UrfavoritePedagogue

“Teach Yoruba to your children. Let them learn their mother tongue. Don't call it the vernacular. We Portuguese, we are nine million. Everybody speaks Portuguese. Then if you want to learn English in secondary school, you learn. If you don't want, you don't need it. It's your mother tongue that is your identity. There are some words that you cannot translate. In Portuguese, we have words we cannot translate. Like in Yoruba, you want to translate everything. Let me give you an example: Egungun. You translate Egungun as masquerade. Masquerade is carnival. It's somebody. You know carnival was created by the Christians. So Egungun now is a masquerade. You took out the spiritual value of your own identity. Egungun represents your ancestors that come once in a year to the house and pay homage to them.” — Dr. Paula Gomes, Portuguese cultural researcher and Culture Ambassador to the Alaafin of Oyo, advises the Yoruba people.