Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 56 views

    The Hands of The Blacks by Luis Bernardo Honwana

    Uploaded by

    Nica Felizco Quina
    The Hands of The black is a story of a curious boy on why are the palms of the Black are still light.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Hands of The Blacks by Luis Bernardo Honwana

    Uploaded by

    Nica Felizco Quina
    56 views2 pages
    The Hands of The black is a story of a curious boy on why are the palms of the Black are still light.

    Original Title

    The Hands of the Blacks

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The Hands of The black is a story of a curious boy on why are the palms of the Black are still light.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    56 views2 pages

    The Hands of The Blacks by Luis Bernardo Honwana

    Uploaded by

    Nica Felizco Quina
    The Hands of The black is a story of a curious boy on why are the palms of the Black are still light.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 2

    The Hands of the Blacks by Luis Bernardo Honwana

    I don’t remember now how we got on to the subject, but one day, Teacher said that
    the palms of the Blacks’ hands were much lighter than the rest of their bodies. This
    is because only a few centuries ago, they walked around with them like wild animals, so
    their palms weren’t exposed to the sun, which made the rest of their bodies darker. I
    thought of this when Father Christiano told us after catechism that we were absolutely
    hopeless, and that even the pygmies were better than us, and he went back to this
    thing about their hands being lighter, and said it was like that because they always
    went about with their hands folded together, praying in secret. I thought this was so
    funny, this thing of the Blacks’ hands being lighter, that you should just see me now. I do
    not let go of anyone, whoever they are, until they tell me why they think that the palms
    of the Blacks’ hands are lighter. Doña Dores, for instance, told me that God made
    Blacks’ hands lighter so they would not dirty the food they made for their masters, or
    anything else they were ordered to do that had to be kept clean.

    Señor Antunes, the Coca-Cola man, who only comes to the village now and again
    when all the Cokes in the cantinas have been sold, said it was a lot of baloney. Of
    course, I do not know if it was really such, but he assured me, it was. After that I said, “All
    right, it was baloney,” and then he told me what he knew about this thing of the Blacks’
    hands. It was like this: “Long ago, many years ago, God the Father, Jesus Christ, the
    Virgin Mary, St. Peter, many other saints, all the angels that were in Heaven, and some
    of the people who had died and gone to Heaven—they all had a meeting and
    decided to create the Blacks. Do you know how? They got hold of some clay
    and pressed it into some second-hand molds and baked the clay of creatures, which
    they took from the heavenly kilns. Because they were in a hurry and there was no room
    next to the fire, they hung them in the chimneys. Smoke, smoke, smoke—and there you
    have them, black as coals. And now, do you want to know why their hands stayed
    white? Well, didn’t they have to hold on while their clay baked?”

    When he told me this, Señor Antunes and the other men who were around us were very
    pleased and they all burst out laughing. That very same day, Señor Frias told me that
    everything i had heard from them there had been just one big pack of lies. Really and
    truly, what he knew about the Blacks’ hands was right—that God finished men and told
    them to bathe in a lake in Heaven. After bathing, the people were nice and white. The
    Blacks, well. They were made very early in the morning and at this hour, the water in the
    lake was very cold, so they only wet the palms of their hands and the soles of their
    feet before dressing and coming to the world.
    But I read in a book that happened to mention the story, that the Blacks have hands
    lighter like this because they spent their lives bent over, gathering the white cotton of
    Virginia and I don’t know where else. Of course, Doña Estefania did not agree when i
    told her this. According to her, it is only because their hands became bleached with all
    that washing.

    Well, I do not know what to think about all this but the truth is that however

    You might also like