Blowing bubbles

The fact that my friends helped me solve this mystery was heartwarming. They are not only helping me because I am their friend, they are also doing it because, of all the stories that I can share about their language, they attach the highest value to the ones that talk about the ways coat appearance permeates the Hamar vocabulary and therewith their pastoralist worldview. They are proud of showing and teaching me their knowledge.

Telling the world, from colleagues to you on Things That Talk, is something that makes me feel that I can play a small role in introducing the Hamar worldview, and write about it, so that this knowledge gets out there and contributes to our understanding of how people elsewhere on this planet see and experience the world.

Every time I go back, I bring gifts for my friends (they also have tons of presents for me!). One time I brought with me soap bubbles for the children. And, as happens so often, out of the blue (pun intended) the children pointed to the soap bubbles, and said: "that is guitá, that is guitá!". The sheen one sees on the bubbles, in the sky, and on the cow that I still hadn’t met in real life, all of that is guitá.

Please keep on reading the stories in this zone. Because there is still a lot of cattle-talk that we need to discuss.