The most amazing thing i have never seen in my life?

Question:

The most amazing thing i have never seen in my life?

My work is associated with east African countries, mostly Kenya and Ethiopia. I just got back from Ethiopia with the weirdest encounter of my life, which changed my previous sympathy for the country. It all started with me and my co-worker as we visited the Lake Tana that??s the origin of Nile River in Ethiopia. There on the lake were these poor Ethiopians trying to fish while we sow one man dropping bunch of fishes, crabs, shrimps and lobsters, etc..back to the lake, I asked him why he was doing that, he looked at me with surprise and asked with broken English what else he could do with them. I told him why couldn??t he eat them or give them to other people, he shouted out, how people could eat such things and left immediately. We were both so surprise, imagine how shrimps and crabs can??t be eaten and the weird part is, they are Ethiopians always suffering with hunger and famine. After we encounter this we tried to show to the local people how to eat, shrimps, crabs and different kinds of fish as they only eat one type of fish , we cooked and tried to give them to taste, some of them were actually vomiting for just watching us eat and none of them dare to try, my friend was laughing at their stupidity but I was actually offended and the worst part is not just sea foods that they don??t know how to eat, we found out there are many types vegetables that they don??t know how to eat specially mushroom they call it ?? umbrella of hyena?? and children play with is everywhere on the street , but no one use them as food, my general encounter is that poverty is both mental and physical in Ethiopia and they are the poorest and the most proudest people I have ever seen. Can you imagine, they think eating pork is disobeying God? Anyway Kenya is relatively better, actually they are growing economically better than Ethiopians, and they know mushrooms, sea foods and pork are for food. My friend and I now working on project to teach Ethiopians what to eat hopefully we can get somewhere, anyone who read this can give me idea to include in the project I am posting this again & again because I haven??t really got good idea for my project

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

African cultures are so different and authentic (as you've probably concluded yourself). The people there are living their lives the only way they think is right (as you most probably must have seen). Don't you think it would be a bit odd that they 'don't know how to eat sea foods', if we accept the fact that their way of life is much, much more older then ours? I'm a bit surprised that you haven't thought of another option in stead of thinking that those communities, which last for thousands of years, would stay ignorant to some basic ways of survival... As an answer for this, I would have to quote a book most people here don't like to hear quotations from: the Bible. Though, I don't intent on using it for any religious purpose, but only trough a scientific method. In one place (I don't have the book with me, so I don't know exactly where) in the Old testimony, you can find a list of forbidden foods where, along many others, sea foods are listed also. In Hebrew, those foods are not 'kosher', they are unclean. Now, we have seen many examples of older beliefs being reflected on some newer ones and even on historical documents (as the Bible is). I have noticed a long time ago that in these cases, there is no exact explanation. This is the case with forbidden foods also. Therefor, one should conclude that they were tabooed for another reason: if it is prooven that the old Jewish people were residents of Africa, long before the books of the Old testimony were written, and if we know that Africa is considered to be the cradle of humanity, it is likely to presume that the old Jews have encountered many other nations due to their nomadic, migrational way of life. History also prooves that in this encounters there happens the proces of aculturisation - mixing of cultures. So, since we have no explanation of why would some foods be forbidden in the Jewish coulture, could we not assume that this was taken from another people, or at least that the practise of not eating certain foods in the Jewish people and in other African nations has the same, far origin?
What you've witnesed may not be just ignorance, but an ancient religious restriction. Only modern societies do not know of any forbidden foods, but in the old days this was normal. Now I can think of a vaigue example from ancient Greece: the Greeks did not drink pure wine, for it had become a substitution for blood (because of the color) and, generally, a substitution for human sacrifice; they only drank a mixture of wine and water - pure wine was only for their gods. This is a bit remote compared to real foods, but it has the same principe. There are many, more concrete, cases to be found in various ancient, or just old enough cultures...
In many beliefs, sea animals are seen as demonic or as the bearers of souls, and therefor holy (or just the opposite - unholy!). Mushrooms also have a very important role in many (even present-days) cults and magical practises. I have even read a very fine work about the tree of knowledge from the Bible being actually a mushroom of a certain kind!
Basically, we're looking at African coultures from an eurocentric point of wiew. We can't be objective about their beliefs because they are so different from ours, and for this fact we tend to proclaim them 'ignorant' or 'savage' and similar. It could look like, while we think that we're trying to help them, we're actually destroing them, because we're destroing what they believe is right and all their values; just because we can't understand them! Just look at the examples: India, New Zealand, Japan, Ethiopia - when we find something that is so very new and uncomprehensible to us, we end up not helping, but conquering!

So, give all this a thought and try to open up your mind to other possibilities - what you don't know, try to judge rationally and fair!