The Obsolete Soul

Mark's career at the advisory office is at a standstill, his relationship with girlfriend Ella is quietly capsizing, and he's beginning to discover strange blanks in his memory. Plus his goldfish are missing. As Mark's increasingly frequent episodes of amnesia begin to take on a life of their own, he finds himself battling the threat of an unexpected leap in human evolution.Is the Rabbit really cleverer than the Monkey? What is the moral of the story? Like other parts of the world, Mozambique has a rich oral literature of animal fables. Grandmothers still tell them to children, and the children respond in a chorus with the magical word "Karingana!"It would be sad if this heritage disappeared entirely in the face of modernization, so teachers are being encouraged to record it, in English and Portuguese, and hopefully later in its original Bantu languages as well. There is no reason why school children should not use materials from their own culture as they learn to read, thus bridging the gap between home and school. I have seen how students come to life and participate when traditional stories are welcomed into the classroom, so this book ends with some suggestions for ways to do this.