NIGHT IS OVER

(by Jacque Schrader)

The night is over, the night is done 
Be-fore I had the chance, before I even had the chance 
To count, to count all of the stars in the sky. 

recording: recording by Libana [Libana]

notes: Libana album "Instrument of Peace" liner notes [Kickstarter]

The Night Is Over (a traditional proverb of the Fipa people of East Africa
beautifully set to music by Orff-Schulwerk music educator Jacque Schrader)

the original proverb in Fipa (a Bantu language of Tanzania), as given in
Astrology, Science and Culture: Pulling Down the Moon (2004) by Roy Willis &
Patrick Curry, an anthropological study of the social phemonenon of astrology:

... a proverb from the Fipa ethnicity [...] suggestive of the futility of
supposing that we finite, mortal humans can ever, contrary to the
pretensions of modern science, of Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins,
grasp the totality of things:

Uwaala-ntaanda, ng'usiku unga ca!
(The night is over before one has finished counting the stars!). (p.24)