just seem off to me at times. How can someone descend from heaven with chain like ladder, holding the fate of the places people will be with the sand from the snail shell in his hand? I remember vividly how I would watch my Yoruba teacher's mouth move up and down sharing and teaching us this history but they seem untrue to me.
So many untold fact that now calls for questions and even the kings questioning and challenging themselves at the moment with claims of superiority, "you're not bigger than me, I am mightier than you" simply because some facts are misplaced in the disclosing of history.
Correcting this perception is something I think can never be possible because it is an history that has remain in existence for ages and centuries now. Till date, we have the Opa oranmiyan in Ile-Ife which I struggled to go see one of the last time I went to my hometown and many more and there are stories that backs these things so I think these histories which seemed untrue has come to stay and up till the time the world ends, it keeps on getting diluted with our own part of the script to make it historic in tale.
I will be dropping my 🖊️ here on the Hive Learners community prompt.
Thanks for reading through 🤗
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