Ethiopian folk stories, #3 30 June, 2008

The concluding episode of our short series of Ethiopian tales, as collected during my week with the family of a man called Ayele, in southern Ethiopia.

It’s worth remembering that Aesop’s fables all (or mostly) came out of Africa, and there is a clear resonance of those stories in these ones – the animal basis, the interaction of the storyteller with those hearing the tale, and the desire to pass on some kind of message that is useful for daily life. But it’s the choice of the message that is intriguing here – fatalistic rather than optimistic, suggesting steadfastness in the face of adversity rather than high morals and clever attempts to get out of difficulties.

I’ll follow this story up with some proverbs that the family passed on to me, too.

The brave goat

The she-goat produced many kids, but was sad when her owners took them all off to market to be sold for food. So she decided to leave the house, and set up home on her own. She stole the householder’s best knife and left. In due time, she had three little kids of whom she was very proud.

Ethiopian folk stories, #2 25 June, 2008

Continuing this short series of stories I picked up in southern Ethiopia, in a village called Molle Kebele, 5km from the town of Boreda. Ayele’s family speak Gamo (related to the larger language group Wollaayita).

Here are two stories, again reflecting the twist that the culture puts on the morals of its tales that sound slightly unusual to a western ear trained to listen out for ‘positive’ morals.  And for those who liked the zebra story last time, the second of these is an animal fable once again.

The story of the four old friends

Four old friends went into the forest to collect fruit from high trees.

The first was asked to get the fruit by climbing up and dropping it down. He refused: “I’m scared of heights,” he said.

Ethiopian folk stories, #1 20 June, 2008

The current food crisis in Ethiopia reminds me of the last one, in 2000, when I spent several months based in Addis Ababa and travelling to more remote locations in this large, wild, mountains country. Hardest among them was Gode, in the eastern Somali region, reputed to be one of the two hottest places on earth in which people live all year round. Food security is always tenuous here, and a season of failed rain means the livestock on which the ethnic Somalis depend may die.

At the end of this period I spent a week in the south of the country with a family of coffee-growing subsistence farmers. This was to research a social studies curriculum for New Zealand schools; World Vision were planning an internet, video and audio series to go along with the curriculum. The idea, refreshing after all the coverage of the drought and food shortages, was to tell the story of ‘ordinary’ Ethiopians and how they feed their family.

During my stay I asked the children of the family, with help from their mum, to tell me their favourite folk stories and proverbs. The results are interesting – these are often quite pessimistic tales, even by the standards of the often grim Grimm brothers. The endings don’t quite work out the way a Western ear expects them to.

I’ll give you one today, and add some more later. Instead of starting ‘Once upon a time’, the storytelling formula starts with the storyteller asserting, “The story is true” (‘Hayse hanes‘). To which the audience responds cautiously, “It could be true,” (‘Haniko hanes’).

The story of the two zebra children

A zebra mother and father lived with their two children, a boy zebra and a girl zebra. As these things happen, the mother and father zebra died, leaving the two children to live in the home alone.