Tales from Africa Read online

  Frog returned in the empty jug the next morning and told Itanda that he had delivered his letter, but Itanda didn’t believe him.

  ‘You mean you went to the Sky Kingdom?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Frog.

  ‘Then where is my reply? I should beat you for lying to me!’

  Frog stretched to half his full length. ‘Why would you beat the only one who can help you? You didn’t ask for a reply, did you?’

  ‘No,’ said Itanda, scratching his head.

  ‘If you want a reply, you should ask for one.’

  So Itanda wrote a new letter:

  I, Itanda watcher of clouds and birds,

  keeper of the healthiest Earth herds,

  roamer of hills high and valleys wide,

  would like your daughter as my bride.

  If your response is good and swift,

  I will visit with dowry gifts.

  Frog took the new letter and waited in the well the next morning, As before, the maidens took him up with them, singing their usual song as they climbed the spiderweb ladder.

  ‘Up and down, such is the way of life;

  enjoy the wind whether low or high.’

  When they arrived at the Sky Chief’s homestead, Frog put the new letter in the same place as the first and hid close by. This time, when the Sky Chief read the letter, he called his wife and showed it to her.

  ‘This is the second time,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how he gets the letters here from Earth.’

  The Sky Queen read the letter and bit her lip. ‘He must be very powerful. Why don’t we ask him to come and meet us? Ask him to bring three gold nuggets. If he can come up here without your help then he will be worthy of meeting our daughter.’

  So the Sky Chief wrote a letter to Itanda as instructed by his wife, and put it on the table where Frog had placed Itanda’s letters. As soon as they left the banqueting room, Frog picked up the letter and hid in an empty water jug ready for his trip back to Earth.

  Itanda was stunned when Frog gave him the Sky Chief’s letter. He turned it this way and that, reading it over and over again. Although he had a reply he still could not believe that Frog had actually gone up to the heavens and returned. He read the letter one last time and turned to Frog.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Frog. ‘I will think of something. You go and get the gold nuggets.’

  ‘But I only have cattle! How will I get my hands on gold nuggets?’

  ‘It’s simple. Exchange some cows for gold.’

  ‘But how?’

  Frog hopped on to a rock and stared at Itanda. ‘Do you know how to do anything but stare?’ said Itanda.

  ‘You have to find someone who has gold first,’ Frog replied.

  Itanda nodded but said nothing.

  ‘Tell me –’ Frog poked Itanda – ‘who has gold in the forest?’

  ‘The dwarves do, but it’s impossible to find them. And the rats too, but what would rats want with cattle?’ Itanda scratched his chin.

  ‘You should ask them. If you are not sure of anything, you should ask.’

  So Itanda went off to find the rats, who kept hoards of gold nuggets in burrows, caves and hides all over the forest. He was sure they would ask him for something that he could not get in exchange for the three gold nuggets that he needed. However, when he found the chief of rats he was surprised to find that they were happy to exchange three nuggets of gold for five cows, if Itanda would teach them how to milk the cows. Fresh cow’s milk was a favourite of both baby and adult rats. Itanda taught them how to clean the teats on the cows’ udders and squeeze them carefully to get the milk out.

  ‘Don’t forget to milk all the udders every time,’ he reminded them as he left. ‘They get uncomfortable if you only milk some and leave the rest.’

  Frog took the nuggets to the deep forest well in the morning and waited as he always did. When the maidens arrived, he put a nugget each in three water jugs and hid in one himself.

  The maidens sang their song as they climbed back up to the Sky Kingdom.

  ‘Up and down, such is the way of life;

  enjoy the wind whether low or high.’

  When they arrived at the Sky Chief’s homestead, Frog jumped out of his jug and noticed that the Sky Chief and Queen were preparing a wonderful feast to welcome Itanda. Frog gathered the gold nuggets and hid as the homestead cooks carried in trays and trays of spinach and fish and cassava and beans and tomatoes and rice and spicy drinks made from ginger, hibiscus, rose flowers and dandelion leaves, as well as beers made from maize and millet.

  In the evening, even though Itanda was not there, the Sky Chief’s family sat around the banqueting table with all the maidens and cooks and ate a hearty meal, leaving a generous plate for Itanda – just in case he arrived later.

  Frog clenched his mouth shut as he watched because he knew that his long tongue would fly out as it always did when he was hungry and smelled very good food. His belly rumbled as the cooks licked their lips and the maidens asked for more beans and the Sky Chief and Queen’s brilliant daughter gobbled spinach like a rabbit. He thought she looked so beautiful – it was no wonder she was called Kamene, which meant dawn.

  When they had finished eating and the Sky Chief’s homestead had fallen silent again, Frog crept out and sat at the place set for Itanda. He stretched out his arms and legs, puffed his throat and belly and feasted like a chief. After he’d licked all the plates to a clean shine that glowed in the moonlight, Frog put the gold nuggets at the place where Kamene sat at dinner. Then he hopped – very slowly – back to his hiding place, for he was so so full.

  He didn’t go back down with the water maidens in the morning because he didn’t want to return with no news for Itanda.

  The Sky Chief and Queen came into the banqueting room arm in arm later in the morning to see if there might be a new note from Itanda, explaining why he had not joined them for dinner. To their surprise, the plates were bare. Not a crumb of cassava, not a shred of spinach or a drop of dandelion drink was left.

  As the light is so bright in the Sky Kingdom, the gold nuggets were extra shiny where Frog had arranged them in a triangle by Kamene’s dinner place. The Sky Chief gasped as he saw the nuggets and grabbed the Sky Queen’s arm.

  ‘He came,’ she said.

  The Sky Chief nodded. ‘He must be very powerful. How did he know to place the gold at Kamene’s place on the table?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s invisible,’ laughed the Sky Queen. ‘Maybe he’s been watching us.’

  ‘Maybe,’ the Sky Chief smiled. ‘But what do we do? We can’t promise our daughter to someone she has never met.’

  ‘Well, we must make it clear to him that she’ll only be his bride if she likes him, so he has to come to see her.’

  ‘I’ll write another letter,’ said the Sky Chief.

  By the time Frog got back to Earth the next morning, Itanda was upset. He thought Frog had tricked him and run away with his gold nuggets. He was staring at clouds, fuming, when Frog poked him with his tongue. Itanda jumped up angrily when he saw Frog.

  ‘Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for two days.’

  Frog held out the Sky Chief’s letter. ‘I didn’t want to return without a response. Especially because you sent me with gold.’

  When Itanda read the letter he sat on the ground and held his head. ‘What do I do now?’ he asked Frog. ‘What do I do? I can’t go up there. What do I do?’

  ‘You have to find a way,’ said Frog. ‘You are very close now. Maybe one of the dwarves will have a spell you can use.’

  Itanda shook his head. ‘It will take too much time.’

  ‘You just have to find them.’

  ‘The Sky Queen wants me to come soon.’ He pointed at the letter. ‘There is no time.’

  ‘Well, I can’t take you,’ said Frog and he hopped away, heading towards his pond deep in the forest.

  ‘Wait,’ shouted Itanda. ‘Can’t you help some more? Can you make them come to me?’

&
nbsp; Frog shook his head and continued to hop home. After five hops he stopped and turned around. ‘Actually, I have an idea,’ he said. ‘But after that it’s up to you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Itanda. ‘Of course.’

  When Frog reached the Sky Chief’s homestead the next morning, he crept into Kamene’s room and hid under the bed. When the heavens were quiet and he was sure that Kamene was asleep, he climbed out and carefully put a special glue across her eyes so she wouldn’t be able to open them in the morning. The glue could only be washed away with water from Frog’s pond.

  In the morning, Frog returned to Earth with the water maidens and found some bushes near the deep forest well where he could wait.

  Up in the Sky Kingdom, Kamene woke up to find that she was blind. She stumbled out of bed crying and tripped over the armchair where she usually read stories before she slept at night. She fell to the ground with an enormous crash and her parents rushed to the room.

  ‘What happened?’ The Sky Queen picked up her daughter and the Sky Chief checked her for bruises. They noticed her eyes were closed and asked her to open them, but she couldn’t. The Sky Chief fetched some water and they washed Kamene’s face, but she still could not open her eyes.

  ‘I’m blind!’ she wailed. ‘I’m blind.’

  The Sky Queen turned to her husband. ‘We have to call the healers. This is not normal.’

  One by one, all the famous healers in the Sky Kingdom arrived to examine and treat Kamene.

  They tried rubbing herbs on her eyelids,

  they tried sudden clapping to surprise her,

  they tried hot water with cats’ whiskers,

  they tried green potions and blue ointments,

  they tried chanting and drumming,

  they tried cold water with owl feathers,

  they tried brown oils and red powders,

  they tried making her sneeze by tickling,

  they tried warm water with gecko skin …

  Nothing worked. Nothing.

  So they all came to the same conclusion. Some very powerful creature had cast a spell on Kamene and they had to think of who it might be and settle any argument that they might have with that creature.

  The Sky Chief and Sky Queen looked at each other and said, ‘Itanda!’

  ‘He’s angry because we kept his gold nuggets and he hasn’t met Kamene,’ said the Sky Chief.

  ‘We must send back the nuggets,’ said the Sky Queen. ‘We must send them and send her to be cured.’

  The Sky Chief summoned the seven water maidens and instructed them to help get Kamene dressed and take her down to Earth. They were also to bag the three gold nuggets and wait at the deep forest well until a powerful man called Itanda came to heal Kamene.

  So down the water maidens went, supporting Kamene (who couldn’t walk straight, let alone climb down an invisible spiderweb ladder) and singing their song:

  ‘Up and down, such is the way of life;

  enjoy the wind whether low or high.’

  When they got to the well, to their surprise a frog came out. He hopped right up to Kamene and put a damp cloth in her hand.

  ‘Wipe your eyes with this,’ Frog said.

  As soon as Kamene wiped her eyes, she felt her lids loosen. She opened her eyes slowly to see the most brilliant green frog ever, sitting on a rock beside her. He looked like an enormous emerald with a smile. Kamene had never spoken to anyone from Earth before, so she was very excited.

  ‘Hello, Frog!’

  The seven water maidens gasped. They had seen all the healers in heaven try to help Kamene see again, yet all it had taken was a damp cloth from a frog.

  ‘Hello,’ replied Frog with an even bigger smile. ‘I will now take you to the man you are to marry.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Kamene. ‘I get to choose who I marry.’

  Frog shrugged. ‘OK, Kamene; come and meet the man who sent the letters to your father to ask for your hand.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Kamene. ‘How can a frog take me to the man who sent the letters? And how do you know my name?’

  ‘Yes,’ chimed in the seven water maidens. ‘How?’

  ‘Because I am a very special frog.’ Frog stood to his full height on the rock. ‘I took the letters to your father by riding in the water jugs that the maidens carried. I returned with the Sky Chief’s replies for the man to read. I showed the man how to get gold nuggets. I delivered the gold nuggets that the Sky Queen asked for, and I sealed your eyes so that your parents would send you down to Earth. I am no ordinary frog; I can do anything I set my mind to.’

  Kamene put a hand on Frog’s cheek. ‘Well then, you are the one that I choose to marry. I don’t want to be married to a man who does nothing. I want to be married to a frog that always tries.’

  And with that, the water maidens threw the gold nuggets in the bottom of the deep forest well, and they climbed up the invisible ladder with Kamene and Frog:

  ‘Up and down, such is the way of life;

  enjoy the wind whether low or high.’

  Poor Itanda, the herdsman, is still waiting for a bride. He is out there staring at clouds and wondering where his gold has gone. Frog, however, was soon married to Kamene, the dawn, on a joyous, star-filled, moon-bright night in the Sky Kingdom. And every morning, just before the sun rises, you can hear frogs all over the world croaking loudly, still celebrating the biggest ever frog wedding.

  A Tortoise Named Ununile

  An Igbo tale

  In Igboland, between the end of a year and the start of a new one, the dry Harmattan winds turn the long elephant grass in the plains brown and brittle. Snakes and giant lizards can no longer sneak up on their prey because the roots they slide between crackle like Vulture’s hoarse cry. In the forest, where Mbe the tortoise lives, the mango trees carry no fruit and yam vines wither on their mounds. Even the oba trees, that stand tallest and carry fruit the longest, only have dry seedpods that fall to the ground in heaps.

  Most animals in the forest stored enough food to last them until the rains came – all except the birds, who visited friends in the clouds for an annual feast. All except Mbe, the wily tortoise with the smoothest shell in the forest, who went from animal to animal begging for food until they had grown tired of him.

  He had gone to young Frog

  and both Jackal and Dog.

  He’d filched fungus from Gnat

  and begged bugs from Bushrat.

  He’d gone sideways to tap up Crab,

  climbed a tree to plead with Leopard,

  picked peels, sipped Monkey’s juice

  and shared star fruit with Mongoose.

  He’d crashed the meagre feast of the ants

  and fed on the small scraps of Elephant.

  There was no one else to beg from.

  Mbe crawled, slow and hungry, through the forest every day, hoping to find leaves with enough sap in them to keep his stomach from rumbling.

  One afternoon, he heard loud chirping and chattering near the edge of the forest, where the largest oba tree stood. Mbe went towards the noise and poked his head through wilted shrubs to see what was happening.

  It was a gathering of birds of all sizes. There were big birds like Eagle and small birds like Hummingbird, there were birds with tidy feathers and birds with scraggly feathers. Mbe stretched his neck further and saw that they were crushing oba seeds and squeezing the pulp through a piece of calico cloth that Vulture was holding over a hole. They were making celebration paint!

  Mbe immediately saw his chance. He was a very fine painter. In fact, he was a master in the arts of face and body painting, as he often decorated his smooth shell to help him hide from hunters. If the birds were making celebration paint, then there had to be food close by and he – Mbe – had a large and empty belly. He crawled out of hiding.

  ‘My bird friends,’ he shouted. ‘Can I be of help?’

  The chattering and chirping stopped and the forest fell silent. Then Pelican spoke in her strong voice. ‘
We know all about you, Mbe. Parrot has told us about your lazy and sly ways. We want nothing to do with you.’

  When Mbe heard this he knew he could not lie, because once Parrot knew something about you he repeated it to everyone. Nobody would believe him if he said anything different.

  The birds turned away from him, and continued their chirping and chattering.

  ‘Birds, birds,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve changed. Why, just last week, I cleared leaves from beneath this very tree and left these seedpods here for you to use.’

  The birds fell silent again. It was true that there had been no leaves under the giant oba to disturb their gathering of seedpods. Of course, they had no idea that Mbe had eaten the leaves to fill his own belly.

  ‘I see you are making paint. I would like to help.’ Mbe moved closer to the circle of birds. ‘My front feet are hard and wide like pestles. I can crush seeds more quickly than you.’

  Apart from a few tweets, the birds remained quiet. They could see the wisdom in his suggestion; their beaks were no match for his two front feet.

  Mbe hurried to finish his argument. ‘Besides, I am a master in the art of uri – my paintings of faces and bodies are unmatched. I can make a stone look like a jewel, I can make a rainbow more colourful, I can give extra life to a sunset.’

  Mbe moved to crouch right in the middle of the assembly of birds. Now that he had their attention, he settled into his favourite pastime – telling tales.

  ‘You know there was a time when you birds were colourful? You didn’t just have white feathers like you have now. When you took to the sky, you created patterns. My father said it was just beautiful.’ Mbe paused for effect as each bird looked at its dull white feathers. As tortoises lived much longer than birds, he knew that they had no choice but to trust him.

  ‘I can help you get those colours back. This oba you are crushing will give you yellow; I can get blue from indigo bean plants and red from dead insects. With those colours I can make all the colours in the world.’

  Pigeon made a sound in his throat and faced Mbe. ‘And what do you want from us? You never do anything for nothing.’