AN ANGEL OAK STORY (A LOW COUNTRY FABLE)

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Fable, Low Country, South Carolina

I enjoy writing these little fables. With gratitude I acknowledge the use of the wonderful photo of that magnificent tree, courtesy of AngelOakPhoto.com. I grew up less than a mile from Angel Oak, a short walk through the woods. In those days the tree wasn’t protected, and we kids used to play tag on it, the rule being that you couldn’t touch the ground. For the high school kids, there were many kisses exchanged beneath its branches.

Quersica thought that she was the last of her kind in eastern North America, and maybe all of the continent or even the world, but she supposed that there could be one or two dryads left out there in the far west among the redwoods or some other far place. She had her own name for creatures like herself which neither you nor I could pronounce without difficulty, and it would be meaningless to us. To the Greeks she was a hamadryad, a tree spirit or nymph partial to oak trees. The Greeks had gotten a lot of things right about dryads, but not everything. Quersica had coalesced within the vaporous cocoon of the great primeval forests when plants not animals had dominated the earth. As far as she knew, dryads were not part of some organized pantheon of gods. She had never met an entity that she would consider a god, but in the early days of the earth other creatures more or less like herself had abounded on the earth and in the seas. Yes they had some limited powers and they lived a long long time, but none were immortal or possessed godlike attributes. Quersica had the power to protect herself and her trees if necessary, and she could enhance the health of plants, and to a far lesser degree animals, but she never considered herself or her kind gods. Nevertheless she had witnessed the patterns of life, an evolutionary dance that had passed the dryads by long ago, and she chose to believe that there was a guiding hand somewhere. Many of her friends had chosen the final joining because they believed that they would begin anew on a higher plain of existence. It was a comforting thought, but she knew that sometimes things just ended.

The Greeks had believed that hamadryads died when the trees they inhabited died. It was more complicated than that. Quersica had existed for ages before she’d achieved true self-awareness, and additional ages after that before the non-denominational dryad had felt herself drawn to bond with the live oak trees and become a hamadryad. She supposed that that choice, if it was a choice, represented a dryad’s coming of age, the end of her youth. In that youth she had visited all the great trees of the world: the redwoods, the baobabs of Africa, the towering evergreens of Siberia, the tropical mangroves, the eucalyptus of Australia, and the magnificent bald cypress that were her close neighbors in the swamps of the low country of what would become South Carolina, before she had chosen the live oaks. Her closest dryad friend, Disteechia, had chosen the nearby bald cypresses. Her friend had joined her tree in a moment of elation as the festively festooned canoes of the local Kiawa sub-group of the  Cusabo tribes, celebrating a royal wedding, had paused in the water near her to seek her blessing. Such moments of spiritual elation often precipitated a joining, more so as the passing ages had begun to wear on the dryads. That tree had lived on for over three hundred more years, a tribute to the strength of her friend’s spirit. Quersica had inhabited countless live oaks, and absent that final joining dryads survived their trees. They lived on until they chose to join a tree and surrender their separate identity. From that point on their lives were entwined with the life of the tree. Absent natural disaster or outside intervention, how robust and long the tree lived after that was dependent on the strength of the dryad and her spiritual transcendence at the moment of joining. It was their final gift.

When Quersica had chosen to inhabit her present live oak, it was already two hundred years old and a magnificent specimen. She had lived within its knotted trunk and gnarled branches for nearly a thousand years more, and largely due to her, it was still in excellent health. Several subgroups of the Cusabos, most notably the Stonos and the Kiawas, had venerated and protected that tree because of her presence, and Quersica had saved it from flood and fire time and time again. She allowed the local tribes to gather some of her tree’s acorns to extract a cooking oil used for special feasts, and gather some of the leaves to mix with those from other trees to make a rug for a newborn infant, as well as the bark that her tree shed naturally to make a royal dye. On occasion she had appeared in the flesh before those early Americans, usually to forestall abuse of her tree, but sometimes on festive occasions. Dryads were not nearly as promiscuous as the Greeks had portrayed them, but she had had a few dalliances with handsome young warriors along the way. However all that was far in the past. The utter destruction of the Cusabos by the colonists had cast a depressive pall over her world. She had resolved to join with her tree when the next worthy opportunity presented itself. Therein lay the rub. To the demise of the Cusabo was added the horrors of slavery and warfare, and suddenly, for a Dryad suddenly, there was no room left for great moments of spiritual elation. She was trapped.

Quersica never revealed herself to the colonists, except a couple times as a ghost to frighten away would be teenage vandals. She never forgave them for what they had done to the Cusabos, but she was not a vengeful spirit. She observed with interest when Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox, had his ragtag troops rendezvous beneath her tree, but she frankly didn’t care who won that war. However she felt great sympathy for the slaves, and appeared on occasion to do what she could to help a sick child through an illness. Most of the slaves had come from Africa via a few generations on the islands of the Caribbean. Some of them continued to practice their old religions when the colonists weren’t looking, usually at night, and often under her branches. They viewed her and her tree as sacred. Along the way the tree had acquired the name Angel Oak, which the colonists attributed logically to the fact that one of the owners had been named Angel. However to the slaves, she was the angel that lived in the oak.

In July of 1863, the Union Army occupied Johns Island in preparation for an attack on Confederate positions on neighboring James Island, which were part of the fortifications defending Charleston, as recounted, with Hollywood’s usual cavalier attitude toward historical accuracy, in the movie Glory. Colored soldiers bivouacked under Angel Oak, and a young officer had some of his men gather the local slaves. When they had assembled, sitting high on his horse, he read The Emancipation Proclamation to them. When he shouted the words, “Shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free!” there was a tremendous upwelling of joy and celebration. In that great moment of spiritual elation, Quersica joined her tree.

Angel Oak now belongs to and is well protected by the City of Charleston. It was severely damaged during Hurricane Hugo. Normally a tree that old wouldn’t recover from that kind of injury, but to everyone’s amazement Angel Oak recovered fully. Perhaps Quersica had something to do with that. There is no charge for visiting Angel Oak, considered one of the world’s great trees now and the oldest living thing east of the Rockies. If you do, say hi to Quersica.

Author’s Note: In addition to my fondness for and familiarity with the tree, the seed for this story was born when I read an account of a young Union officer, a passing mention really, who on one of the sea islands south of Charleston, gathered the local slaves under the branches of a massive oak tree, and read The Emancipation Proclamation to them. The account didn’t say which barrier island, give a specific date, or identify the tree.  My search for additional information proved futile. Frankly it was more likely one of the islands further south in the neighborhood of Hilton Head, which were under Union control for much of the war, including on January 1st, 1863 when The Proclamation was issued. But it could have been Johns Island during that brief Union occupation in July, certainly the tree would qualify, and that is close enough for a storyteller.  

 

 

 

THE PECULIAR SQUIRRELS OF JOHNS ISLAND (A LOW COUNTRY FABLE)

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Animals, Fable, Fiction, Low Country, South Carolina

In the far far past a tribe of squirrels lived in the great forests of the north in what we now call North America. It was a warm time in the history of world, and they fed well on chestnuts, acorns, and pine nuts. They were fat prosperous squirrels. Somewhere along the line they decided that fatness was a sign of prosperity, and prosperity was a sign of superiority. Naturally the fattest squirrels became the leaders, and married the fattest wives, and had the fattest children. Oh they had enemies like owls, hawks, and eagles, but their gray fur blended into the forest nicely and made them hard to find. Also the thinnest squirrels were always the ones that had to do the most dangerous food gathering, and therefore were the ones most likely to be eaten. So over the long passage of years being fat was no longer something that happened after they were born if they ate too much. They were born to be fat. We call that genetics. Eventually they became so different from squirrels in other places that they became their own special kind of squirrel. We call that differentiation of species.

Then over the years the weather became colder. For a long long time the change was slow. Gradually some animals developed white fur or feathers so they could hide in the snow or hunt without being spotted. Those that did survived, but those that didn’t like the squirrels began to dwindle. Many animals moved southward where it was warmer, but not the squirrels. The oak trees and the chestnut trees began to die too, leaving mostly the cold hardy evergreens, which reduced the available food. Then somewhere in the world a narrow part of the ocean froze solid and completely blocked the great ocean current which brought much of the warmth to the north. Then things became much colder, and huge mountains of ice, called glaciers, began to push into the forest, knocking down even the tallest and strongest trees.

For ages the squirrels resisted moving, even as they grew fewer and food became ever harder to find. But now they had no choice but to move south and look for a new home. Over many generations they kept moving south, but other animals had moved there long before them, leaving no place for the squirrel tribe. Over time, as they traveled they changed. The fattest squirrels were no longer the most likely to survive, because they were slow and easy prey for the hunters. The squirrels were often near starvation, and oddly, although they all lost weight, their skin did not shrink. It just became kind of loose and flabby, like a big wrinkly overcoat. To tell the truth, bedraggled, starving, and wrinkled, they were not a pretty sight. They became known as the ugly squirrels, and were chased out of forest after forest.

Finally they came to the swamps and thick forests of the South Carolina low country, and they settled on Johns Island, one of the many barrier islands along the coast. That was not an ideal place for the squirrels to live because it was filled with mosquitoes and ticks  and snakes, and many other dangers. However there were lots and lots of rotting trees with old woodpecker holes that could be easily enlarged to make shelters. Anyway by that time the once-fat-squirrel-now-wrinkled-squirrel tribe was desperate for a home, and Johns Island had room for them.

Most of the other animals shunned the squirrels. However the equally ugly possums welcomed them. That is how a young male squirrel named Abrandadorenta, which in the classical fat squirrel language meant he who climbs trees quickly, became a close friend of a possum named Steve. The squirrels had lost all of their past grandeur except for their grandiose names. So they clung to those. Maybe their pride had supported them through all their troubles. Different things prop us up. However when it came to names, the local possums weren’t so highfalutin.

So one day up high in an old oak tree, Abrandadorenta hunted acorns while Steve hunted insects. Steve’s favorite food was ticks. There is no accounting for tastes. Suddenly a bobcat started climbing up the trunk, trapping them, a bobcat named Bob. All male bobcats are named Bob. That’s how they got the name. Bobcats liked to keep things simple — hunt, kill, eat. Abrandadorenta ran to the thin outer branches. Steve thought about playing dead, but playing dead high in a tree is not recommended. So he tried one of the other possum tricks. He started shaking all over and foaming at the mouth. Bob took one look at Steve and decided to go chase the squirrel. He’d never cared much for possum anyway. That gave Steve his chance to escape.

Unfortunately for Abrandadorenta, Bob was a very agile young bobcat, and thin branches or not, he kept working his way closer and closer. Finally there was no where else for Abrandorenta to go, and Bob was approaching striking distance. Although he was certain he would die from the fall, the brave squirrel leapt from his branch. As he fell he instinctively spread out his four legs. The wind caught his open flabby coat and he glided lower to the trunk of next tree and escaped. Once the rest of the tribe learned that trick, it greatly improved their ability to escape predators. From then on they flourished in their new home. Instead of the ugly squirrels, they became known as flying squirrels. A much nicer name don’t you think?

Moral: Not all gifts come gift wrapped, and sometimes they open themselves.

HOW DOLPHINS LEARNED A NEW WAY TO FISH (A LOW COUNTRY FABLE)

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Dolphins, Fable, Low Country, Marsh Hen, Strand Feeding

I wish to acknowledge the wonderful Audubon paintings, which thankfully are in the public domain.

Harriet was a marsh hen. That is the common name, but in the books marsh hens are called clapper rails. The males in her family liked that because for them being called a marsh hen was embarrassing. You know how guys are. Rail sounded cooler, kind of macho. “Hi, I’m Fred, a rail, glad to meet cha.” As the name marsh hen implies, Harriet was about the size of a small chicken. She lived in the endless miles of salt water marshes on the coast of South Carolina, some bordering the numerous tidal creeks and rivers, others surrounding the non-beach sides of the many barrier islands. Harriet lived in the marshes between two islands, Edisto, a large island, and Botany, a much smaller island. She had a long, slim, downward curving beak, designed to winkle out small shrimp, crabs, and other yummy critters from the pluff mud. Pluff mud is the fluffy shoe-stealing sink-deep mud of salt water marshes. Oysters make their homes in it. I wonder if they live in the lost shoes.

Now Harriet had a special friend, Muriel, a sea turtle. One dark night Harriet had been sleeping in her bushy nest in the marsh just across a little tidal creek from the Botany Island beach, when she’d heard some strange grunting sounds. At first she’d thought maybe it was Alfred and Ida and their kids, the wild goat family that lived on the island, but it would have been unusual for them to wander the beach in the middle of the night. She went to the edge of the marshgrass and peered out. Huge sea turtles were lumbering out of the surf to lay their eggs in the sand. The nearest one, which turned out to be Muriel, had just dug a hole in the sand and settled in. Harriet waded across the creek to the beach and struck up a conversation. Marsh hens like chickens seldom fly, and never very high or far. So inbetween Muriel’s grunts they chatted away and became friends. They agreed that whenever her wanderings permitted, every full moon Muriel would come back to visit. Now Harriet had snapped up a baby turtle or two when they’d hatched and made their frantic scramble to the ocean, but she never ate one after she became friends with Muriel, a simple matter of courtesy.

On a night of the full moon Harriet went down to the beach to meet Muriel. Muriel hadn’t arrived yet, but there was something on the beach. It turned out to be Bill, a bottlenose dolphin, all wrapped up in a fishing net. The locals often called them porpoises, but bottlenose dolphin is the correct name. Bill preferred dolphin, but he wasn’t crazy about the bottlenose part. Anyway Bill had barely managed to save himself from drowning by beaching himself. The weight of the net and the fact that it limited his movements had made it more and more difficult for him to surface for air. The tide was going out, and when Harriet found him he was a good ways from the water. Bill was very weak from his struggles. Harriet immediately began to unravel the cords with her long beak. Harriet worked for an hour, maybe two, until she had unraveled a good bit of the net. Fortunately Muriel arrived just in time to tug the rest of it off of Bill and roll him down the sloped beach to the water. Bill just rested in the shallows a bit. Then when he felt strong enough, he thanked them and swam off.

About a week later as Bill swam down a tidal creek, he saw Harriet probing the pluff mud on the creek bank. At the same time he saw a school of small mullet swimming by her. On an impulse he swam quickly toward her and scared a couple fish into flipping up on the bank where Harriet ate them. He tried that again from time to time when he spotted Harriet, not always successfully because the fish didn’t always panic and flip themselves up on the bank, and it was hard for one dolphin to generate a big enough wave to wash them on shore. Also they weren’t always in the perfect spot. Still it was fun to try and Harriet appreciated the effort.

Then one day Bill was swimming with his cousins, Al and Edna, when he spotted Harriet. He talked his cousins into helping. There were no fish right in front of Harriet, but working together the three dolphins managed to herd a school of fish to the right place. Then they surged forward at the same time, creating a bow wave that washed a whole lot of fish up on the bank, many more than Harriet could eat. Al was hungry, so he flipped himself up on the mud bank and began munching away. Soon the other two dolphins joined him. With practice the dolphins became better and better at that style of fishing, whether Harriet was around or not. It became known as strand feeding, and for some years only South Carolina dolphins did it. Then some of Bill’s relatives visited, those odd Geechee dolphins from down Savannah way. Soon Georgia dolphins were doing it too. And if you ever visit Botany Island or Edisto or any of the other barrier islands in the South Carolina low country, you’ll have a good chance to see dolphins strand feeding. All thanks to the kindness of Harriet the marsh hen.

MAGAWA THE EVIL SORCERER (AN ORIGINAL AFRICAN FABLE)

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Africa, Angels, Demons, Fable, Morality Tale, Sorcerer

When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chad I always had my ear out for myths, legends, and good stories. There was a Chadian tribe, name pronounced as bah-nah-nah (real spelling Banana believe it or not), that was always being accused of sorcery and shapeshifting. Many countries African and otherwise have one group that they blame for all the negative things that happen. It was claimed that their sorcerers would change into elephants at harvest to steal grain, and you could identify them by the red eyes of the elephant. Once in chatting with some UN or World Bank Ag people (I forget), they said that there might be a basis for that myth. Given the peculiar nature of an elephant’s digestive system, and assuming it was filled almost 100 percent with grain, some fermentation might be possible. Therefore during the harvest season theoretically an elephant could get drunk because of all the internally stored grain, and subsequently hung over with blood shot eyes. Highly doubtful but fun speculation. Anyway that is the seed of inspiration for this story.

There was a time long ago when supernatural beings were present on the earth more than they are today. Although frowned upon by the greater powers back in the home office, as human beings emerged contact between them happened all too frequently. Those immortals performed varied tasks. Some were elemental forces of fire and earth and wind and water, who moved continents, raised mountains and volcanic islands, and steered the currents of the great oceans. Others were the guardians of fish and birds and grasslands and forests and wild beasts, permitting those creatures to progress and develop at a measured pace according to a Grand Design of which they themselves had no ultimate knowledge. They had jobs to do, but where it all led was not in their purview. Some people called these entities spirits or elementals or angels or demons. One of the old words for those deemed benign was “eudaemon” — literally “good demon,” which later people translated as “angel.” Classfying them as good or bad, angel or demon, was often a result of how their individual actions affected the beholders. An earthquake is destructive but not evil, although the elemental causing it would most likely be labeled a demon by the people in a destroyed village.

However powerful, they were not immune to many of the same temptations faced by man. One of the great sins was having carnal relations with humans. A far worse sin was having children with humans. That almost always involved a male angel/demon and a human female, since the female immortals, though certainly not above lust, could prevent conception. It took a singularly rare act of definance for a female immortal to intentionally conceive a child. Perhaps because they were the progeny of two very different creatures, the children of a union between an immortal and human were always sterile. Their original name was Nephilim, and although they were not immortal and could be killed, they lived far longer and possessed powers far greater than ordinary people. Rare was the Nephilim who could resist the temptations such longevity and power entailed. No doubt they were the source of many of the legends of nightmare creatures like vampires and werewolves. Some of the famous conquerors of ancient history may well have been Nephilim. Fortunately there were never many of them living at any one time. Also in an era when great kings and conquerors often fought at the front leading their warriors, the more ambitious of them tended to lead risky lives. Nevertheless, if not for their sterility, there is little doubt that their descendents would have ruled the world. Apparently that was not part of the Grand Design.

Magawa was a Nephilim, the son of Chuila, the guardian spirit of the large wild animals of Africa. Over the countless years Chuila had become more and more drawn to the predators, especially the larger cats. In time he became cruel and arrogant and greedy and lustful. The big cats lusted mostly for blood, where he lusted for other things as well. One evening in the guise of a lion he spied a beautiful young woman, Miralu, bathing in a pond. Without thought he changed into a man, pounced on her, and raped her. Magawa was the result of that rape. The Grand Design of The Creator included a covenant guaranteeing Free Will to all the mortal creatures on earth. However since Chuila was immortal, he was subject to swift certain judgement for his horrible transgression. Chuila was walled away from the earth and imprisoned in the dark cold void between the stars for as near to forever as to make no never mind.

Miralu was never quite right after her rape. Although she tried, she couldn’t force herself to feel the love and affection of a normal mother toward her child. Listless and sad, she died when Magawa was just a boy. Magawa grew apace in strength and cunning, inheriting some of the powers of his father, including the ability to shapeshift into animal form. As a boy he had only a slight reddish tint to his eyes, but as he aged and the evil within him grew as well, his eyes became the color of blood. He would have been considered handsome if not for those eyes. Increasingly he was shunned by everyone, including the young women he desired. Nevertheless his powers enabled him to become wealthy. Eventually he lived apart in a grand house in a large compound guarded by fierce animals. At times he would change into a lion or leopard to kill his enemies and to abduct women in the night, women who would never return to their villages. During the harvest season he would become an elephant in order to steal grain that he would carry home in his large stomach, which could hold undigested for many hours around twenty-five gallons of grain. The people always knew that the elephant stealing their grain was Magawa because of its blood red eyes. Thus he became known and feared as an evil sorcerer.

Harmattan was a wind elemental whose domain in the north of Africa was mostly desert. In the winter he blew cold dry air, often filled with fine dust, far southward to peopled lands. Those dust storms irritated eyes, throats and lungs and caused illness. In the desert he could whip up a quick sandstorm that could scour the skin of men and animals. In the summer when moister air moved up from rains far to the south, he would toss it high and create thunderstorms that he would push westward into the sea to strenghten as they moved across the warm waters and sometimes became hurricanes that devastated distant lands. Harmattan was not beloved, but he was not evil. Although there were times when he enjoyed flexing his powers to excess, causing great destruction to lands and peoples and pushing his barren domain ever southward. He did this because he had no empathy with living things. However gradually over the long years he began to delight in the flight of birds. He loved the way they played in his winds. One species of bird became especially precious to him. We might even call them pets. However because the birds ate grain, and there was little of that in the desert, they often flew south to find food. For the first time Harmattan experienced loneliness when his pets left him, and for the first time he experienced happiness when they returned.

Cramcrami was the guardian of the vast savannahs of Africa. She loved all things grass, even the little burr grass that thinly blanketed the dunes on the borders of the true desert during the rainy season, only to die completely away in the hot dry months. It is said that grass and grain have the same mother, and for all intents and purposes that mother was Cramcrami. She came into contact with humans early on when nomadic women first gathered the seeds of wild grasses. She helped when humans began to settle and farm. She sang long over the grasses favored by humans, and her powers increased the size of the grains and the yield per plant. Cramcrami was gentle by nature and lacked the physical strength of elementals like Harmattan, although still quite strong by human standards. Nonetheless she was in fact one of the most powerful entities on earth, for in addition to grasses, grains, and herbs, she also had great influence over bushes and small trees. Most importantly, she was thoughtful and did nothing without considering the consequences, which distinguished her from most of the other supernatural entities on earth at that time, and was a kind of power in and of itself. She was called by many different names in many places. She was credited for giving olive trees and fig trees and many berries and fruit to mankind. She 

IDRIS AND THE RIVER PEOPLE

Tags

Africa, Bagirmi tribe, Cameroon, Capitaine Fish, Chad, Fable, French, Slave Raiders

This story takes place sometime in the nineteen twenties. It is about a young fisherman named Idris who lived in a village on the east bank of the Chari River between the city of Fort Lamy a little ways to the south and Lake Chad much farther to the north. A member of the Bagirmi tribe, his family was poor because his father had lost an arm. They depended on Idris who was an excellent fisherman. His best friend Moussa came from a wealthier family. In fact Moussa’s family was distantly related to Sultan Moustapha of the Bagirmi Tribe. Most days, especially in the dry season when the river was shallow everywhere but in the very center, Idriss and Moussa would go out on the river in a fine pirogue that belonged to Moussa’s father Aboubakar and try to net or spear fish in the shallows. Aboubakar spent his days tending his herds of cattle and goats and riding his handsome horse. Idris’s family owned an old leaky pirouge that he used only in Moussa’s absence, for fear of it sinking. Their prize catch was the large capitaine (a.k.a. Nile perch) so highly valued by nasaras (white people, mostly French), who lived in Fort Lamy. One large capitaine would sell for enough money to feed a family for a week, maybe two.

It had been the Bagirmi Tribe that had appealed to the French for help against the Arabic slave raiders. We sometimes think of slave raiders as small gangs of outlaws, but in those days some commanded what amounted to small armies. In fact in Idris’s day many of the older Bagirmi women had plugs in their lips intended to make them unattractive to the raiders. Idris was happy that girls no longer had to do that. A few years before Idris was born, a combined and badly outnumbered but better armed French and Bagirmi force had defeated Rabah, the last and greatest of the slave raiders, at Kousseri, a small town on the Cameroonian side of the river across from the eventual Chadian capital city of Fort Lamy, named after the commanding French officer who had died heroically in that battle. Many years later it would be renamed N’Djamena following Chad’s independence from France. Idris’s father had lost his arm at Kousseri, and from then on could only fish with line from the river bank. In addition to his father’s arm, the price of that victory had been that the French settled in to govern that vast area known as The Chad, the last significant area in Africa to be colonized. And now the Bagirmi were less than they once were, just one of many tribes, but they no longer had to worry about slavers. Whether things were better or worse under the French was something the old men argued about over millet beer.

Fishing on the Chari was dangerous. Hippos would sometimes overturn pirogues and kill fishermen. Drowning when the river was flooding was always a danger, for very few people knew how to swim. It is easy to learn to swim in a nice swimming pool or a safe little lake or pond, but not so easy in swift rivers or in ponds infested with poisonous snakes. And once in a while a large crocodile would slip down the river from the endless reeds on Lake Chad or the seasonal swamps and ponds on the west side of the river in Cameroon. In fact the west bank of the river was a favorite place to fish. Lines on paper drawn by nasaras didn’t mean much to the Bagirmi. Also Idris and Moussa were always on the lookout for the river people, not that they saw them often. In fact Idris had seen one only twice in his life. The river people looked something like nasaras, with their pale skin and long flowing blonde hair. They also had angled emerald-colored eyes, many small pointed teeth, gills, narrow heads, and webbed hands and feet. That they were seen so rarely was thought to be due to the magical powers that some thought they possessed. No nasara had ever seen one, at least as far as anyone knew. They doubted that the river people existed at all, believing them to be folk legends. But then no nasaras spent days on end searching the river for fish. Seeing one of the river people was considered to be an omen of some sort, whether good or bad was a matter of debate, probably because hippo attacks sometimes followed sightings. Some thought that the hippos were like cattle to the river people.

Now Idris thought more deeply about the river people and things in general than Moussa and the other young men in his village. Except for their long blonde hair everything about the river people seemed designed for swift movement in water. That bothered him, so one day he asked Hussein about it, the wisest old man he knew. Hussein said he didn’t know for sure, but the hair could just be vanity. He’d seen many a strutting bird and preening animal, so why not river people? However he then asked Idris to think about how few times river people had been spotted. Hussein smiled and said that with the sun shining down and his hair fanning out above him as he sat on the sandy river bottom, a river person might be pretty hard to see. Also since the river wasn’t deep all year long, often Idris had wondered where the river people lived. Moussa’s father believed that they lived in cavelike villages under the banks of the river, although no one had ever seen such a village. Others said that they lived under the reed mats floating in Lake Chad and only came down on occasion, which is what the members of the Kanembou Tribe around Lake Chad claimed, but then the Kamembous were known for telling tall tales. Anyway no one knew for certain, not even old Hussein.

One day while Idris and Moussa were fishing, a giant crocodile broke the surface holding a struggling river man in its jaws. Moussa wanted to paddle away, but Idris stood up and threw a spear that pierced the crocodile’s eye. The crocodile released the river man and disappeared beneath the water. Although bleeding violet blood from several wounds, the river man stared at Idris, as if memorizing his features, then he’d nodded once and rolled beneath the water. When the villagers heard the story, they were amazed. No one knew whether it meant good fortune or ill fortune for Idris, but everybody agreed that it had to mean something.

Now it so happened that all the sultan’s daughters had been married off one by one, save for his youngest, a gazelle-eyed beauty named Aisha. Whenever Idris and Moussa encountered Aisha, Idris thought her shy smile drifted his way more than Moussa’s, but perhaps that was wishful thinking. For each daughter in turn the sultan had held a contest to determine the lucky young groom. The first had been a horse race. The second had been the longest crocodile skin. And the third had been a hunt for meat for the bridal feast. A renowned hunter had brought in a magnificent antelope cheval, but the prize had gone to a handsome younger man who had brought in a warthog. Turned out that the Sultan just loved roasted warthog. Who knew? That night at the feast, although his portion was small and not choice, Idris discovered that roasted warthog really is delicious. Later he watched as the daughter in question gave a quick sly wink to her husband to be. For Aisha’s contest the Sultan had decided on the largest capitaine. The suitors were given one week with prizes measured every evening. That gave Idris hope, for everyone knew he was the best fisherman for many miles around. Briefly he wondered if maybe Aisha had had something to do with that.

Over the first five days of the contest Idris and Moussa fished together as usual. Both had caught capitaine, but Idris had caught the largest. It was part of the contest ritual to gut and clean the fish in the late afternoon with all the villagers present. On the sixth morning Idris discovered that Moussa had taken his pirogue out earlier by himself. So Idris took his old pirogue out that day. He didn’t catch anything. In fact Moussa had left in the middle of the night and paddled the ten miles or so against the north flowing current all the way to Fort Lamy. There in the fish market he had spent all his money to purchase the largest capitaine he could find, one larger than the one Idris had caught earlier. He thought Aisha was a fine looking girl, but really for him it was all about marrying the sultan’s daughter. Paddling back with the current was much easier. When he presented the fish there were murmurs because the fish had already been gutted and cleaned. Moussa explained that he had caught the fish early in the morning and was afraid it would spoil laying ungutted in the pirogue all day. Idris was suspicious, but he had no proof.

He decided to go out by himself the next and final day of the contest, his old pirogue notwithstanding. He no longer trusted his friend. He fished vainly all that day and began to despair when suddenly the water around the boat began to roil. That frightened him because that often happened just before a hippo attack. But soon the water on both sides of the pirogue filled with river people. That was frightening too, but there was little he could do about it, so he sat quietly. The river people on one side grabbed the pirogue and held it steady, while the river people on the other side hoisted up and dumped over into the center of the pirogue the largest capitaine that Idris had ever seen, maybe that anybody had ever seen. The fish was so heavy that the pirogue sank down until only a couple inches remained above the water line. It would later measure out at just under six foot and three hundred and sixty pounds. And it was beautiful with silver scintillating scales blue tinged in places and black eyes surrounded by bright yellow eye walls. When he looked back up all but one of the river people had disappeared. Of course it was the one whose life he had saved. The river man smiled. That was a pretty scary too with all those little pointed teeth, but a smile is a smile for all that. Idris smiled back and this time the river man nodded his thanks. Then he turned gracefully and slipped beneath the water.

When Idris returned oh so carefully in his pirogue, he became the toast of the village. The sultan himself came down to gut the fish, quite an honor. Idriss heard some old men mutter that it was the biggest capitaine anyone had caught since the days of their great great grandfathers, which made him smile. In his experience when it came to fish stories, great great grandfathers, great grandfathers, grandfathers, and old men in general were not exactly wedded to the truth. When the sultan sliced the fish’s belly open, a large emerald fell out. After some oohing and ahhing, the sultan announced that much of the money from its sale would be used as a dowry for Aisha. He bought them a plot of land on a hill overlooking the river, with a nice mud brick house that had a real tin roof, and he gave Idris a fine new pirogue. The land behind the house was flat and fertile so Aisha could grow spices and hot peppers and gumbo and ground nuts among other things. In the years that followed, Idris and Aisha had four healthy children. Surprisingly they all had green eyes and just the tiniest bit of webbing between their toes and fingers. They loved the water and were all fine fishermen and fisherwomen. His two girls were strong limbed and fished as well as the two boys. As for Moussa, from that day on he had no luck fishing. He became a herder like his father.

Moral: You know, every great once in a while, just to keep the universe honest, a good deed really does go unpunished.

THE LEOPARD, THE TORTOISE, AND THE GAZELLE (AN ORIGINAL AFRICAN FABLE)

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Africa, Animals, Fable

In Africa a long long time ago there were places where people had yet to come and animals ruled supreme. In one such place the chief of all the animals, the mokonsi, was the leopard. Some other animals were bigger and stronger like the elephants and hippos and crocodiles, but the animals considered the leopard the most dangerous and didn’t want to get on his bad side. No one feared the peaceful elephants, and the hippos and crocodiles were only dangerous in or near rivers and lakes. The leopard could climb trees, and see at night better than most of the other animals, moving quickly and quietly through the trees, and he was strong with long teeth and flashing claws. So the leopard ruled the deep forest.

Now the leopard was not content just to be the mokonsi of the deep forest. He claimed to rule the vast grassy plains on the borders of the forest as well. Most of the animals there, the antelopes, warthogs, jackals, and even the big strong buffalos feared the leopard and accepted him as the mokonsi. All but the gazelle and his wife. The gazelles were so fast and nimble that the leopard could never catch them, although he often tried to sneak up on them in the night. The female gazelle grew tired of being stalked by the leopard, so she decided to ask her old friend the tortoise for help.

This was no ordinary tortoise. She was called the mother of all tortoises because she was the eldest of all the tortoises living in the entire world. She was hundreds and hundreds of years old and her shell was as big as a very large house and even had bushes and grassses growing on top of it. Animals often walked right by her thinking she was just another hill. All the animals respected her for her wisdom, and some even claimed that she had secret magical powers. In fact she possessed no magic, if by that you mean something supernatural, but her shell did contain wonders, wonders called books and scrolls. Long ago the tortoises had learned to chew and pound reeds to make paper, and they’d learned to read and wright in tortoise fashion. Now their loosely bound books made with crude paper weren’t as fancy as our modern books, but it is what is written inside a book that counts. In fact the inside of her shell was really an enormous library containing all the tortoise wisdom of the ages, which was a lot because they live so long, are very observent, and do a lot of thinking in their quiet shells. It was considered an honor, almost a holy pilgrimage, for elderly tortoises to make the long slow journey to give her the book they had assembled over the course of their lives.

All that aside, to the lady gazelle the tortoise was just an old and treasured friend who lived nearby, and a very wise one. She told the tortoise about their problem and asked for her advice. Her friend replied that she would think about it and to come back in a week. During that week the tortoise read a lot and thought about the problem, paying special attention to the section of her library labeled psychology. When she had a plan that she thought would work, she told the gazelle what to do.

A few days later the leopard came slinking around and asked the lady gazelle where her husband was. While staying out of leaping range, she told him the tortoise was using her magic to send her husband up to the gods to ask them to kill the leopard. The leopard was furious and took off at a run to find the tortoise. As soon as he left the male gazelle came out of hiding and they both raced off and got there well before the leopard. When the leopard arrived he saw the head of the male gazelle on the ground covered in blood and the tortoise holding a bloody axe in her mouth.

“Is he dead?” The leopard asked.

“No,” she replied after setting down the axe. “This is how I use my magic to send someone to the gods to appeal for help. He wants to replace you as mokonsi.  I’ve done this countless times through the years. He will be fully restored shortly.”

The leopard padded around huffing and puffing. “Then you must do the same for me so that they can hear my side.”

The tortoise obliged. The lady gazelle came out of hiding and dug her husband out of the dirt and washed off the red berry juice. They thanked the tortoise. And for awhile peace reigned over the forest and the grassy plains. But sooner or later another mokonsi always comes along.

Moral: While the distant gods are often deaf to our appeals, the axes here on earth are rather sharp.

THE ELEPHANT AND THE SONGBIRD (AN ORIGINAL AFRICAN FABLE)

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Africa, Animals, Fable, Humor, Modern Folktale

This fable was inspired by my puzzling out a few Congolese fables published in 1966 in Lingala, I think as a grammar school primer, by Pere Paul Lepoutre. The originals were rather cryptic authentic oral tradition folktales and bear almost no resemblance to my stories. My stories were written for an American audience, and the writing is entirely mine. However I did fall in love with the delightful anthropomorphic animal characters in those tales. The good father deserves a mention, as do the anonymous Congolese story tellers who kept their folktales and culture alive. Special thanks to Susannah Glover Black for her illustration.

Before the Sahara Desert was fully formed, when there were still vast grasslands and even a few rivers and lakes in what is now almost all desert, along the borderland between the jungle in the center of Africa and those grassy plains, lived two unusual friends, an elephant and a songbird. They were unusual friends because most animals, including people who are just another kind of animal, prefer the company of those who look and act like they do. That way they don’t have to learn new ways of thinking and behaving. Learning how to get along with and appreciate others who are different takes some effort, but it is always worth it.

Big and strong with a voice of thunder or a thousand trumpets all sounding at once, the elephant was a dull gray color, except when he covered himself with brown mud or red dust, which he liked to do when the sun was hot or now and again just for the fun of it. The songbird was mostly green up top, and mostly yellow on the bottom, and really quite pretty. So tiny compared to his friend, the songbird could crawl into the elephant’s trunk and tickle it with his feathers, which caused the elephant to sneeze him up high in the air. The songbird thought that was great fun, and the fall back down didn’t hurt at all, because of course the he could fly. The elephant loved listening to his friend sing. It put him in such a good mood that he didn’t mind the sneezing, at least until his trunk became red and sore, which happened sometimes if they played the game too long. This elephant had four wives, because that is the way of elephants, while the songbird had just one wife. The elephant’s wives got along well. He was careful to treat them all the same. Making a lady elephant angry can be downright dangerous, even for another elephant.

Everyday the two friends searched for food together. Although he was too small to fly high or far, the little bird could fly to the tops of trees and spot ripe berries and other fruit. Then the elephant would butt the trees to shake down fruit or rake berries with his long trunk. Above all the elephant loved the cinnamon flavored bark of certain thorn trees, a species of acacia tree. Whenever they found the right kind of acacias that were just the right size, the elephant would slice the bark with his tusks and peel it off with his trunk. Usually butting trees and raking vines didn’t hurt them, but peeling the bark killed the acacias. The bark from the older larger trees didn’t taste nearly as good to the elephant, so he left them alone. Therefore there were always seeds falling and new trees sprouting, but it took at least ten years for the trees to reach the size the elephant liked best. He ate them much faster than they grew. Soon acacias of the right size were very hard to find. The elephant could have saved some of them to eat later. That is called conservation. Elephants don’t know how to do that. Neither do some people.

They ate other things too. Their wives made foofoo for them everyday. Foofoo has many names and is made from different grains or roots in different places. It usually looks like a mound of soft jiggly bread. You eat it by tearing off a small piece with your fingers (after washing your hands) and dipping it into the stew. Our two friends didn’t have hands, but a handy trunk and tiny beak worked just fine. Regardless of what it is made from, it takes time and hard work to make foofoo. African wives clean roots and grain thoroughly. Some root pieces have to be soaked several times to remove harmful toxins (things that would make you sick). Then they spread them out to dry, watching to make sure no animals steal them. Then the wives use big sticks (pestles) and large wooden bowls (mortars) to pound the grain or roots into a fine flour. The wives often work together, pounding the sticks in turn, clapping their hands to keep time like a jump rope chant. When the flour is ready they slowly add water until they get the consistency they want. Then they cook it slowly in pots. The foofoo was always delicious, as well as the sauces and stews the wives made.

However, since they had it everyday, the two friends didn’t really appreciate it. One starry evening they ate their supper under a knobby old tree. As usual the foofoo and sauce were perfect, but there was no cinnamon flavored bark for the elephant’s dessert. The elephant turned to his little friend: “Tomorrow we’ll go to a far place on the edge of the grassy plain. Not many big trees grow there. It’s a perfect place to find acacias. “Fine,” replied the songbird, “but let’s take our wives so that they can make foofoo.” “No,” trumpeted the elephant, as he stomped around causing leaves and small branches to shake down from the tree. “I’m tired of bothering with wives! I need a vacation! We’ll have bark and berries and fruit. We can do without foofoo for a few days.” When the two friends had an argument, which wasn’t very often, the elephant usually got his way because he could shout so loud and stomp the ground so hard.

So the next morning they started off and walked all day until they reached a lovely spot with plenty of fruit and acacia trees of just the right size. Soon they gathered all they could eat. The fruit and acacia bark was tasty, but it would have tasted even better if they had had some foofoo too and maybe a nice sauce. The next day the fruit and bark didn’t taste quite as good. It was exactly the same as the day before. Their wives made many different sauces and stews. Also they missed their foofoo. They’d eaten foofoo all their lives, at every meal, and supper didn’t seem right without it. For us it would be like eating a sandwich without bread. Yuk! By the third day they were so tired of food without foofoo, they hardly ate anything. That night they dreamed about platters of foofoo.

In the morning the elephant decided to call their wives. He stomped around and bellowed as loud as he could, “Wives, oh wives!!! Come to us and bring some foofoo!” They waited all day, but the wives never came.  The village was too far away even for the elephant’s great voice to reach. That night they nibbled on some fruit, but they went to bed hungry for foofoo.

The next morning the songbird announced, “Today I’ll call our wives.” The elephant laughed, “If our wives can’t hear me, how can they possibly hear you?” “Nevertheless,” replied the little bird in his gentle way, “I have a right to try too.” “Oh go ahead,” said the elephant. “But don’t blame me if we go hungry again tonight.” They went a bit deeper into the forest until they found a very tall tree. The songbird flew to the first branch, then the next and the next, until he couldn’t see his friend or even the ground. When he finally reached the very top, he perched on a branch and sang his sweetest song.

Two African fish eagles, which closely resemble bald eagles, were flying by. With their keen hearing and even keener eyes, they heard and saw the little bird. This pair had mated recently and were carrying twigs to build a nest. The female eagle dropped down to the tree, and the male eagle followed her. The male thought that they should be on about their business, but they were newlyweds, and if his mate wanted to listen to a songbird, well he would go along, at least for a little while. Because the eagles were carrying twigs for a nest, the songbird sang about how much he missed his wife and their comfortable nest, which he hoped would soon be full of tiny blue eggs. When he finished, the female eagle had tears in her eyes. Then the songbird asked her to use her powerful wings to fly to their little village and ask their wives to come at once, bringing everything they needed to make foofoo. Of course the lady eagle agreed to help. We can only guess what the male eagle thought, but seeing the mist in his mate’s eyes, he wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. It was full of twigs anyway.

The songbird fluttered down and rejoined his friend. They waited all day. The elephant was certain that their wives couldn’t have heard his tiny friend. The elephant had barely heard something, not even enough to make out the words, and he’d been standing right at the bottom of the big tree. Just at sunset the wives arrived. The elephant’s jaw dropped open in amazement. They had even brought some foofoo wrapped in big banana leaves. It wasn’t as fresh as usual, but it still tasted great to the songbird and the elephant. They praised their wives and told them how much they missed them.

Later they sat out under the stars rubbing their full bellies from time to time. Finally the elephant said, “I still don’t understand how our wives heard you and not me.” The little bird laughed, “My friend you have legs like tree trunks and a voice of thunder, but I can sing, and I . . . I have wings!”