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  "createdAt": "2025-07-31T15:05:13.968Z",
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        "alt": "Numerous reports attest to the hospitality of Ainican com-munities. Within any village or chiefdom, the codes of hospitality and a spirit of charity prevented the extremes of poverty and abandonment which one finds in richer and supposedly more mature societies. The African extended-family was in itself an agency for mutual aid and welfare; and the family connections led to the clan, where a similar pattern unfolds.\nThe common ancestor shared by all clan members is a very vague figure on the borders between history and legend, many generations distant, but a clan brother is a brother. He was welcomed, housed and fed if he turned up at the compound of another clan member whom he had never seen before. The greater the status of the individual, the greater his obligation to have an open house for all, although he did get something in return, for the reciprocal exchange of gifts was a common practice.\nAfricans approached their earliest European acquaintances in the same hospitable and charitable manner that was normal in dealings among themselves. They called the white men\n\"honoured guests', they gave them protection and love, they plied them with gifts; and it took Africans some time to realise\n53\nthat Europeans worshipped strange gods called Money and Profit. African society did not prove immune to those gods, but right up to the present one finds comments on the warmth of African hospitality, emerging from the whole social conscience and not just from unusually well-disposed members of the community.\nBecause of the extended-family system and the universal hospitality, the aged were fortunately free of the problems of sustenance. They played self-fulfilling and socially satisfying roles within their communities. While old age was a liability in a New World plantation and throughout the capitalist world, in Africa advanced age brought honour, increased respect and authority. ",
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  "text": "\u003e The African extended-family was in itself an agency for mutual aid and welfare;\n\n\u003e and it took Africans some time to realize that Europeans worshipped strange gods called Money and Profit."
}