The Baboons Who Went This Way and That: Folktales From Africa

by Alexander McCall Smith

  “Everybody is calling us evil,” he said. “They shake their heads when they mention our names and say that there is enough food for everybody without our stealing the food of other people.”

  The hyena felt ashamed too and he lowered his head to the ground and howled through his yellow teeth.

  “I do not like to think of my name being so bad,” he said to the elephant. “Let’s go to the chief and ask him to change our names.”

  The elephant thought that this was a good idea. Once he was no longer called an elephant, then he would be able to hold his head up again among the other animals.

  “We shall set off early tomorrow morning,” he said to the hyena. “It is a long way to that chief’s house and we shall need all day to travel.”

  * * *

  The next morning the two friends set off just as the first light of the sun came over the top of the hills. They walked through the bush all morning and stopped only for a short time at midday. Throughout the afternoon they walked, following the path that led to the chief’s village, watching the sun go slowly down the sky. At last, just as the sun sank and the first of the stars began to glimmer above them, they saw the fires of the chief’s village.

  The chief’s messenger welcomed them at the entrance to the village. He had heard of the bad name of the elephant and the hyena, but because they were visitors to the chief he did not show his feelings about them.

  “We have come to have our names changed,” explained the hyena, his red eyes glowing in the darkness.

  The chief’s messenger listened politely and then said: “I’m sorry, but it’s too late for the chief to change your names. He can do that tomorrow morning when it is light and he can see what he is doing. I shall get some boys to show you to your sleeping quarters for the night.”

  A tall boy came and took the elephant to the place where he was to sleep. Because he was so large, this had to be in a field. The boy wished the elephant a good night and then he took the hyena to his place. Not being so large, the hyena was able to sleep in a hut, and was given the skin of a water-buck with which to cover himself.

  “At night there are only stars in the sky,” said the boy. “You will need this skin to keep you warm.”

  The hyena thanked him and settled down in a corner of the hut and began to cover himself with the skin. The boy closed the door of the hut and went back to the chief’s messenger.

  “Our guests have gone to bed,” he said.

  “Good,” said the messenger. “They can speak to the chief when the sun comes up and he can change their names then. That will make them happy.”

  Just before the first light of the morning, the hyena crept out of his hut and made his way to the elephant’s sleeping field. He walked low down, his head dropped, as if he were sneaking away in shame – just the way that all hyenas walk. Standing in the field, waiting for his friend, the elephant also had his head lowered, his tusks almost touching the ground.

  “I am very ashamed of myself,” the elephant said, even before the hyena could wish him good morning. “They put me in this field of corn to sleep and during the night I ate it all.”

  The hyena looked at the field. It was covered with the stalks of felled plants, as if a great wind had blown upon it during the night.

  “I am also ashamed,” he said to the elephant. “They gave me a skin last night to cover myself and I ate it all up. Only the end of the tail is left.”

  The two bad friends were now too ashamed to go before the chief to ask him to change their names. Instead they ran into the bush and found places far from people where they could live. They were still called elephant and hyena and all the other animals still said bad things about these names. That is why the elephant and the hyena live far away.

  8

  The Wife Who

  Could Not Work

  When Kumalo saw the beautiful girl at her father’s house he knew that he would have to marry her. The girl was shy and did not look at him, but he could tell that she was beyond doubt the most beautiful girl in that part of the country.

  “How many cattle would I have to give you to marry your daughter?” he asked the father.

  The father looked at Kumalo and could tell that he was a rich man.

  “That girl is very beautiful,” he said.

  “I can see that,” said Kumalo. “You must be proud of her.”

  “The man who marries her will have to give me lots of cattle,” went on the father.

  “How many?” asked Kumalo. “I am sure that I will have that many.”

  “Fifty,” said the father.

  Even for Kumalo that was a very large number of cattle, but he agreed with the father that he would give them to him in return for the privilege of marrying his daughter. The father seemed pleased and called other people across to witness the bargain.

  “I must warn you about something,” he said after they had agreed on the day when the cattle would be delivered. “Many beautiful girls cannot work very hard. That girl is so beautiful that she cannot work at all.”

  Kumalo was surprised by this, but quickly promised that the girl would never have to do any work in his household.

  “That is good,” said the father. “She will be happy with you.”

  There were other women who lived at Kumalo’s place. These were aunts and cousins and other relatives, and they all had large huts where they kept all their property and ate their meals at night. They were happy living with Kumalo and they were pleased when he told them that he would be getting married. They prepared a great feast for his new wife and when she arrived they all cried with joy when they saw how beautiful she was. On the first day that she spent at Kumalo’s house, people came from all the nearby hills to look at the beautiful girl. Then they went back and told their families about her beauty and about how many cattle Kumalo had given her father.

  Kumalo explained to everybody at his house that his new wife was too delicate to do any work.

  “This beautiful girl will have to sit in the shade all day,” he said. “She can watch you work, but she must do nothing herself. I have promised her father that.”

  So, while the other women performed the many tasks that had to be carried out around a house, the new wife sat in the doorway of one of the huts and watched them go about their tasks. She said nothing while she watched, but the women could feel her eyes on them as they worked.

  After a few weeks, Kumalo’s senior cousin complained to one of the other women about the new wife.

  “She sits there all day,” she said bitterly. “She eats her share of the food – and more – but she does nothing in return.”

  The other woman agreed.

  “I have seen her too,” she said. “There is no reason why she should not do some work as well. She has the strength.”

  Other women, hearing these remarks, joined in the protests. They did not say anything to Kumalo himself, knowing that he had promised his father-in-law that the new wife should not work, but every day now they stared at the new wife and tried to make her feel guilty about not working. The new wife, however, just stared back at the other women, a sweet smile on her face.

  Eventually the senior cousin decided that she would act. She had had enough of watching the new wife do nothing while the rest of them laboured and she went up to her and told her that the time had come for her to work. Kumalo had gone to a far place to buy cattle and would not be back until the next day – it would be safe for them to make the new wife work.

  The new wife did not object. Rising to her feet, she asked the senior cousin what she had to do and quietly took the calabash that was given to her.

  “It is easy work just to fill this small calabash with water,” said the cousin. “Even a beautiful woman like you can do that.”

  The other women stopped their work and watched the new wife walk off towards the river. As she disappeared into the thick grass that grew there, they all laughed.

  “At long last that lazy woman is having to work,�
�� they said. “Today at least she cannot sit in her doorway and watch us working.”

  * * *

  The new wife found the place in the river where water was to be drawn. She filled the calabash with ease and then turned round to begin her walk back. As she walked across the sandbank at the edge of the river, though, she felt the weight of the calabash getting greater and greater. She sensed the sand coming up around her ankles and found that it was more and more difficult to lift her feet. Then she found that her feet were sinking and that no matter what she did she could not free them. She was so light and delicate that the weight of the calabash was pushing her down into the ground, and in the time that it takes a bird to fly from one tree to another she had sunk completely out of sight.

  The other women waited for her to return to the house so that they could laugh at her and send her back to the river for more water. After they had waited for some time, they began to feel uneasy.

  “Perhaps she has run away,” said one of the women.

  “She would not do that,” another said. “She must be hiding. She is trying to give us a fright.”

  The senior cousin decided that they should go and find the new wife and so the women all left their work and followed the footprints down to the river bank. They searched and searched all along the river and in the bush beside it, but there was no trace of the new wife. Wailing loudly, they returned to the house wondering what they would be able to tell Kumalo when he came back the following day.

  “We shall say that she was eaten by a lion,” suggested one of the women. “That way he will not be able to blame us.”

  Kumalo came back to the house early the next morning bringing with him the cattle that he had bought. He was in a good mood after having bought fine cattle, but his smile faded when he saw that his new wife was not in her usual place.

  “Where is my beautiful wife?” he asked the women. “She was sitting in her doorway when I left.”

  The women all looked at the senior cousin, who answered with the lie that she had prepared.

  “A lion ate her,” she said. “We tried to stop it, but it was too hungry.”

  Kumalo looked at his senior cousin.

  “You are lying,” he said. “A lion would not choose a delicate girl like that. It would rather eat a fat woman like you.”

  The cousin said nothing, but when Kumalo shook his fist at her she told the truth.

  “We only asked her to do a little work,” she whined. “It was not too hard.”

  Kumalo did not listen any more. Immediately he ran to a man who lived nearby who knew all about finding people who had been lost. This man listened to Kumalo’s sad story and then told him what to do.

  “Go to the side of the river,” he said. “Beat this small drum and get a fat woman to jump hard on the ground. That will bring back your beautiful wife.”

  Kumalo ran back to his house, the sound of his beating heart loud in his ears. He called the senior cousin to follow him and made his way quickly to the side of the river. There he played the drum, while the senior cousin jumped up and down on the sand. It was hard for her to do this, as she was so fat, but each time she showed signs of slowing down Kumalo would shout at her and urge her on.

  At last they saw the sand parting and the head of the new wife slowly appeared.

  “Jump faster!” ordered Kumalo, and as the senior cousin continued to jump the rest of the new wife was forced up out of the sand.

  When the new wife had risen completely out of the sand, Kumalo went forward and embraced her tenderly. Then he led her back to the place where she used to sit and watch the women working. The senior cousin, ashamed of what they had done, promised they would never ask the new wife to work again. Although he was angry with the other women, Kumalo forgave them, and that night they all had a feast to celebrate the return of the new wife to her husband.

  9

  Bad Blood

  There was a woman who lived in a village near the end of the land. This woman had two sons, one called Diepe and the other Diepetsana. They were very poor people and they did not have a great deal to eat. Their granary was never more than half full and they wore very shabby clothes. Sometimes they had no clothes at all, and had to wear old rags and leaves to preserve their modesty. It was not easy being that poor.

  In the same village there was a young man called Dimo. He was not as poor as these other two, as he had married the daughter of a rich man. He had everything that he needed in this life, including a great deal of food. This food, which was rich and good, had made him quite fat.

  This Dimo asked Diepe whether he could come and help him at the cattle post of his wife’s parents. There was much to be done there, he said, and they would be looked after well. Because he was poor and had nothing else to do, Diepe agreed to accompany Dimo to this place, which was very far away, and on the edge of the place where nobody lived but only wild animals.

  During their first evening at the cattle post, Dimo’s wife brought water to the hut to wash the hands of the men before they had food. Dimo asked Diepe whose food he would be eating and said that because it belonged to the parents of his wife, it was not right that Diepe should eat it. So Diepe went to bed without any food and his stomach was empty and painful within him.

  That night, Dimo went outside and killed some sheep which were in a stockade. Then he took the blood of the sheep and put it in a calabash. Back in the hut, while Diepe was fast asleep, Dimo put the sheep blood all over the sleeping man’s face. The next morning, when the parents of Dimo’s wife went out to look at their animals they found that the sheep had all been killed.

  “Who has done this wicked thing?” they asked.

  Dimo pointed at Diepe, and said, “His face is covered with sheep blood. Look! That is the person who has done this wicked thing.”

  The parents then said that Diepe should be killed for having done this, and that happened that afternoon. Dimo was pleased, and when he went back to the place where Diepe’s brother lived, he told Diepe’s mother that her son was being well looked after in that other place and that now he had come to take Diepetsana to join him. Dietpetsana was very pleased to go with Dimo, although he could tell that there was something wrong. Diepetsana was a traditional doctor and would be very good at sensing such things when he was older. But even now he could tell that there was something wicked planned, and he took with him two very important fly whisks that were good for all sorts of tasks.

  They reached the cattle post and Diepetsana saw that there was no sign of his brother. That night he slept in a hut, but before he lay down he set up the fly whisks so that they would see if anybody came in at night. One was placed at the foot of his sleeping mat and another at the top.

  In the depths of the night the fly whisk at the top of the sleeping mat sang out: “Who is this entering?”

  And the reply came from the fly whisk at the bottom of the sleeping mat: “Isn’t it Dimo?”

  “What does he have on his hand?” sang the top fly whisk.

  And the bottom fly whisk sang “Isn’t it blood?”

  Dimo was very frightened when this happened and he withdrew from the hut. A few minutes later he Plucked up the courage to enter again, and the same thing happened. And so it went on until the morning, when the parents of Dimo’s wife awoke to find their son-in-law outside the hut with a large gourd of sheep’s blood and the sheep all dead upon the ground.

  They were very angry and killed Dimo on the spot. They were pleased with Diepetsana, though, and they rewarded him handsomely. He was now a rich man and he looked after his mother well, so that she was no longer poor. Their life had changed, although they still felt sad for the loss of Diepe and thought often of their brother and son who had now gone.

  10

  Two Bad

  Friends

  When an important chief died down in that far part of the country, there were many people who went to see him buried. It was a time of great sorrow, as this chief had ruled over many people for many y
ears and had been the son of one who had served with a very great chief.

  Two friends, who liked to play tricks on one another and on other people, decided that they would go to the burial too. They walked past a place where there were many mourners, all sitting under a tree and singing about how sad they were that the chief had died.

  “We are very sad too,” the two friends said. “We are sad because that great chief was our father.”

  When they heard this, the people under the tree were surprised. They asked the two friends if they were sure that the chief was their father, and they replied that they were.

  “You must give us money,” one friend said. “You must give us money because we are the sons of the one who has died.”

  The people knew that they should do this, but they were unwilling to give money to people whom they did not know.

  “If you come with us to the grave,” they said, “then we shall be able to find out whether you really are the sons of that great chief.”

  The two friends agreed to do this. There was no reason for them to refuse to go to the grave, and already they were thinking of ways of fooling these people under the tree.