by K. P. Kojo
Poku’s wife, Yaa, was a farmer, but all her yam and groundnuts and corn had been eaten by rats, so Poku’s bounty from hunting was what they both relied on for food. But Poku was down on his luck. Although he had traps all over the forest, he never found whole animals in them any more. He had caught deer, rabbits, boar, wild goats and even the most wily of forest birds – a guinea fowl – but each time he got to the traps, only the legs were left. The bodies seemed to disappear. The legs were always neatly separated from the bodies and left in a tidy pile. Everyone said it must be the work of Sasabonsam, the mysterious giant creature of the forest, but nobody had seen it.
Because there were only legs left and Poku always had to pay a tax of two hind legs to the chief of Samankrom for hunting in the forest, he only had two thin front legs to share with Yaa. In fact, when he caught the guinea fowl they had nothing to eat because a bird only has two hind legs, and wings where goats have front legs. Poku and Yaa both grew quite thin and gaunt, but there was nothing Poku could do. He kept hunting and hoping that he’d catch enough for a big meal.
One afternoon, as Poku approached a pit trap that he had set close to the river, he heard some voices pleading: ‘Release us, please!’
Poku was used to odd things happening in the forest, but it was one of those dark days with no sunlight in the trees, so he took out his club and crept slowly towards the pit. He pulled back the palm fronds covering the pit and peered inside. Poku could tell that there were three creatures in the pit, but he couldn’t see clearly because of the gloom in the forest.
‘Who is there?’ he asked.
‘A rat,’ said one voice.
‘A snake,’ said another.
‘You have to save me from this rat and snake,’ said the third.
‘A rat, a snake and … what are you?’ Poku cut some bushes to allow some light in and looked in the pit again.
‘A man,’ said the voice, just as Poku turned from cutting the bushes.
It was indeed a man. He was clearly from another village in Asanteman, as Poku did not recognize him. And beside him was a poisonous mamba snake and a large cane rat with a scar on its left ear.
Poku shook his head. ‘What happened here?’
‘That man,’ said Rat, pointing at the tall man by Snake, ‘was trying to catch me for food. I ran towards the river and fell inside this pit. He couldn’t stop so he fell inside too.’
‘I see. And Snake?’
‘I was on that branch just above your head. That man grabbed the branch to stop himself from falling in the pit and made me fall inside too.’
‘Just get me out, please,’ said the man.
‘Please release us,’ pleaded Rat.
Poku turned to Rat. ‘You and your kind go about at night and feast on the crops that we have worked hard to cultivate. You’ve eaten all of my wife’s crops this year. Why shouldn’t I take you home and eat you for dinner?’
‘I apologize for my kind,’ replied Rat. ‘If you let me go, I will make it up to you. I can replace …’
The hunter lifted Rat out of the pit before Rat finished speaking. ‘Your apology is good enough for me,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Rat. ‘There is much more I can do. I can replace broken things. When you return, your wife’s crops will be as they were before being eaten by my kind. And to repay you for your kindness to me, I will tell you where to find some enchanted gold.’
The rat whispered a riddle into Poku’s ear before scuttling away:
Use Sankofa as your guide
the third tallest tweneboa to find;
Follow the sunset’s light,
go left when you think it’s right;
Think like a rat
running from a hungry cat.
Then Rat stopped and called back, ‘Remember where my scar is. And tell no one where you find the gold or it will all disappear.’
‘Thank you.’ The hunter nodded and waved Rat goodbye.
Poku returned to the pit. ‘Snake,’ he said, ‘why should I spare you? You bite my kind all the time. You even kill children.’
‘I am a good snake,’ said the mamba. ‘I saved that rat’s life by threatening to bite this cruel man if he killed him. I only bite to save lives, but if you set me free I will tell my kind to stop biting humans. Not all of them are good listeners, but I promise to tell them. Also, I will give you this very powerful snakebite antidote, just in case one of my kind bites you by mistake.’
Poku the hunter was moved by the snake’s speech and lifted him out of the pit. The snake pulled a tiny pouch from under its skin and gave it to him.
As the snake slithered away, Poku helped the man climb out of the pit and then shook his hand. The man didn’t say what his name was and he didn’t even say thank you, which was very rude behaviour in the kingdom of Asanteman. Poku was surprised but he let the man go on his way.
So the hunter returned home, tired, hungry and with nothing except his club, his cutlass and the pouch that Snake had given him with the antidote. He was prepared to go to bed hungry, but was worried about what to tell his wife, who had grown so thin that her cheekbones were showing.
However, when he reached the footpath near their house he was surprised to hear Yaa singing and, as he got closer, he was sure he could smell yam cooking.
‘Poku!’ yelled his wife as soon as she heard him at the door. ‘You’ll never believe what happened. All my yam is back.’
She gave him a huge atuu, wrapping her arms round his neck. ‘We have no meat, but we shall have mashed yam with palm oil.’
Poku was too stunned to speak, but he was happy to find that the rat had told him the truth. He put the pouch from the snake under the bed and joined his wife for dinner. While he ate the delicious mashed yam with spiced red palm oil, he thought about how he would try and solve the rat’s riddle to find the enchanted gold.
Early the next morning, Poku set off for the forest. When he was halfway in, he remembered that Sankofa meant to go back in order to go forward, so he returned to his village and looked out across the forest skyline. He soon located the third tallest tweneboa tree. ‘I think that is where Rat meant,’ he said to himself, and made his way into the dark depths of the forest.
Poku dug a hole beneath the third tallest tweneboa tree, but he found nothing. He dug another just as the sun was rising – still nothing. He dug another, then another, then another … By mid-morning, he was exhausted. He covered all the holes that he had dug and sat down to rest, wondering how come the rat had been right about his wife’s farm, but not the enchanted gold.
Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep. He woke up to the sounds of the forest: birdsong, loud cicadas and rustling in the undergrowth. He was lucky that no leopards had come his way while he slept.
It was late afternoon. Above his head, a hummingbird hovered, pecking at insects in the tree’s bark; beyond his feet a lizard caught a cricket and crushed it in its mouth. Poku suddenly remembered the rest of the riddle that Rat had whispered in his ear:
Follow the sunset’s light,
go left when you think it’s right;
Think like a rat
running from a hungry cat.
That’s what he had done wrong! He had set off too early; he needed sunset, not sunrise.
Poku waited, watching birds, snails and insects as he often did in the forest. And, sure enough, when sunset came, a tunnel of light shone directly through a gap in the bushes on to a patch to the right of the tweneboa tree. Remembering the rat’s scar, he looked left instead and noticed a very thick root of the tree twisting away into a patch of shrubs, where a single yellow flower bloomed. He followed the root, and when he cleared the dead leaves and shrubs around it, found a rat hole. He didn’t even have to dig! He reached into the hole and out came two large gold nuggets, gleaming even in the dim light.
The next morning, Poku went to market and bought three goats and six chickens to rear at home. When he returned, the nugget that he had taken to buy the goats and chick
ens was right back in the wooden box where he kept the gold. So the hunter took the nugget and went out again to buy bricks to make his house a little bigger. When he got back the nugget was in the box again, as though it had never been taken. With his own home now bigger, he decided to help his friends.
The neighbours’ daughter, Aba, had been gravely ill and unable to get treatment because the healer who could help her had demanded six brown chickens as payment. Poku bought the chickens as a gift for the neighbours and went with them to see the healer. Soon Aba was cured and running home through the forest.
Poku was astounded to find the same two nuggets still in his box when he got home. The rat’s gold was indeed enchanted.
Poku could have become rich and lazy, but he was hard-working and continued to hunt for his food. He came to be known in his village as a generous man who was always willing to help his neighbours – and anyone who was sick or poor and came to him. The goats and chickens he had bought were soon a huge family of chickens and goats, producing lots of eggs and milk and meat. Poku and his wife had two daughters, who ran faster than chickens and liked to go hunting with him on Thursdays. No rats ate the crops on his wife’s farm and nobody from Samankrom had been bitten by a snake for a long, long while.
However, one day, news reached Samankrom that the Omanhene, the chief of Asanteman, had lost a case of gold. The town crier went around all the villages asking everyone to look out for the case and try to help find it. The most special piece of gold in the case was an intricate necklace that belonged to the Omanhene’s trusted advisor and wife. It was made by the finest gold craftsmen in the land and was as lightweight as an evening breeze.
For days everyone seemed to be looking for the case. When Poku went into the forest with his daughters, they searched in tree trunks, by snail trails, under toad stools, in palm groves, by bamboo clusters, beside beehives and in their father’s hunting traps. They found nothing – and neither did anyone else. The Omanhene desperately wanted the necklace back for his wife, so he offered a reward of five gold nuggets to find the case.
The rude man that Poku had rescued with the rat and the snake was named Koo. As soon as the reward was announced, Koo saw his chance. For years he had heard stories about how wealthy Poku the hunter had become and he was jealous. He wanted to be wealthy too. Five gold nuggets would be perfect! Two nuggets would get him a bigger house and a farm and he would still have three nuggets left to buy whatever he wanted.
Koo had already been telling people in his village that it was strange how a simple hunter from Samankrom had become so wealthy that he was known everywhere in Asanteman. Now he travelled to the palace of the Omanhene to tell him that Poku the hunter must surely be the thief that they were looking for.
By nightfall, Poku was arrested and taken before the Omanhene. He was questioned for hours, but because of the rat’s warning he could not tell the Omanhene and his guards where his wealth came from. His house was searched, but no gold was found. Even the box where Poku kept his nuggets seemed empty, for the gold could only be seen when the hunter held it.
‘You are a very devious thief,’ the guards said. ‘Where is the Omanhene’s case of gold?’
‘I do not have it,’ replied Poku.
‘So where is your wealth from?’ they asked.
‘I can’t say,’ said the hunter.
No matter how many times the guards asked him, Poku’s answer was the same: ‘I can’t say.’
And because he said the same thing in court in front of the Omanhene’s judges, he was found guilty of stealing and sentenced to execution. Koo had sworn that Poku took the case and Poku had not been able to prove otherwise. Everyone thought that he must have sold the case in another kingdom.
The day after the judgement, Poku was paraded through the villages by the executioners to teach everyone that stealing leads to death. Every lizard, bird, rat, insect, snail, snake and man saw the poor hunter being dragged along the ground in chains.
The executioners ululated, drummed and clapped. They performed spectacular acrobatics – leaping over each other, exchanging their swords in mid-air and somersaulting in groups of three and forming human pyramids. They also chanted:
He who steals loses his tongue
He who steals loses his lips
Don’t steal, don’t steal
Don’t lose your head
He who steals loses his head
As they approached the square where the hunter was to be executed, they began the sword dance, rotating in smaller and smaller circles until their swords just missed the hunter’s body as he walked in his chains. The crowd following the prisoner and the executioners hummed a sad melody and clapped.
Suddenly, there was a disturbance from the back of the crowd. The executioners stopped dancing and a woman came running forward, crying out loud that the Omanhene’s wife had just been bitten by a snake. All the chief’s guards and executioners were ordered immediately to fetch the best healers to save her life.
The executioners tied Poku to a pillar in the public square and went off, leaving one guard to keep an eye on him.
The most famous healers and herb experts in Asanteman went to the Omanhene’s palace to try to save his wife. But they all came out after a few minutes with her and said the same thing: the venom was too strong. They could help her live for a few more hours so the Omanhene could say goodbye to her, but she would surely die.
When the sad news reached the square, Poku overheard the guard and remembered the antidote that Snake had given him. He tapped the guard’s shoulder.
‘I think I might be able to help save the Omanhene’s wife, but I will have to go home first.’
The guard knew that the Omanhene considered his wife irreplaceable. She was his best advisor and his most trusted confidante. The Omanhene would rather lose all his possessions than lose his wife. So the guard agreed and escorted Poku back to his house to fetch the antidote.
At the palace, Poku examined the Omanhene’s wife and turned to face the Omanhene and his linguist. ‘I agree with the healers, my great leader. She will not live,’ he said. But all the while he was really thinking of a way to punish Koo for his false accusations.
‘You are our last hope,’ said the linguist. ‘Something must be possible.’
The hunter nodded. ‘She will not live, unless I strengthen this antidote with a special ingredient.’
‘What do you need?’ cried the Omanhene. ‘Anything you need, you can have.’
Poku was silent for a moment, surprised that the Omanhene had addressed him directly. ‘I need the skin from the forearms of a treacherous man,’ he said.
‘Is this a riddle?’ asked the Omanhene, close to tears. ‘Where will I find a treacherous man?’
The guard who had escorted Poku home stood up. He had seen how the people of the hunter’s village had come out to embrace Poku because of his good deeds. As he couldn’t address the Omanhene directly, he whispered to the linguist.
The linguist addressed the Omanhene. ‘My chief, sometimes a lie is the truth facing the wrong direction. Your humble servant asks that you consider that the thief who stands here before you –’ he pointed towards Poku, ‘– might be innocent and a good man.’
The Omanhene frowned for a while, then nodded slowly. ‘That would make Koo, his accuser, a treacherous man.’
The chief lifted his right arm to summon his men closer. ‘Guards, go and bring Koo and skin his forearms.’
With the skin from Koo’s forearms, Poku applied the antidote to the snakebite and within minutes the Omanhene’s wife was able to open her eyes. Attendants wiped the sweat dripping from her forehead and soon she was sitting up.
The Omanhene was so grateful that he wanted to reward Poku, but the hunter refused.
‘Your wisdom has spared my life,’ said the hunter. ‘I need nothing more.’
‘And would you like me to punish Koo?’
‘It’s not necessary, my chief,’ said Poku. ‘He has been punished en
ough.’
So Koo continued to live in the kingdom of Asanteman. He was still rude and still spread rumours and gossiped about other people behind their backs. Of course, his forearms healed, but they didn’t return to the healthy brown colour they were before. They stayed a sickly red, and when children saw him they would chant Hwe ni nsa kokor, nsa kokor, nsa kokor nsa kokornsa kokornsa, which means Look at his red hands, red hands, red hands red handsred handsred … They said it so fast that it began to sound like kokonsa, kokonsa, kokonsa – and that’s how kokonsa became the word for a treacherous person or a gossip in Asanteman.
The Cheetah’s Whisker
A Habesha story
There once lived a girl called Abeba. She lived close to a stream called Fafen Shet, in a village that sat in beautiful savannah plains. Her home was in Ethiopia, a country full of hills and rivers and one of the first places in the world where people farmed grain.
Abeba was the happiest girl you could imagine. She spent her free time playing tegre with friends and rode her father’s shoulders while shouting, ‘donkey, donkey, donkey.’ When she spotted her mother, Mariam, coming home from work in the fields, she would run and skip around her, asking questions all the way home. Her father, Taddese, taught her how to write a kind of poetry called qəne, which she liked to share with her parents while they had dinner.
Every day was wonderful for Abeba, except that every now and then she yearned for a little brother or sister to play with. She sometimes wrote qəne poems about how a hand cannot make a loud sound without another hand to clap against, to remind her parents that she was lonely.