African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics)

by Stephen Belcher

  Nyirarucyaba feared her father’s anger and so she fled into the forest. There a hunter found her and gave her shelter, and eventually they married and Nyirarucyaba bore him a child. One day, as she was walking near their camp, she saw a cow feeding her calf; she was able to get close and to taste some of the milk that had spilled, and she found it delicious. After some thought, she caught the calf with a rope of braided vines and led it to her camp; the cow followed quietly after it. Her husband, the hunter, at first refused to drink the milk, but eventually was brought to do so when he was sick.

  After some time, Nyirarucyaba learned that her father was sick, and so she decided to take him some of the marvellous substance she had discovered. She did so, and he recovered immediately. He pressed her to give him the cow, and she agreed only after he had threatened to kill her husband and child.

  Gihanga discovered where the cows came from: they came out of a lake. He prepared his men to go and capture all the cows, but diviners warned him that he should send away his son Gafomo, who might spoil the enterprise. So he sent Gafomo off on an errand while everyone else prepared to go down to the lake. But Gafomo secretly turned back and followed them to the lake-side, and there he climbed a thorny tree known as a mushubi.

  The cows began coming out of the lake to graze on the grass, and men caught them with braided ropes and led them quietly away. Then came the bull of the herd, and seeing it Gafomo was frightened and called out from the top of his tree. The bull turned back into the lake, leading the rest of the cows with him, and the men were not able to get all the cows they wanted. At that time they renamed Gafomo after the tree in which he had sat, and his name became Gashubi.

  Gihanga then allotted portions to his children, and he named Kinyarwanda to be king after him. When Nyirarucyaba came and asked what her share was to be, Gihanga told her that she and her descendants could come to the king as he was being enthroned and demand milk, and he would have to provide her with milk.

  Kinyarwanda later decreed that women should not milk cows, because the squatting position was obscene.

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  THE GREAT LAKES II: THE STORY OF WAMARA (BAHAYA)

  The BaHaya live on the south-western shores of Lake Victoria (Victoria Nyanza), and in former times were divided into several principalities or kingdoms (Kiziba, Ihangira, Usswi). Much material from their traditions of origin is shared with neighbouring peoples (Kintu is the central figure), proof of a common origin at least for the ruling dynasty and their idioms of power. The BaHaya are also noted for their iron-working.

  A jackal came at night and yapped around the compound of King Wamara, disturbing his sleep, and so Wamara and his two principal chiefs Irungu and Mugasha went out hunting for the animal. They quickly started it from the bush, and then their dogs pursued it as it led them on a course which ended in a cave. Following the trail, Wamara, Mugasha and Irungu found themselves in an underground world, a place they had never seen before. This was the land of Kintu, who rules beneath the earth. Kintu ordered the strangers to be brought before him, and then greeted them politely. He asked them where they had come from and who they were, and Wamara answered.

  Then Kintu offered them food. Fearful, Wamara ordered Mugasha and Irungu to taste it first. Kintu’s servants brought banana beer and goat-meat; Mugasha was unable to stomach this food and threw up, but Irungu tasted it, found it delicious, and recommended it to his king.

  Then Kintu’s servants brought in a kitare cow, one of the beautiful long-horned cows with a brilliant white coat, attended by a maiden who milked her before the visitors. Kintu offered them the milk; Wamara told Mugasha not to bother tasting it, because he trusted Irungu’s opinion. Irungu drank a bit from the bowl and then told his king, ‘Of all that we have been offered here, this is the best.’ Wamara tasted the milk and fell in love with the cow.

  Kintu expressed surprise that they did not have such provisions in their world above the ground, and then invited them to stay. For nine days they remained in Kintu’s caves, and during that time Mugasha wandered through Kintu’s domains and saw his people cultivating fields and growing different crops; he collected the seeds of the different crops that he encountered. Kintu, meanwhile, assembled a herd of cattle and goats, and when the time had come for Wamara to return to his kingdom, Kintu offered to send the livestock up with Wamara, on condition that Wamara send back the servants, including the maiden who attended the kitare cow, and that he should not forget to thank Kintu for the gifts.

  They returned home, and found some of the followers still waiting outside the cave. Then they returned to the court. Mugasha set about planting the seeds he had brought with him, assisted by his wife. Wamara shared the milk from the cattle with his household, and showed his wives how to anoint themselves with butter so that their skin glistened. He would sit admiring the kitare cow, the pride of his herd, and the servants heard him say, ‘I should die if I lost her.’

  But despite his love of the cattle, Wamara forgot to give thanks to Kintu for his gifts, and beneath the earth Kintu became impatient. Eventually, he asked his servants which of them would go to punish the humans for their forgetfulness. Rufu, death, presented himself. He would go and remind the humans of their debt.

  But when Rufu came to Wamara’s court, Wamara’s men beat him mercilessly with sticks and he was forced to flee. Wherever he hid, they found him and beat him, until he came across the maiden from Kintu’s land who watched over the cow. She took him beneath her wrap and hid him inside her vagina, and so he escaped the pursuers.

  Later, he came out and seized the opportunity to drag the kitare cow into a swamp so that it drowned. And then people remembered what they had heard Wamara say, that he would die if ever he lost the kitare cow. Wamara went with his followers to the swamp and threw himself into the morass; Irungu and the other servants followed him.

  After their deaths, Wamara, Mugasha and Irungu became bachwezi spirits watching over humans. Mugasha in particular is associated with the lake and its storms, but he is also thanked for the food he provided for people.

  13

  THE CHAGGA OF EAST AFRICA: MURILE

  The Chagga are a farming people who live in Tanzania in the region at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, and nowadays they are known mainly for growing coffee. Their story of Murile, collected early in the last century while the region was still a German colony, can serve to illustrate an appreciation of cattle from a people that was not marked strongly by pastoralism or by the ‘cattle complex’. One might compare Murile’s transformation of a yam into a child with Khaggen’s transformation of a leather scrap into an eland (Chapter 1).

  The boy Murile was the eldest of three sons. He assisted his mother when she went out to gather colocasia roots (a sort of yam) which they were going to store and then plant in their fields. One day they dug up a particularly fine root, and Murile told his mother that it reminded him of his youngest brother. The mother laughed at the idea, but Murile found that the image of the root stayed in his mind. Some days later, he slipped into the storeroom and removed the root; he found a hiding place for it in the hollow of a tree-trunk. There he sang a spell over it and poured water upon it. The next day, when he returned, he found that the root had become a little child.

  He fed the child in the hollow of the tree from his own share of the family’s food; he would scrape a handful or two into a small bag which he kept hidden at his side, and then eat one or two more mouthfuls. But he himself started to suffer from his limited rations, and his mother began to worry about him. She asked his younger brothers what he was doing, and they told her that he always put a part of his food into a small bag. She asked them to find out for her what he was doing with this food, and so they watched him more carefully and soon discovered that he was taking the food to a tree-trunk in the bush. They told their mother, and one day she went to the tree-trunk and found the child in the hollow. She had no idea where this child had come from, but she saw it as a threat to her own son Murile, since he was sufferin
g from a lack of food on the account of this child. So she killed the child and returned to her camp.

  That evening, after dinner, Murile slipped away again with the share of food which he kept for his root-child. But when he came to the hollow he heard no noise, and when he looked inside he found the child lying lifeless on the ground. At first he could not believe that it was dead; he lifted it and called to it. He sang a song over it. But the body remained limp. Then he wept for a long time. It was late that night when he returned to his parents’ camp.

  The next day he broke out weeping again as they sat together in the morning, and his mother asked him what was the matter. He answered that it was the smoke from the fire burning his eyes. She told him to move to another side of the fire. But tears continued to stream down his face, and eventually she told him he should move away from the fire entirely. He took his father’s small stool and sat down at the end of their cleared space.

  He began to sing. He sang to the stool on which he was sitting, telling it to carry him up higher than the tree-tops, higher than the clouds. The stool lifted off the ground and Murile rose into the air. His younger brothers saw him and shouted. His mother came and cried out, calling on him to return to the ground. He shouted back that he was going away and he would never come back. His father called to him. Neighbours and relatives, drawn by the noise, came and called to him. To all he gave the same answer: he was going away and he would never return.

  The stool carried him into the air until he reached the land above the clouds. He got off the stool and walked for some way through empty lands of trees and bushes until he met some people cutting grass to serve as thatch. Murile asked them where he was, and they said they had no time to speak to idle hands. So Murile joined them in their work and cut several bundles of grass which he bound up with vines. Then the people told him he was in the land of the Moon, and that the Moon had a great palace, and they pointed him in the direction of the palace. Murile walked on, and a bit further he found young men cutting saplings to serve as a base for the thatch roofs. Murile helped them, and they pointed him on his way. Closer to the settlement he found fields, and there he helped the people who were setting and watering beds, and others who were hoeing the weeds. After the fields he came to the well, and he helped the water-carriers by carrying a pot back into the kitchen area.

  The women who were preparing the food invited him to sit and join the meal when they fed the workers, and so he sat down with the other men. To his surprise, the food was not cooked. There were roots and bulbs, such as he ate at home, but although they were sliced thin they were still raw. There were thin strips of meat laid over the pounded grain, but these too were raw. Murile wondered at this, and after the meal he asked the head cook if that was the only way they knew to prepare their food. The cook answered that it was.

  ‘I know a different way,’ said Murile. ‘Give me some tubers and some meat, and I shall show you something new.’ The cook agreed and gave Murile the foodstuffs. Murile went behind the palace and collected some dry wood and some tinder and laid out a fire. Then he made himself a fire-starter from several pieces of wood: the base and the twirling shaft, and a small bow whose string was looped around the shaft. He sawed with the bow for a short time and soon the tinder began to glow and smoke, and after that the dry wood caught on fire. Murile roasted the tubers in the coals and then grilled the meat on sticks. He brought the meal back to the cook who tasted it and cried out in delight and amazement. The cook immediately hastened to the Moon to offer him this new delicacy, and Murile followed after.

  The Moon was delighted with the new foods, and promised Murile any reward he might wish for the secret of its preparation. Murile asked for such wealth as was available, and he was given cattle and goats and sheep, as well as several wives. He settled in the Moon’s palace and lived there for some time.

  After many years, he felt a longing for the earth and his family. So he thought how he might manage a return. He had told his family that he would never return, but such promises can be changed. He decided to send a bird as a messenger to announce his return. The bird flew down to Murile’s family and sang to them about his imminent return, but the people did not believe the words of a bird. Nevertheless, Murile set out. His wives and much of his wealth remained in the land of the Moon, but he took some boys to help him drive a great herd of cattle and goats before them. They walked and walked, for the path down to the earth was much longer when there was no flying stool to carry a body. After some time Murile began to feel tired. He was walking near his finest ox, a beautiful bull with great horns and a sleek coloured hide. The bull saw that he was tired, and spoke to him. The bull agreed to let Murile ride on his back if Murile swore that he would never touch the bull’s meat, and Murile readily made the promise, for he had no intention of ever using the bull for food. So Murile was riding a bull when he reached his parents’ camp.

  They welcomed him joyously, for they had never expected to see him again and here he had returned bringing great wealth with him. He settled with them, giving strict instructions that the bull who had served as his steed must be kept in safety until the end of its days, and that its meat should never be used as food.

  He lived with his family on earth for many years, and in this time the bull became old and slow. One day, without consulting his son, Murile’s father decided that the bull’s time had come and he slaughtered it. They cut up the meat and held a great feast. Murile realized that they were eating the meat of the bull which had helped him, and so he abstained from the meal. His mother noticed this, and became concerned that her son was not getting the nourishment he needed. She did not accept his reasons for not eating the meat of the bull. So she saved some of the fat and later prepared a dish of cooked grain in which she used the fat as seasoning.

  As soon as Murile took a mouthful of the dish, the food spoke to him. ‘You have broken your promise,’ it said. ‘You said my meat would never touch your mouth.’

  ‘Mother,’ cried Murile, ‘you have given me the meat I forbade.’ But his mother simply told him to be quiet and to finish his meal. So he ate another mouthful, and yet another. But with each mouthful, his body sank further into the ground until he was completely swallowed up by the earth. So he disappeared, leaving his cattle and goats as wealth for his family.

  TRICKSTERS

  The trickster is one of the most popular mythological and folkloric figures in the world, and Africa is richly endowed with trickster tales. The figures themselves are often animals – the tortoise, the hare, the spider – but their appetites and failings are invariably human. Trickster tales have a moral dimension: tricksters exemplify the consequences of thoughtless or disobedient behaviour. The tales also have an expressive function: they speak to that which is real and human in us, rather than what is ideal and perhaps unnatural; they express the human reality, often in a comic and thus more palatable tone.

  But tricksters also have a more serious purpose and nature. The trickster and the culture-hero often overlap, if they are not identical. The ‘trickster-transformer’ is a world-shaping demiurge whose shifts and contrivances overcome immediate dangers while leaving consequences for humans to face in later times. Tricksters are also often associated with the systems of established world order that underlie divination systems (such as the Ifa divination system in west Africa), and they serve as the interpreters of the messages from that system. They thus explain possible mistakes in the content of the messages, protecting the system itself; more significantly, they can control the system by exploiting loopholes and bending rules. Thus, they add an element of disorder and unpredictability to the world: features which we all know by experience are present in our lives. Because the trickster can see past (or through) the rules, the trickster is also creative. The trickster is rarely intentionally so; the benefits of the trickster’s inventions are usually accidental afterthoughts. But they remain real.

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  UTHLAKANYANA, THE ZULU CHILD TRICKSTER

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sp; Uthlakanyana is an excellent example of the hero-trickster who gets into trouble through a lack of self-control or an inability to foresee consequences, but whose ingenuity and considerable powers solve his problems and benefit his people. Many of Uthlakanyana’s adventures are reported of other figures, and although this story is taken from Zulu traditions, in the south of Africa, it can be considered representative of the type across the continent. This story was collected in the mid-nineteenth century.

  Even before his birth, Uthlakanyana amazed his family: he told his mother when he wished to be born, so that she cried out in amazement and all the men of the kraal came to see what was the matter. At his birth, Uthlakanyana cut his own umbilical cord with his father’s spearhead and then announced his arrival to the world. Such an unusual beginning promised extraordinary deeds, and Uthlakanyana fulfilled that promise. He is remembered not for his strength, but for his cunning, his tenacity and his small size, which evoke the mongoose, killer of snakes.

  As a child he was greedy and often tricked his family out of their food, taking it all for himself. When they no longer posed a challenge he decided to go out into the world. He came across a bird-trap set by a man-eater, and as he was fond of birds he removed them and ate them. Later, he came across other traps and again removed the birds. But this time he got caught: the man-eater had realized that someone was taking his birds from his trap and so had laid sticks coated with birdlime around the traps. Uthlakanyana walked unawares onto the sticks and so was caught. But when the man-eater came, the wily boy persuaded the ogre not to eat him immediately, but to take him home and let his mother cook him. Uthlakanyana claimed that if he were not cooked properly he would taste bitter, and the man-eater would have no pleasure in chewing his bones. And besides, he should have the birdlime washed off.

  The ogre agreed and took his prize to the home where he lived with his mother and small brother. They washed him and laid him out that night, and in the morning the ogre told his mother to cook Uthlakanyana while he and his brother went off hunting. First, though, at Uthlakanyana’s request, he put the boy on the roof of the hut to dry in the sun, before being cooked. But Uthlakanyana really wished to be able to see in which direction the ogres went to hunt.