The Baboons Who Went This Way and That (3 page)

He arrived at the front of the cave and began to sing his song. As he did so, he had a strange feeling – as if there was somebody watching him. He turned round, but all that he saw was the wind moving through the dry brown grass and a rain bird circling in the sky. He finished the song, and the girl rolled back the rock to let him into the cave.

“I would like you to come and live with your family again,” he said to the girl. “We are sad that you are not with us.”

“I am sorry too,” she replied. “And yet I love this place too much to leave it. Perhaps one day my father will decide to come back here.”

The boy shook his head. He knew that his father would never come back now that he had found that he liked the other place to which he had gone. Soon the memory of this place would fade and the family would talk no more about it.

The boy ate some food with his sister and then left. As he walked away, he again felt that there was somebody watching him, but again he saw nothing but the wind and a small snake that moved like a dark arrow through the dry leaves on the ground.

The man who had driven the family away from that place was a cannibal. Now he had heard the boy singing his special song to his sister in the cave and he had remembered the words. Under a large tree not far away, he practiced the song which the boy sang. His voice, though, was too rough, and he realized that no girl would be fooled into believing that it was the voice of her young brother.

The cannibal had a way to deal with this. He made a fire, and on the fire he put a number of stones. Then, when these stones were red hot, he put them in his mouth and let them lie against that part of his throat that made the sound. After a few minutes he spat out the stones and tried the song again. The stones had done what he had hoped they would do and his voice was now as soft as the boy’s.

Inside the cave, the girl had settled herself to sleep on her sleeping mat when she heard her brother singing outside. It surprised her that he should come back so soon, but then she remembered that he had left a calabash in the cave and might be returning to collect it.

“I am coming, my brother,” the girl sang out. “The rock will move back and let you in.”

By the time that the mouth of the cave was half open, the girl realized that it was not her brother who was standing outside. When she saw the cannibal, her heart gave a leap of fear and she struggled to roll the rock back. The cannibal, though, was too quick and had seized her before she could seal off the cave mouth.

The girl screamed as the cannibal lifted her off the ground and began to tie her arms and legs with a rope he had with him. Then, when she was firmly tied up, he went to a place nearby and began to make a fire so that he
could cook the girl and eat her. As he made the fire, he sang a special song, of the sort that cannibals sing, in which he told of how a poor hungry cannibal had found a fat girl in a cave.

The girl wept with sorrow at the thought of what had happened to her. She wept for her father and mother, whom she would never see again, and she wept for her stupidity in trying to stay in so dangerous a place. Through her tears, she sang a sad song, about how a girl who lived in a cave was captured by a wicked cannibal.

The boy had felt so uneasy on his way home that he had come back to the cave. Now he was hiding in the grass, listening to the sad song of his sister. When he saw the cannibal bending over his fire, the boy rushed forward and pushed him into the flames. The many skins which the cannibal was wearing soon caught fire and he ran wildly away, letting out strange cries as he ran.

The boy untied his sister and then led her back to their father’s new place. That night, the girl told her father of what had happened. He was worried at the thought of the narrow escape that she had had, but he was relieved that she was now safe. He was glad, too, to hear that the cannibal had run away, as this meant that the family could now return to that place where they had been so happy, and where the girl knew they would be happy once again.

A family who lived near a river had good fields. Because they were near the river, there was never any shortage of water, even when other parts of the country were dry and dusty. There was no father in this family – he had gone off to a town and had never come back – and so the mother lived with her five sons and with her own mother and father. Although she sometimes wished that her husband would return, she knew that this would never happen, and so she reminded herself of her good fortune in having such good fields and such brave sons to look after her.

This family ate nothing but pumpkins. From the time when they had first come to that place, they had known that the ground was good for pumpkins. If you planted pumpkin seeds there, in a few months there would be large plants growing across the ground and, a few months after that, there would be great yellow pumpkins ripening in the sun. These pumpkins tasted very good. Their flesh was firm and sweet and would fill even the hungriest stomach. As the boys grew up, the woman saw that pumpkin was undoubtedly the best sort of food for a boy, as her sons were strong and took great pleasure in helping their mother in the fields.

Soon this family was known throughout that part of the country for their good pumpkins. People would walk from a great distance to buy spare pumpkins, and later they would tell their friends just how delicious these pumpkins were. The family planted more pumpkins, and soon they had so many in their fields that they were able to sell almost half of their crop, while keeping the rest for themselves.

One morning, the youngest boy, Sipho, went from the huts to fetch water at the river to water the pumpkins. He did not get as far as the river, though, as what he saw in the fields made him turn straight back. Calling out to his mother, he ran up to her hut and told her what he had seen.

The woman lost no time in running down to the fields. When she reached the first of the fences she let out a wail of sorrow.

“Our pumpkins!” she sobbed. “Who has eaten our pumpkins?”

The other boys and the grandfather were soon in the fields as well. They looked about them and saw that many of the pumpkins had been ripped from their vines and were lying, half-eaten, on the ground. Other pumpkins had been crushed, and the seeds were scattered all over the ground. Every field looked as if it had been a battleground, with the yellow blood of the pumpkins on every stone.

The whole family set to work in clearing up the broken pumpkins. Then, when this was done, they set to repairing the fences which had been broken by whomever had done the damage. That night, the two elder boys crouched in a bush near the furthest field, waiting to see if anything would come back to wreak further havoc.

Many hours passed, but at last they heard a sound. They knew immediately what it was that had done so much damage to their crop. Of course, they were too frightened to move, and had to sit in their bush while the great elephants ate as many pumpkins as they could manage and destroyed many more. Then, when the elephants had walked away, the two boys ran to their home and told their weeping mother what they had seen.

The next day the family discussed what could be done to save their remaining pumpkins.

“There is nothing we can do,” said the grandfather, who was very old and had seen many times the damage that elephants could do. “When elephants come to a place the only thing that people can do is to move somewhere else.”

“But we cannot leave this place,” said the mother. “We cannot leave our beautiful fields and the good water in the river.”

“Then we shall all starve,” said the grandfather. “The elephants will eat all our pumpkins and there shall be none left for us.”

Nobody spoke for a while. They all knew that what the grandfather had said was probably true. Then the oldest boy stood up.

“I know of a way to save our pumpkins,” he said. “It is the only way.”

The other boys looked at him as he spoke. This boy always had the best ideas, but they wondered how even he could deal with such great beasts as elephants.

“We shall put a boy in a pumpkin,” he said. “We shall hollow out the biggest pumpkin that we can find and we shall put a small boy inside. Then, when the elephants come back to the fields, they will be unable to resist such a good-looking pumpkin. The biggest elephant will eat it, and when the boy is inside the elephant’s stomach he can strike at its heart with his knife. That will surely drive the elephants away.”

Everybody agreed that this was the best plan that could be suggested.

“You will have to get inside
the pumpkin,” the oldest boy said to his youngest brother. “You are the smallest.”

The small boy was unhappy about this plan, but since the whole family had agreed on it, he could not refuse to play his part. While the older boys went off to the fields to look for the biggest pumpkin, the mother made a special meal for her youngest son. Then she covered him with fat and gave him some special charms that she had kept for such a time.

The other boys came back to the house with the largest pumpkin that the family had seen that year. They set it on a low rock and cut a hole in its side. Then, with wooden scoops and knives, they took out the pumpkin flesh and put it in a cooking pot. Soon the pumpkin was quite hollow and they were able to push the youngest boy inside it.

It was now getting dark, and so they carried the great pumpkin down to one of the fields and placed it in the middle. No elephant could fail to spot such a delicious-looking pumpkin.

Do not be afraid,” they said to their young brother. “There is nothing that can go wrong with this plan.”

Inside the pumpkin, the small boy stayed quite still. If he moved, he thought it possible that an elephant would become suspicious. He had a long time to wait, and it was cramped inside the pumpkin, but, like all his brothers, this boy was brave.

Some hours passed before he heard the first sounds of the elephants. To begin with there was only a faint rumble, and then the whole earth seemed to shake as the elephants entered the field. The largest of the elephants, who was also their leader, looked about the field as he wondered which pumpkin to eat first. When he saw the big pumpkin in the middle, he knew immediately that that would be the best pumpkin to eat. He went across to it, sniffed at it briefly with his trunk, and then scooped it up into the air and straight into his mouth.

Inside the pumpkin, it seemed to the boy as if the whole world was turning upside down. He felt the hot breath of the elephant as the trunk embraced his pumpkin and then he sensed the sides of the pumpkin squeezing as the vegetable passed down into the great creature’s throat. When the movement stopped, he realized that he was now inside the elephant’s stomach. This was the time for him to cut his way out of the pumpkin and find the elephant’s heart.