Conversations with Ogotemmeli

The excerpts from "Conversations with Ogotemmeli" that we read tell the story of an ancient community of Dogon's in Africa that European antrhopologists travel to to study their customs and religious practices. There is talk that the people of this community take part in ritual sacrifices and other so called barbaric activies that the Europeans do not agree with. One of the most interesting things about these excerpts is the way that the narrative moves from one point to another. At the beginning, it is written very much like a novel. The setting is described very creatively and it follows a pretty simple beginning of a novel sort of structure, introducing the characters and their surroundings. However as you get deeper into the text, it becomes more of an informational reading. You learn who Ogotemmeli is and listen as he tells one of the European anthropologists about the basis of their religion, where their ideas came from and why they think the things they do. At first Ogotemmeli is worried about how to properly tell the story of his people to the European, as the European has studied his culture for approximately fifteen years and therefore knows already a lot of the things that Ogotemmeli wants to tell him.
While I was reading this, i felt like I was the European anthropologist interviewing Ogotemmeli. After reading the preface and the first chapter of the excerpt, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of what was going on. A poor, African community with its roots latched in medieval practices like rituals and sacrifice. However, as Ogotemmeli speaks and tells you the Dogos beliefs on the creation of Earth, it's enlightening. You realize that none of the Dogos religious practices are immature, but rather they are all based on solid ideas that the Dogos truly beleive in . He talks about the creation of man, sin, and the difference in gender roles, all issues that are dealt with in any main stream religion.
Even though I haven't read the whole text, only excerpts, I can tell you confidently what I think happens in the end of the story. The European writes a book about how the Dogon community is not a group of savages performing crazy rituals for no reason, but rather that they are a mature, religious group who are just as smart as any other group of people. The Europeans went into the African jungle to find a group of freaks, and instead they found a group of intelligent people who simply have a different set of beliefs then the rest of the world. It's another story of learning not to judge a book by its cover, and that in order to understand a different person or culture, you have to sit down and have a conversation with them.