WBC Story Telling #2Wakame na Warugwe

Now there are different stories/ tales from the animal kingdom that are always told to young ones. In the beginning, Animals were friends and used to stay with each other till there was conflict and that is why they don’t see eye to eye. Wakame is the Hare also known as Ichuli in some tales. Warugwe is the leopard.

Now the Hare and Leopard were great friends and stayed together and then famine struck. It was so bad that they were almost starving. So the Hare told the leopard,” why don’t we get rid of our mothers since they are eating food and not being productive”. The Leopard welcomed the idea and they devised means to get rid of their mothers by drowning them. Leopard tied up the mother with stones and drowned it, the Hare on the other hand tied up the mother with grass( hay) and both left the well.

But the Hare went back to find the mother floating around because of the hay and Leopard’s mum had ultimately sank and died. He untied her and took her to a cave and secured her. He would always go back without Leopard’s knowledge and eat food prepared by the mum. The famine ravaged on and Leopard was starving but Mr Hare seemed fine and healthy. Leopard wondered and asked Hare,” You look so good, what are you eating?” Mr Hare replied, “I eat cow dung(they had a cow). Leopard tried the cow dung and it was sour and disgusting. Then he said to himself,Hare must be up to something, will secretly follow him tomorrow. And secretly, Leopard followed him and saw him heading to the cave. To his shock he saw Hare having food with the mother. Enraged,he made a plan,he went and killed the mother of Hare. When Hare went back to the cave,he found the mother dead and knew who had killed her. He kept quiet and planned to revenge. He said to Leopard, “why don’t we slaughter our only cow since we are dying of hunger, you will do the fetching of firewood and I will do the roasting”. Leopard was very happy, for once his friend had come up with a good plan and off he went to collect firewood. Hare had collected a small round stone which he put in the fire and it reddened due to the fire,he put the fat around the stone and it was dripping with fat. Then Hare told Leopard,”You must be tired, I have something for you as our meat gets ready”. Then went ahead and gave him the stone/fat to swallow. On putting it in the mouth, he realized that it was hot and said, Mire, mire omuriro nchwere, nchwere obunuzi.(If I swallow, I will swallow fire but if I spit then I will be spitting out sweet food) so with that dilemma, the leopard swallowed the hot stone and died. Now these are stories for ten year old children and below because they don’t require intuition. So you end up telling them why Leopard and Hare don’t see eye to eye.