Supply of Equipment Meeting with the Mentor
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homeland and this new world. The bar signifies the watering hole where Santiago can observe and get information about the new place. There, he finds the new
rules, new people, new customs, and even new language. This drastic contrast signifies the movement or change of the rhythm which is useful to understand
more about who Santiago really is. The quotation bellow shows a reflection of the watering hole and the drastic contrast of the special world from the former world
that Santiago encounters with: “How strange Africa is, thought the boy. He was sitting in a bar very much
like the other bars he had seen along the narrow streets of Tangier. Some men were smoking from a gigantic pipe that they passed from one to the
other. In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and
chanted
—as everyone about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground Coelho, 1993: 33
“He was in a different country, a stranger in a strange land, where he couldnt even speak the language. He was no longer a shepherd, and he
had nothing, … Coelho, 1993: 38
When Santiago arrives at the bar, he feels alien not only to the terrain but also its people. He finds different customs, tradition, and rules. Santiago
can’t speak their language. Even though he has studied Latin and theology in the
seminary, and spent two years to be an explorer in Spain, in the land of Africa he becomes a stranger and must learn many things about the local currency. For
example, he has already known that the people of the land are descendants of the Moors, but in this land he just recognizes the way they practice their belief. Then,
he also learns the new rule that in this land wine is banned because their religion forbids it.
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