"Every morning the gazelle wakes up knowing she must run faster than the lion or will be dead. Every morning the lion wakes up knowing he must run faster than the gazelle or he'll starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun rises you better start to run."
This wise aphorism is talking about responsibility. The gazelle represents the women and the lion the men of Kulumani. Despite their seemingly contrary goals, they must all do the hard work to survive. They have to take responsibility for their actions, and failure means death. In the dangers of a remote African village this truth should be especially apparent.
"In war, the poor are killed. In peace, the poor dies."
This is a commentary on the subservient position of the women of the village. When they are silent, they are abused by their men. When, however, they try to speak up, they are still treated badly in the conflict. Their position is not changed either way. This leads to a unique kind of hopelessness.
"There is only a way of escape from a place: is leaving ourselves. There is only a way of leaving ourselves: is loving someone."
In this quote, Couto is attempting to explain the duplicitous nature of victimhood. It tells you that you cannot free yourself, but you can. It tells you that you have done nothing wrong, but you're still responsible for doing something right. If your goal is to be freed from your oppression, you must learn to lean into the suffering and conquer it. You cannot run from your problems, but you can turn them into opportunities.
"Everything that we have carefully built over centuries in order to remove ourselves from our animal nature, everything that language has covered over with metaphors and euphemisms (our arms, our faces, our waists), in one instant can be converted back to its naked, brutish substance: flesh, blood, bone."
Throughout the text, Couto goes to great pains to point out the similarities between man and beast. He's urging readers to remember that homo sapiens are still members of the animal kingdom, despite people feeling superior to their animals neighbors. When threatened, humans will respond just the same as a frightened animal, by fighting to survive. We should have a greater sense of humility about our accomplishments because they mean nothing if we don't acknowledge our true nature.
