Amos Tutuola: The Hidden Math in African Folklore
Amos Tutuola
The Hidden Math in African Folklore
 |
| Amos Tutuola: Nigerian author who put African folklore on the world stage |
Think math is just numbers and equations? Think again! Nigerian author Amos Tutuola's wild adventure stories are actually built on mathematical ideas - you just have to know where to look.
The Story That Branches Like a Tree
In most adventure stories, the hero goes from point A to point B in a straight line. But in Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard, the hero's journey is more like a tree with endless branches.
Think of it this way:
Remember those "choose your own adventure" books where you'd flip to different pages based on your choices? Tutuola's stories work similarly. To complete his main quest, the hero has to finish smaller quests, and each of those has even smaller challenges.
Real-world analogy: It's like trying to make a fancy dinner. To cook the main dish (your goal), you need to chop vegetables (sub-quest), but to do that you need to find a sharp knife (sub-sub-quest), and so on.
Spiritual Problems Have Exact Solutions
In Tutuola's world, when you encounter a ghost or spirit, they don't just want "a sacrifice" - they demand very specific things. A spirit might ask for exactly "70 barrels of palm wine" or "a cow with three horns."
Think of it this way:
In Yoruba tradition, the Ifá system acts as a detailed spiritual map for navigating life's challenges. There are 256 primary 'territories' on this map. A divination session locates your precise situation, providing the exact wisdom and actions needed to navigate it. Tutuola’s stories bring this system to life, showing a universe where spiritual issues have identifiable roots and specific solutions.
 |
| My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: Where the rules of reality don't apply |
A World Where Maps Don't Work
The "Bush of Ghosts" in Tutuola's stories isn't a normal forest. Distance changes depending on your mood, you can walk in circles but end up somewhere new, and towns can exist inside someone's head.
Think of it this way:
Imagine a video game where the rules of physics don't apply. Walking forward might teleport you backward. A small door might lead to a giant room. This is what mathematicians call "non-Euclidean geometry" - space that doesn't follow our everyday rules.
Real-world analogy: Think of those optical illusions where stairs seem to go up forever, or drawings where water flows uphill. Tutuola's spirit world works like that.
Characters That Can Be Multiple Things at Once
In these stories, people aren't just one thing. A character might be partly human, partly ghost, and partly animal all at the same time.
Think of it this way:
Instead of simple categories like "tall" or "short," think of percentages. Someone could be 60% human, 30% ghost, and 10% animal. This is different from our usual either/or thinking (you're either tall OR short, not both).
So what's the big idea? Amos Tutuola wasn't a mathematician, but he captured a way of thinking that's deeply mathematical. His stories show us that African folklore isn't just "simple tales" - it's a sophisticated way of understanding a complex world, full of patterns, systems, and connections that mathematicians are still discovering today.
The next time you think math is just about solving equations, remember that it's really about finding patterns - and those patterns are everywhere, even in the most amazing stories.
