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06793_Field_TCUM T358.txt
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1996-04-10
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to the medieval cartographer, whose efforts resembled modern
nonobjective art. The shock of the new Renaissance space is
still felt by natives who encounter it today for the first time.
Prince Modupe tells in his autobiography, I Was a Savage , how
he had learned to read maps at school, and how he had taken
back home to his village a map of a river his father had
travelled for years as a trader.
. . . my father thought the whole idea was absurd.
He refused to identify the stream he had crossed at
Bomako, where it is no deeper, he said, than a man is
high, with the great widespread waters of the vast Niger
delta. Distances as measured in miles had no meaning for
him. . . . Maps are liars, he told me briefly. From his tone
of voice I could tell that I had offended him in some way
not known to me at the time. The things that hurt one do