1. A small amount of food stays in a small part of the body.
2. If a person itches excessively, it comes out into the open: One cannot hide something obvious.
3. If one looks for a child's mother and does not see her [she is deceased], pity for him is ended. [A child does not get much sympathy except from its own mother.]
4. One learns about pieces of yam by splitting yam.
5. When the chicken pecks at the ground in the wrong way, its neck becomes strained.
6. If one finger touches the oil it spreads to all the other fingers.
7. When a chicken drinks water and looks upward, sadness fills its heart. [A chicken cannot drink easily.]
8. One who pursues a chicken [unjustly] must fall, and a chicken must waddle.
9. The house rat tells the outside rat that there is fish in the basket.
10. When the head touched the wasp it caused it to sting him.
11. The chicken ignores the one who killed it, and crooks his neck [in displeasure] at the soup pot. [Instead of blaming the killer he is annoyed with the pot.]
12. When the child learns climbing, its mother learns how to shout.
13. Fire does not know the one who fetched it.
14. Eating without inquiring about the food causes sudden death (lit., not suffering before dying).
15. If one performs a sacrifice but does not see a vulture, one should know that something serious happened in the home of the spirits.
16. Human beings are numerous but males are few.
17. Feces do not smell while inside the stomach.
18. If a trickster dies he is buried by trickery.
19. It is failure to acquire wealth that causes one to boast.
20. If the mouth does not speak, who is going to know?
21. Sheep says that he does not know how to dance, but if he is pushed by an ant-sting, he will dance.
22. If a child knows [recognizes] a good thing, the good thing knows him.
23. If a young man chews a palm kernel, one sees its shell.
24. What a person is [referring to behavior] he will always be.
25. The eyebrow protects the eye.
26. Come and listen to my child and his friends.
27. One does not visit the spirits empty-handed.
28. What is sweet to the mouth causes pain to the buttocks.
29. Where there are spirits there are human beings.
30. If one rips his mat, he sleeps on the floor.
31. Whether the hawk flies high or low, it will still perch in the ojî tree. (One who travels abroad does not fail to return to his homeland.)
32. The bee comes on account of wine, the fly comes on account of decaying things; what makes the wasp come? (A person should stay quietly until he is called.)
33. When one hides to spy on a person, another person hides and spies on him. (No one knows when something good will befall him.)
34. One who cuts with a knife of war goes home to a knife of war. (A man is known by his deeds.)
35. It is good that the chicken carried the corpse of the dog, because if the dog had carried the corpse of the chicken, people would have said that the dog killed it. (It is good that the chief called himself a madman, because if someone else had called him that, that person would have been scorned.)
36. If the rain beats down on the slave, it beats down on his owner. (Two people going to bring a case for trial at the house of a chief must spend money.) [Cases often were brought to chiefs for preliminary hearings before going to British courts.]
37. If (it happens that) one plants a raphia palm tree in the earth, he also plants his ear.
38. Is it that fish do not feel the cold, or is it that fish do not have fire?
39. For the ears to hear properly, they need not be so large that they cover the head.
40. What the goat sees and is silent about, if the male dog sees it, he barks until daybreak.
41. While one is telling lies, he is losing out. [losing credibility and other things]
42. The way a man comes into this world [referring to temperament or other circumstances of birth] calls to him [influences him] while he is young. [Maturity lessens the influence.]
43. Where the corpse lies is where the vultures congregate.
44. Whatever the hawk gives birth to will not fail to carry off chickens.
45. The dog answers to whatever name anybody gives him.
46. The water that is in the potsherd belongs to the dog.
47. The fire left the pot alone and went and killed what was inside of it.
48. If as many people as eat fish sit together, an entire basket is brought down [from its high storage place].
49. Wherever a child has found a blind snail, he expects to find snails at all times.
50. If one goes out in the morning and a chicken chases him, he should run away, because he does not know if it sprouted teeth during the night.
51. If an old man with gray hair does something bad to you, harden your head and take revenge on him, [because] good is good.
52. The yam that protrudes from the ground tells people to tread on it. [asking for trouble]
53. After the chicken stares at something, he should peck at it. (After staring at me, do you think you are going to kill me?
54. What the kid does, its mother taught it.
55. The musk shrew went to cry for an in-law and cried himself into a long mouth.
56. If the diviner talks more than the divination reveals, let him add his own materials of divination.
57. The young girl committed an abomination and then looked upward [avoiding eyes].
58. The young daughter keeps running around and around the chief's compound, because she ate her mother's groundnuts [afraid to go in].
59. The chicken is the cause of people eating her eggs. [It is her own fault.] [chickens raised mainly for hatching]
60. The thing that causes the sore determines the treatment of it.
61. When the sun beats down, one sees what the small cricket killed.
62. You can't fall from a high place and have someone else swell up.
63. When a young girl eats bean cakes in the market, her honor is defiled.
64. Continuing to bring is better when it concerns the other person [comes from another person's pocket]. (I will not bring my possessions, but I laugh deceitfully while taking all of your possessions from you.)
65. Carrying the corpse of another person's child, is like carrying a bundle of firewood. (When another person's child dies, one who is not closely related does not feel sympathy.)
66. Another person does not realize the sickness of his companion.
67. If a bee has stung a child, when he sees a horsefly he runs away. (When one realizes that bees sting and that it is painful, that causes him not to want to experience anything else that is painful.)
68. One who is compelled by the breeze to put on his wrapper will put on the ugberugede [tightly wrapped undergarment, like ogodo ]. [Maybe he has been embarrassed by the breeze blowing back his lighter garment.] (When a thrifty person does a thing a second time [he may have missed it the first time], he spends his money lavishly so he can get what he wants.) [Overdoing, going too far.]
One does not beat a child on the day he spills oil [first time overlooked] but rather on the day he spills inferior palm oil [second or third misbehavior].
69. If one crosses over to another town, he starts to eat something he usually shuns.
70. If the cooking-pot enters the yam barn, the small yams become afraid.
71. If you see a place where a pumpkin bears fruit, you see also a place where a pregnant woman goes to pluck it.
72. If the pumpkin does not bear fruit, what will the pregnant woman eat?
73. It's not good for the oil palm to bear fruit and ripen on the same day.
74. The bow that shot the swallow [bird so tiny that it is very hard to hit it] gets twenty small arrows [by way of reward].
75. If one stays at home waiting for someone, his leg does not pain him (or break). [Easier to wait for someone at home, e.g., you are not inconvenienced if he does not show up.]
76. Rather than fill my stomach and fall by the wayside, let me eat to half-full. [afo ugwu =half full stomach]
77. A baby chick that falls into a pit is involved in dancing.
78. I used the corner of my eye to know that to hold is really to hold. [I could easily tell that something serious was going on.]
79. The brother of a madman feels shame but the madman does not feel it.
80. The stroke of words hurts more than the stroke of a knife.
81. One does not pinch the package one is going to unwrap.
82. If the master of the house delays in eating the food, the children will scramble for it.
83. If one piece of yam remains in the fire, all eyes will be focused on it.
84. A chicken that fails to complain about the knife that killed it will start to twist its neck [in annoyance] to the stew pot.
85. The crab swam the large stream and the small stream, then came into the stew pot and was stuck.
86. If one finger touches the oil, it spreads to all the fingers.
87. The support [encouragement] of a fight exceeds the actual carrying on of it.
88. One cup of water is enough to bathe well in.
89. The fly wastes time buzzing around the heap of feces that is bigger than it.
90. If one does not know a thing, his age-mates will show him.
91. If one does not agree to accept his standard [e.g., he may put himself above it], he is carried back to his father's compound. [Not literally carried, but subjected to discipline.]
92. One uses old eyes to seek an old road.
93. After the bachelor has gone out, the ashes of the morning's fire
still wait for him.
94. One who has things shares them.
95. The chicken's eggs fill the basket-- find out which is male and which is female.
96. When the corpse begins to smell, the brother carries it.
97. One who holds someone to the ground holds himself.
98. When "know-it-all" leads the way, love [friendly type] is destroyed. [avoided, missed]
99. A person's foolishness is his wisdom. [Ignorance is bliss.]
100. The hand that a person prefers is the one he uses to support his head.
101. The playing of dogs is that one falls down for the other.
102. If the soup is good and the fufu (boiled food) is good, the throat starts to cry, may you [pl.--referring to the cooks] not die.
103. A good word has no answer. [Its value is obvious.]
104. The palm tree grubs fall and the birds make a joyful noise.
105. Do you think that the dog does not know who sells bones?
106. Giving a dog the name of an enemy does not mean winning.
107. Having many gaps in the teeth does not mean that one has eaten a lot of meat.
108. If the garment were the measure of goodness, our wickedness would not remain in the world.
109. If sleep were death, not one person would remain in the world.
110. If the vulture were edible, the ancestors would have eaten it.
111. When the leopard's pelvic area is broken all round, then the duiker approaches him concerning old debts.
112. A large town causes large fear.
113. If an enemy kills a leopard it is said that he killed a sleeping one.
114. One who squints at [use of eyes to express some feeling, good or bad] someone greater than he is only recognizing him. [The gesture would be ineffective under such circumstances.]
115. When the sore heals, one forgets the pain of it.
116. Crow says that he cries so that the public will hear his voice, not so that the thing that holds him should release him.
117. One who throws a bird up in the air shows him the road to the place where his mother is [in a state of freedom].
118. When the lizard fails to run around the base of the tree, the dog catches it.
119. If you kill a goat for a hawk, his eye remains on the chicken. [hard to change habits]
120. The nduru 's eye is on the bag of black-eyed peas.
121. The mouth [verbal approach] one uses to borrow money is not used to pay it back.
122. A short person hangs his bag where his hand can reach.
123. The dog does not chew the bone that has been hung around its neck.
124. It is in the afternoon that the child realizes that its mother is dead. [no one to bring him food]
125. If the chicken fails to cluck, what will she use to train her children?
126. If you can't follow the bridge properly, you fall into the water.
127. One who talks too much about his illnesses [or troubles] is avoided. [He is apt to reveal too many details about himself.]
128. The owner of the corpse carries it at the head.
129. When a child's is tired of working, he has strength to fight. [Fatigue makes him aggressive.]
130. When a chicken comes out in the morning and starts to chase me, I start to run because I do not know if it has sprouted teeth during the night.
131. It would be good for the wind to blow so that I can see the bottom of the chicken.
132. One who chases a baby chick must fall.
133. The chicken says that it will not forget the one who plucked its tailfeathers in the rainy season.
134. One who plays with a chick smells the droppings. [over-familiarity]
135. The chicken that will be a male comes out of the shell. [Gender
shows up from the beginning.] (The thing that will be profitable
starts in the morning.)
136. When the chicken passes wind the earth chases it [the chicken] away.
(When a person does something bad, he becomes afraid.)
137. If the chicken stops clucking, what will she use to train her child?
138. If you accuse me of stealing a chick, I will steal a hen. (If you keep on accusing me of something I did not do, I do something big.)
139. If a child tells everything he has learned, he goes empty- handed to follow the spirits. [not literally follow spirits; he has nothing to say.]
140. If a child keeps on seeing his mother's friend every day, one day he will cut her [the friend] with a knife.
141. If a child carries both water and wine, he knows which is the heavier.
142. If a child grabs his father around the feet, his [the father's] garment will cover his [the child's] eyes.
143. If a child waves his hand [gesture of defiance] in his father's face, his father will strike the ofo on the ground because of him. [intent is to curse the child]
144. If an immature child asks what happened to his father, what happened to his father happens to him.
145. The eagle says that if you tell birds to choose what they want to be, he chooses the eagle.
146. He-goat says that his traveling out was good, that he traveled out and learned to lift his nose up.
147. The apple [African star-apple] says that it is the only one that gives birth to a child whose mouth must be squeezed open [in order to eat it]. [Refers to an individual's bad luck...]
148. The ram says that as things happen to him, he learns wisdom.
149. When the ant stings the buttocks, it learns wisdom.
150. The hawk says that the case between him and human beings will not end, that they will litigate in heaven.
151. Tortoise says that he is walking [normally], but people say that he is walking oddly. [rocking gait] [mara ghara = lacking in knowledge]
152. Tortoise says he is the only one that God created with a covering.
153. If one says that a broom is not important, he will be looking for it in the morning. (Everything has some way in which it can be useful.
154. The uku tree told another tree that if it claimed it was uku it should sprout thorns.
155. A woman says that the case between her and her husband is not something that human beings can judge; will she be better off if the spirits judge between them?
156. An animal who is not strong enough does not live in a wilderness. [øodøo = habitat]
157. The grass that comes the way of the goat is what he eats.
158. One who has never had a sore throat does not know that one can use saliva for breakfast.
159. The spirits that require chicken eggs in their sacrifices should be aware that the hands and feet of the chickens are in the eggs. [Some spirits don't want anything that has hands or feet.]
160. The woman went to her husband's house and learned nothing but eating (all the time).
161. If the elder does not talk around a thing [beat around the bush], he may reveal the secret. [Elders don't talk directly.]
162. They mold pots but eat food from the potsherd. (Those who are in full possession of things but do not allow them to be useful to them.)
163. A sudden event is too much for the strong man.
164. Mortar carried food, it ran back.
165. Mother [female] sheep will sprout horns; the back of her head rubs in her dream.
166. One who denies [food] at the tortoise's house knows that the fire is counting him in at the start.
167. The large tree has a reputation so that elephant leads its friends to it.
168. Watching, watching, while a flower is watched, one does not use a flower to bury a corpse.
169. If it is the thing that the herbalist loves that I tell him to mix [prepare as medicine], he does not mix at first in the obi .
170. If a man learns to lie, his wife learns that her husband is not at home.
171. If a husband is not a good person, neither will his wife be [a good person].
172. If one loses the flute he has and his brothers are called in, on the day that the matter of the lost flute is to be taken up, he takes his mouth and makes a flute. (If one says that a thing is not important, afterwards he starts to look for it.)
173. One knows that corn ripens in the eye.
174. The wild mango does not fall at the foot of the wild mango.
175. If the plantain-eater [large bird], not knowing that birds fly away, eats a grasshopper, he (perches, cries) sisisi .
176. When one eats a coconut, a person also plants what a person will eat.
177. If a thief is given advice, his heart is carving a tool for digging. (If one tells a person that he is doing something bad, he prepares to do it again.)
178. If one completely throws out the ____ that is in the cloth, the one who wears the cloth goes naked.
179. Seeing but not speaking is the fault of the older person, but speech without listening is the fault of the child.
180. When the slave saw that a digging stick [stick sharpened with flat
edge like a chisel] was used to bury his counterpart [a humiliating thing],
he knew that such would be his own fate would some day .
181. The monkey carries her child on her back, but she does not know when it plucks fruit and eats it all up.
182. A great tree does not fall across to another village. [refers to reputation being local]
183. The cow says that she follows the child purposely, that it is not hard for her to stop if the child drags her.
184. If one avoids talking boldly to a chief, eventually he will put on the cap [basket-shaped, covers the face] to speak to him.
185. The female goat has advanced beyond the stage of childish behavior [soiling, etc.].
186. One who says that something is sweeter will tell what it is sweeter than.
187. The deceiver always stays (aloof) like a leper.
188. A blind man eats an apple only when he happens to strike it with his foot.
189. If one loses the pipe he uses to call together his family, on the day that something happens he makes a pipe out of his mouth.
190. One who plays a flute cleans his nose. [Everyone needs a respite to take care of his own needs.]
191. One who holds a person to the ground holds himself.
192. When words leak out of the mouth, taking them back is difficult.
(When something happens, one does not retreat.)
193. The right hand washes the left hand, the left hand washes the right hand. (Doing good to a person, and he returns the favor.)
194. The pig says that by many people working together, the obi is cleared [filled up]. (When many people do the work, it ends quickly.)
195. When the hawk is flying up, his shadow is on the ground.
196. When the chicken's eggs fill the basket, one cannot know which is male and which is female.
197. The stream does not flow backwards.
198. The eye that sees an eagle thanks the eagle because the eye does not often see an eagle.
199. Corn ripens for those who have no teeth. [Irony--good things come the way of those who are unable to take advantage of them.]
200. If a child is treated the same as his companions, he will feel
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