tale 46 fear eats up the soul, dance makes you brave Written by Rainer: rainer.lehrer@yahoo.com Learn languages (via Skype): Rainer: + 36 20 549 52 97 or + 36 20 334 79 74

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Fear eats up the soul and dance makes you brave Once upon a time in banana land, there was a big temple and the banana god was highly praised and glorified by the monkeys and the priests were abundantly provided with food and goods so that they had an easy and comfortable life. However, customs and traditions changed and now, at the time of our tale, monkeys were doing business, exchanging goods and wanted to have a more comfortable live themselves as well. Of course, the monkey priests didn’t like that kind of loosening of customs and tried to hinder this development. They told the monkeys that the end of the world would come if they didn’t repent and came back to the old traditional life. Mostly, the average monkey just laughed at the priests and went on having parties and a life full of joy. However, one day, a monkey priest had an idea. He went out into the forest around the village, hung up horribly looking masks on the trees and made traces imitating animal tracks of lions, elephants, snakes, giant spiders and crocodiles on the ground. Then, he ruffled his hair and tore his clothes and came running back into the village shouting and screaming that a terrible danger was threatening the monkeys. Everybody gathered at the square in front of the temple to listen to what the seemingly scared priest had to tell them. “I’ve just been attacked by horrible monsters and could hardly escape. Look at my hair and clothes. Close all the gates! Close up your children and wives in your houses! Then, come into the temple to praise the banana god because he is the only who can save us!” The monkeys disappeared in all directions, took their children and wives and locked them up in their houses, then, they went to the temple with much food and many goods for the banana god to praise and glorify him. This went on for some time. Of course, the males were rather satisfied with these restrictions because they could walk around with their weapons and play heroes, but for females, it was disastrous because they always had to stay at home, only do the household and serve their husbands, believing that it was too dangerous for them to leave the house. One day, one of the younger females had had quite enough and escaped from her house to see herself what was really going on in the forest. Of course, she was terribly afraid all alone outside the gates, but when she examined the first tracks on the ground, she found out that they were not made by wild animals. Then she inspected one of the masks and got rather furious because she understood that priest had fooled the whole village. While she was there in the forest, she thought about why the priest had done this, “probably, monkeys like him were not satisfied with the social development and want to bring back the old days. Well, different monkeys have different views of life. Very often, these views oppose each other in a way that makes them incompatible. If I just reveal the fraud and expose them to public laughter, these priests will even more oppose any kind of change in our society.” She had some girlfriends in the village and decided to tell them what she had experienced and discus with them what the best solution could be. At night, when all the males were asleep, the girlfriends stole away and came together in the forest to debate how this problem could be solved. At beginning, some girlfriends expressed their anger about the priest but all agreed that a very clever plan had to be made to bring a satisfying result for everybody. And as they were very clever they soon found a great solution. What was this plan? I knew, my dear reader, that you would be rather curious. Therefore, go on reading! For the next night, the girlfriends collected all the masks from the forest, weaved a large cloth and some of them got into it. The whole thing looked like a giant dragon with many heads. The second group of the girlfriends went silently back to their houses and waited for the signal. When the dragon entered the village, the girlfriends inside the cloth made a horrible noise and wildly moved the masks. Of course, all the men dropped their weapons and hid in the houses. Even the priest, who had invented the masks, first got a terrible shock. However, when he recognized his own masks, he understood that his fraud had been discovered and that he couldn’t reveal it without being exposed himself. Then, the girlfriends from the houses came out and danced around the dragon to appease the monster and lead it out of the village. Slowly, the men and priests came out of the houses again and praised the dancers. From that day on, women could go on the street again because everybody believed that only they could protect the village from the dragon. And whenever there was a fight amongst some men, some women came by and began dancing around the quarrellers, then these men stopped fighting, sat down and discussed their problem peacefully because they all remembered that women’s dance had even appeased a dangerous, giant dragon. Continue with tale 47!

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