Humility At The Door

The tipi, indigenous mobile architecture.

A common scene in movies is when someone pounds the door in anger, like “the goddam police” to quote Katt Williams, a famous stand-up comedian.

It’s not a knock, more like a declaration of war. Sometimes it’s a girlfriend wanting to catch the boyfriend red-handed or girl-handed, as in him handling another woman. Common sense says you cannot control a grown man with a full set of teeth. Social media says you can and must debase yourself and health, policing another human being.

Once upon a time, there was only one way of knocking: humility. How? Because of the door. I took some pics of a tipi at the local fair today. The door forces you to be humble, to bow down, lower your head and venture carefully into the tipi. It is one example. The same thing with iqhugwane (traditional Zulu hut). The door is low, down there. You need to almost crawl to enter. In fact, in the olden days, you did not knock. You shouted the owner’s surname, hailing his surname poetry if you knew it.

That small door is common in the northern part of Canada, where Inuit people have lived since the beginning of time. It’s extremely cold so they build snow houses with blocks of ice. Our Geography teacher called them igloo. That small door is found all over the world because traditional societies believed in humility. It is a peace door, a good intentions visit. Weapons were left outside, if visitors were carrying any.

That small door does not accommodate barging in.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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