Folktales and Other Stories from the Edge of the Great Thirst: Tales of Survival in a Harsh Environment

By Bhekumuzi Wuyane

As Bhekumuzi Wuyane perches himself on the great local dome of Dombodema, he is approached by an elderly African storyteller who begins telling him about life in a harsh environment at the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Amid a backdrop filled with cunning animals, strong women, feared and adored leaders, and lovers and sworn enemies, the man relays tales of the three great kingdoms that will eventually transform Wuyane and teach him valuable life lessons.

In his collection of twenty folk tales derived from that experience, Wuyane weaves the African mans stories with others, both old and new, to emphasize the rapidly fading art of passing down messages through folklore. As animals and people struggle both together and separately to overcome their challenges and survive in the desert, leadership styles, a variety of emotions, and good and evil intentions are revealed, illustrating the deeper meaning in every story told within the African culture. When the tales conclude, Wuyane meets with the older man once again, relating the treasured messages he has learned.

Folktales and Other Stories from the Edge of the Great Thirst is a collection of stories with strong and timeless morals that will appeal to both current and future generations interested in fulfilling their visions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491778197

Bhekumuzi Wuyane

The book illustrator, Bekithemba Thabani Nkala, is a student at an Art University in San Francisco, California, and dreams of a future as an animator. This is his first collaboration with the author. Bekithemba has compiled his art work on the webpage Http://thebtproject.weekly.com

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FOLKTALES AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE GREAT THIRST

Tales of Survival in a Harsh Environment

Bhekumuzi Wuyane

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FOLKTALES AND OTHER STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF THE GREAT THIRST

TALES OF SURVIVAL IN A HARSH ENVIRONMENT

Copyright © 2015 Bhekumuzi Wuyane.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

iUniverse

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7818-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7819-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015915519

iUniverse rev. date: 11/30/2015

CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

PART 1 THE THREE KINGDOMS

Chapter 1 Lion’s Iron-fisted Rule

Chapter 2 Giraffe’s Lofty Vision

Chapter 3 How the Great Thirst was Quenched

PART 2 EXPLANATIONS

Chapter 4 Baboon and Python in a Tangle

Chapter 5 Why the Rock Rabbit has No Tail

Chapter 6 The Pig’s Mouth

Chapter 7 Why Tortoise is Shy

Chapter 8 The Sad Tale of Hen and Hawk

Chapter 9 The Weaver’s Nest

Chapter 10 Why the Cock Crows every Morning

Chapter 11 I Know Why Shamba Burns

PART 3 JOURNEYS INTO THE UNKNOWN

Chapter 12 Qedamazimu’ s Revenge

Chapter 13 The Man Who Was a Lion

Chapter 14 Vaniriki and the Thief’s Footprints

Chapter 15 The Crocodile and the Hunter

Chapter 16 The Good-hearted Cannibal

Chapter 17 A god Among Us

PART 4 WINNERS AND LOSERS

Chapter 18 Tortoise Tames the Outlaw

Chapter 19 The Great Race

Chapter 20 The Kind Woman

Chapter 21 Nanane

Chapter 22 Leopard is Dead

PART 5 OLD MEETS NEW

Chapter 23 The Village Servant

Chapter 24 The Widow of Vocola

PART 6 PARTING TALE

Chapter 25 The Last Chapter

Index: Meanings of Vernacular Words Used

Acknowledgements

To everyone who taught me how to tell a story

And

My grandchildren

Whoever they will be.

PREFACE

MANY years ago, when I was an undergraduate at University, a friend asked me if I knew any African stories. It seemed then that everyone knew something about Anansi the spider, a popular West African tale. I had been told at least a score of African folk tales when I was growing up. The friend’s question inspired me to write some of the stories that I still remembered well. At the time, I was fascinated with the new environment I was in which had very little in common with the rural and traditional environment in which I had grown up. I was living in Sacramento, California. I was in an urban area and hosted by an American family. All that was around me reminded me of my different upbringing. It dawned on me that many of the young people growing in my country would not have had the opportunities I had, to hear stories that have been told over and over, a thousand times. I just imagined that in a few generations these stories would have disappeared. I had been lucky to have grown in a traditional setting and transited into another world very quickly. The change taught me to appreciate the value of the life I had lived in the past.

I had had a good grasp of both worlds and could use this experience to document the messages from the stories. With much enthusiasm then, I embarked on writing some of these folk tales. For some reason, after I completed the task, I misplaced the original draft. I believe that the compilation of the stories I wrote during my college days exists somewhere. I have not been able to recover a copy of my original script though, despite all the asking around I have done. After failing to recover a copy of the initial set of stories I felt sad because I could no longer remember some of the stories I wrote.

Now in another place, another time, and at a different phase of my life cycle, when life has given me so much to think about, I decided to compile the stories again. I recalled that even after hearing a folk tale so many times, it never ceased to be interesting if the teller spiced it up with enough extras, as in, some salt here and some pepper there. As I do not remember the stories exactly as originally told, I had to come up with my own style of presenting them. I made an effort to make the stories understandable to any reader, with or without prior exposure to African tales. I realized that the meanings of the stories were more important than the details of each story. I therefore adopted a story-telling approach that focuses on creating strong characters to bring out the key messages in the stories.

The significance of the messages behind the stories led me to believe that the stories were ways of unpacking complex problems, analyzing them and re-packaging them as case studies, thereby making the problem easy to follow and comprehend. In this way the lessons portrayed become accessible even to a little child. There must be a reason why all cultures have a tradition of story-telling. I believe all learning begins with story-telling.

FOREWORD

Over the years, storytelling has graduated from a mere informal way of sharing messages to an important skill that can now be used in formal instruction in the fields of Education, Social Sciences and Development Programming. In this book, Bhekumuzi Wuyane thus tells stories, not just to his ‘anticipated’ grandchildren (to come), he also shares the stories with a wider audience of both young and old. Indeed, if you are an inquisitive child, a young adult, an educationist (of which I believe every adult is one, in some way) and a development worker, this book is for you.

Bhekumuzi Wuyane utilizes an extended story in-a-story technique for packaging folktales and the other stories in this book. The author effectively uses this technique to address sensitive governance and day-to-day interpersonal issues. The technique allows the author ample space to artistically share some traditional folktales, other African stories as well as social commentaries pertaining to some cultural practices that have been perpetuated in some people’s modern-day way of life in Africa.

The first section of this book is pregnant with socio-political implications of different leadership styles that make interesting reading and should stimulate a lot of discussion between social scientists and anyone concerned with governance issues, be it be at the grassroots community levels, in the bureaucratic public sector domain or in the complex corporate circles. The context could be in the traditional way of African life or modern societies as we know them today. The other African stories, presented from the second part to the fifth part of this book, bring out different aspects of life such as socially perceived determinants of social justice and behavior, the myth and reality of fear, interpersonal issues as they define and determine victory or loss, the dividing line and fusion of traditional and modern ways of living. The concluding chapter, not only ties up the first part of the book and the last one as an envelope for the entire collection of folktales and stories but emphasises the idea of facilitating access of memory banks of the older generation by the younger generation whilst also neatly highlighting the reality that each and every one of us has a web of challenges to deal with in our respective lives. To this end, in addressing the challenges, there is a need to be guided by a vision that is translated into a practical mission, informed by global core values, such as honesty, transparency and integrity, to name but a few.

Sylvia Sithole

INTRODUCTION

It struck me that the tales that I grew up listening to, are mostly about animals. They are about their struggles for survival, getting food, water to drink and competing against each other to be ahead of the crowd. Sometimes the stories are about aspirations, dreaming of reaching unprecedented heights, where one had never reached before, as in flying when one is not endowed with wings. The tales are about joy and pain, love and hate, peace and war, forgiveness and revenge, empathy and cruelty, kindness and malice. There are winners and losers in all the stories. There are fair winners and those that use foul means. In most cases, good triumphs over evil, although in a few cases evil is allowed to win.

It seemed to me that in telling the struggles of the animal world, people recounted their own experiences and the lessons they learnt from it all. Through the silent voices of the animal world, they found expression to define life’s challenges and package them in case studies which they used in the upbringing of future generations. From this perspective, writing the folk tales and stories contained in this book became an interesting project.

The tales deal with life in a harsh environment at the edge of the Kalahari Desert (The Great Thirst) in Southern Africa. It is a particularly beautiful environment with hills of rocks that delicately balance on each other (balancing rocks). Some of the rocks have shapes such as an elephant, a lion or even a seal. It is an environment of breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. It is also an environment of contrasts. In the old days there were occasional moments of joy and plenty if the rains came. There were times of emptiness, scarcity and harshness when the rains shied away. During those days, there were plenty of wild animals before they were moved to game reserves. The animals shared the habitat with people. People used the names of animals as their clan identification. It is in this environment that cunning animals, tough as nails women, feared and loved leaders, lovers and sworn enemies, and Rabbit and Tortoise made their stories and attained fame.

PART 1

THE THREE KINGDOMS

Life was slow on a Sunday morning. This morning I had felt the need in my bones to be alone. I had been preoccupied in my mind about too many things. I was young and sometimes my head toyed with so, so many questions that I did not have any answers to. As I sat on the great local dome, Dombodema, I could see the clear blue skies for miles and miles until they bent down to kiss the earth. This ancient huge lump of rock stuck out of the acacia thorn bushes and Mopani trees that surrounded it. From the top of the dome one could almost see anything happening around for as far as the eye could see.

image13girfafecopy.jpg

The quest to quench the thirst.

I was inspired to come to the dome because it stimulated many questions on my mind. On the eastern edge of the dome, there were human footprints on the rock, may be a better expression is in the rock surface. I always wondered who these people were who left their footprint on a rock surface? When did they live? How was it that they could leave their footprints on the rock? There was a common expression usually used at the beginning of folk tales. The saying was, A long, long time ago when the rocks were soft, there lived… I guess manifestations such as the footprints and the plates carved on the rock surfaces were clear testimony to people that at some time in history, the stones were soft.

On the northern side of the dome, the sides were steep. One of the sections had a very steep cliff. We were always warned about getting too close to that edge. Every night that I had a nightmare, I dreamt that I was falling off the cliff on the steep side of the dome. Another section of the northern face, towards the west of the dome had a gentler slope. In the winter months when there was no need to tend to the cattle, we had a lot of fun sliding down the dome. The friction between the dome and the sliding rocks had resulted in a smooth sliding trail that everyone used. After taking a turn to slide down the dome, the most difficult part was climbing up the slope again to slide down one more time. The pair of shorts we wore were the main victim of our sport. Frequently, the front looked new while at the back there was nothing. Needless to say, the parents who bought the clothes were no fans of our sport.

I recalled all the pleasures I had had on this great dome. I wondered though how everything had not changed at all over time. Perhaps the density of individual homesteads was much higher. However, the grass-thatched huts still dotted each compound. Little children darted from one hut to another, maybe followed by a dog or cat. I could see all this from the top of the dome. It was like being on top of the world and having a bird eye’s view of what is going on all around.

I must have fallen into a trance as I thought about all these things. He approached me slowly. A curiously looking figure he was. I had seen those carvings about the old man from my clan. He was bald, carried a hat made of reeds in his hand and wore a pair of trousers torn at the knees. On his right hand he carried a knob-kerrie. He was slim as most of the men in the village are from endless hours of labor. I wondered who he was and where he had come from. In some ways I was a bit scared. There were, immediately below the dome, some old graves. Once in a while, after heavy downpours, we would stumble on freshly exposed human bones. Every time it happened I was deeply disturbed. We had to tell the elders. A reburial of the bones and a little ceremony were done that we as children were not part of.

Now, since it was still morning, I wondered if he was one of them (the dead) come back and regretted having come up to the dome so early. Usually a person approaching another would say Sawubona which translates to: It is good to see you. He did not greet me and he started talking instead.

Whose son are you and why are you here when others are preparing to go to the churches or to go drink as some of you young people do? he asked. I answered that question, with a bit of relief that at least he