As a kid in my community, I always wondered why older people often say the past is better than now or the future. They meant something very important, but I didn't realize how deep it was. It came to a point that I couldn’t find a way to understand unless I asked for an answer.

Later I got answers to solve my headache. Some would say the past is better because education is less important in some societies, especially ours, compared to the olden days. Others might have a different opinion, like attitudes toward parents, or even that children have changed because they are possessed by an evil spirit.

Some knowledge is usually passed down by word of mouth. About 25 to 30 years ago, as I learned, even our town’s name was given as an honor to a particular individual. Many people often say he was the only person living here at that time with his family and spent all his life working so that our homeland would be great.

This story has been passed down by older people to younger ones. Even some stories were like a poem that they sang or said when something went wrong, like: “The Falcon cannot hear the Falconer, things have fallen apart, the center can’t hold any longer.” This was told to me by my mom a week ago, and she said they repeated it over and again until they felt satisfied.

Sometimes some stories are written but not continually. I usually read my favorite story from a book that was written by a civilian which indicates that my home is the oldest in West Africa and Africa, along with how it gained its independence.

Although stories are usually passed orally, one aspect of passing down knowledge is by acting on a TV show that portrays how people lived before, where they live, their culture, their way of doing things, their means of providing, and their ways of gaining knowledge.