Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore TalesNassau, Robert Hamill
Philosophy
Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore Tales
Nassau, Robert Hamill
Animals -- Folklore; Tales -- Africa, West
They laid hold of him, and brought him out of the house. They were
about to go a little further to the end of the town, when he suddenly
pretended he was a corpse, and leaving his body, his spirit went back
home, and assumed another body. They became quiet, all of them being
startled. When they moved him, he was as cold as cold victuals. They
said, "What shall we do here?" Some of them advised, "Let us take
Jâmbâ and this corpse, and let us go together to his father, and
explain, 'Bokeli is dead, but this woman is his wife.'" Others said,
"What! lest his father will kill us!" Then they decided, "Not so! but,
let us send as messenger some Etungi (useless person; no loss if he
should be killed) to the father's town."
The Etungi went on that errand. When he arrived at Bokeli's town,
he met Bokeli sitting at the village smithy, and, not recognizing
him, was intending to pass him by. Thereupon, Bokeli called to him,
"Brother-in-law! what are you doing? You have found me sitting here,
but you seem about to entirely pass me by. Though all your family do
not like me, come in to the Reception-House." The Etungi thought to
himself, "Ah! I am dead! Is not this a brother of Bokeli?" Bokeli
called to his mother, and told her, "Bring out that food of mine
quickly that is there! My brother-in-law has come; he feels hungry!"
They set the food as soon as possible. And the Etungi ate.
Bokeli asked him, "Where are you going to?" The Etungi replied, "I'm
on my way going to tell Njambe that his son Bokeli is dead." Bokeli
said to him, "This is I." Then he gave the Etungi a shirt and a cloth
and a hat, as proofs of his reality.
The Etungi returned to his town. And he reported to the people in the
town, "Bokeli is not dead; I met him at the bellows, working." They
thought he was lying, and they said, "Let him be beaten!" But the
Etungi replied, "True! see ye this shirt, and the cloth, and this
hat!" He added, "He that doubts must first go and see."
Then went Kombe. When he arrived, he found Bokeli at the bellows. When
Bokeli saw him coming, he arose at once, and went to his mother
in the house; he seized a machete, and cut down a plantain bunch,
yo! And he said to his mother, "Make haste to cook it!"
Kombe had by that time entered the Reception-House. Bokeli welcomed
him, sa-a! and said, "Sit down!" Kombe sat down. Food had been cooked;
and he ate. Kombe then says, "I'm going back!" Bokeli at once put
down at his feet the dowry for Jâmbâ, cloths, shirts, hats, etc,
etc. Kombe carried away the things. And having arrived at his town,
he says, "It is true!"
Their father Njambe directed, "Come ye! over there with a present
as a propitiation!" Then he gathered goats, fowls, ducks, plantains,
dried meats, fishes, all sorts and kinds. He ordered, "Make ye a bier,
and carry the corpse. I am going, even if I die!" (He still had a
doubt about the real Bokeli.) They did so. They carried the presents,
and they went, going on the journey.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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