Alena Kiri came to her son and gave him the talisman. ‘You must use this,’ she said. Ngurangurane took up the talisman and summoned the lightning. He ordered the lightning to strike Ombure, and by the power of the talisman the lightning was forced to obey. The bolt fell from heaven and struck the crocodile between the eyes. The crocodile grunted and died.
Ngurangurane then used the skin of the crocodile to make the first boat known to the Fang. But because he was also the son of the crocodile whom he had slain, he instituted a cult of the crocodile. All the people ate the flesh of the great beast, and then they mourned him as a kinsman. In this way, the spirit of Ombure was checked, for although it wandered the village seeking a human on whom to take revenge, all the humans were now flesh of his flesh and immune to him.
42
JEKI LA NJAMBE OF THE DUALA
The Duala are a coastal people of Cameroon, and for centuries now they have gained their living mainly as trading middlemen between the Europeans and the peoples of the interior. The story of Jeki has been preserved as a performance tradition, and may well reflect the survival of cultural elements dating back to a period before the development of trade. The world of Jeki is a world of hunters and fishers living among the lagoons and waterways of coastal Cameroon, and his story is kin to the tales of other forest-dwelling foraging groups (as, for instance, the story of Lianja of the Mongo, Chapter 31, or the stories about the BaNyanga child-hero Mwindo). The Duala admit that they do not really understand the story of Jeki nowadays, but they continue to perform it. This version is retold from editions made by Cameroonian scholars around 1990.
There was a man named Inono Njambe. He had many wives and children, but he gave himself up to the practice of sorcery and began to sacrifice his children and then his wives to gain power. Finally, he only had one child left, known as Njambe Inono, and the people who lived around him felt he had gone too far. They assembled and broke in on Inono Njambe; they tied him up and buried him to the waist in the ground and then they beat him with palm fronds and hurled palm nuts at him until he swore that he would give up his sorceries and let his one son live. Then the people released him. He did not live long after that, but he passed on his knowledge to his son.
His son, Njambe Inono, married. But after a while he was tempted by his father’s secrets and occult power, and people began to disappear from his compound. When his neighbours realized this they came to him and reproached him for following the evil path laid out by his father. Rather than kill him, they placed Njambe Inono and his wife in a huge canoe and sent them over the waters.
At last they came to land, and Njambe established his settlement. He planted a palm tree that grew quickly to an enormous height, and on the tree he placed a great bird. Into the waters he released a crocodile, and in the centre of his compound he placed a chest in which he kept a powerful leopard. These creatures provided magical protection to the compound.
He and his wife Ngrijo had a child, a daughter. Ngrijo would take the child with her when she went to work in the fields, and one day as the baby was crawling in the shade near the edge of the forest a chimpanzee came down from the trees and began to play with it. At first the mother was alarmed, but the chimpanzee talked to her and reassured her, and after that the play became a daily occurrence. When Njambe heard of this arrangement he disapproved and at first prepared to hunt the chimpanzee. But he and the chimpanzee also talked. The chimpanzee showed him where to find shrimp in the nearby ponds, and so Njambe agreed not to hunt him.
Years passed. Ngrijo went to work in her fields; she took her daughter and the chimpanzee watched over the child as the mother worked. The girl became nubile, and one day the chimpanzee took her away. The mother finished her work in the fields and came looking for her daughter; she found no sign of her. She called and walked a little way into the forest, thinking the pair had hidden themselves in some game, but no answer came to her cries. She ran back and forth, and finally made her way home to give the news of their daughter’s disappearance to her husband. Njambe went immediately into the forest and summoned the chimpanzee, and it swung through the branches into a tall tree above him.
‘Where is my daughter?’ demanded Njambe.
‘I have taken her,’ said the chimpanzee. ‘I have shown you and your wife where to find food. For years I have helped your wife at her work, minding the child while she was in the fields. Have you ever returned my kindnesses? Have you left me fruit or food? Have you offered me anything? No. And so I have taken your daughter. She will live with us, among the spirits of the forest.’ With those words the chimpanzee vanished into the foliage of the high tree, and Njambe was left alone to return to his home.
Njambe and Ngrijo did not get on after that, and Njambe took many other wives. After some time, all his wives became pregnant. A year later, there were eight baby sons crawling around in the compound yard; Ngrijo alone had not given birth, although her belly showed signs of swelling. More time passed, and another group of sons were born. Still Ngrijo did not give birth, although her belly was now quite round and she had trouble moving about. Njambe told her she must leave the compound, since she alone had no child, and she moved into a shabby hut near the water’s edge.
More years passed, and Njambe’s compound was filled with sons of all ages crawling, toddling, walking, running and playing around their mothers’ cooking pots and household items. Still Ngrijo did not give birth; she made her painful way through the bushes, her vastly protruding belly parting the branches well ahead of her arms, and she stumbled about her tasks.
Finally, one day when she went out to cut some firewood, a voice spoke to her.
‘Mother, let me out!’ called the voice. ‘Let me out, and I shall help you.’
After the voice had repeated the call several times, Ngrijo lay back against a tree-trunk and spread her legs. Somewhere beyond her belly a child appeared and grew immediately to the size of a great adult.
‘Wait there, mother,’ said the child, and set about chopping and stacking the wood. Then it vanished back into her belly, and she painfully rose and made her way back to her hut. When she got there, she found she had a huge supply of firewood, neatly cut and stacked by the side of the hut. After that, as she went about her work the child would emerge and help her. But it refused to admit it had been born, and she was not allowed to see him or to cut his umbilical cord.
One day, the child showed itself to all the family. Ngrijo and her co-wives had gone out over the tidal flats to catch the shrimp that swarmed in the remaining pools, and they were returning to the shore with their baskets full of the shrimp, but looking anxiously back at the returning waters.
‘Stop, Mother,’ called the child. ‘Let me out here over the waters.’
‘No,’ objected Ngrijo. ‘The tide is coming in, we shall be trapped and drowned.’
‘Mother, I shall help you. But you must let me out on the waters!’ insisted the child, and so Ngrijo lay back and parted her legs. The child emerged and quickly grew up.
The co-wives were watching from the sands closer to the shore. Seeing the child appear beyond Ngrijo, they dropped their baskets of shrimp and fled in amazement and terror.
The child transported his mother and her baskets to the shore, over the waters which had now flooded the sand-flats. Ngrijo found herself at her hut, surrounded by bulging baskets of shrimp to clean and dry. And to their surprise, her co-wives also found that the baskets which they had dropped on the sand-flats as they fled were standing before the doors of their individual huts in the compound, each as full of shrimp as it had been when they started on their way back.
Soon after that, Jeki announced to his mother that the time had come for him to be born. With a sigh of relief his mother spread a cloth over the ground and then lay back and went into labour. Out of her vast swollen belly poured an avalanche of goods: trade-goods such as cloths of all kinds, bottles and containers, chests and ingots of metal. Then came musical instruments, and tools, and magical implements s
uch as bells and charms. Principal among these was Ngalo, the amulet which would serve Jeki in his adventures. Out came the huge canoe which Jeki would use to travel over the waters, and with it a nine-pointed paddle. Then there was a pause.
‘Mother, mother!’ called Jeki. ‘You must move. I cannot be born over the cloth. You must move to the dumping ground for broken bottles and potsherds!’ Ngrijo stood and moved herself so that she squatted over the broken pieces of glass and pots. There Jeki was born, he came out. Ngrijo cut the umbilical cord, and Jeki transported the enormous pile of goods to her hut.
Njambe’s hostility towards Ngrijo carried over to his new son, and was aggravated by the reports of the oddities involved in Jeki’s birth and his care for Njambe’s estranged wife. This hostility was the cause of Jeki’s earliest adventures.
One day, Njambe’s two oldest sons by other wives came to summon Jeki. Their father wished to test the abilities of the latest addition to the family. Jeki should come immediately to his father’s compound. When he arrived, Jeki found all the other children sitting in a great circle in the courtyard. At the centre was a wooden chest, such as was used for trade-goods. Near it sat Njambe.
‘Come, Jeki,’ said Njambe. ‘You must show us your abilities. Tell me what is contained within this wooden chest. If you fail, the children shall beat you.’
‘Ah,’ said Jeki. ‘I see. This is an opportunity for my brothers, who hate me, to do me harm. But you are my father and I must obey you. Let me see.’ Jeki walked around the chest, looking at it from all sides. ‘I think it must contain cloth,’ he said, and Njambe snorted.
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Njambe. ‘Children, beat him!’ Immediately, all Jeki’s siblings fell on him and beat Jeki with their hands and with palm-frond whisks and bits of vine until his skin glowed lividly.
‘It is not cloth,’ said Jeki. ‘Might it be copper ingots?’
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Njambe, and again the children fell on Jeki and beat him until he lay apparently unconscious, gasping on the ground.
‘It is not copper,’ said Jeki, and he looked around at the children and then at his father, and saw that all of them were ready to beat him to death if he gave them the slightest cause. The time had come to end this game, for Jeki had learned what he wished to know: how badly they disliked him.
‘I will tell you, as I might have done at first,’ said Jeki. ‘I wished to learn the truth of your feelings towards me, and you have shown them. The chest contains a single louse which you plucked from your head this morning. You may not know it, but the louse is female.’
At that Njambe sat silent, for Jeki had correctly identified the contents of the chest. His trap had failed, and Jeki had won this round.
A first failure did not stop Njambe. It increased the threat represented by this preternatural son, and so he decided he must use more serious measures. One day, the two oldest sons came to Ngrijo’s hut by the waters and announced that Njambe required Jeki for a task.
‘Ah!’ cried Ngrijo. ‘He will try to kill you. You must flee!’
‘No,’ answered Jeki. ‘He cannot harm me. I shall obey him.’
Jeki accompanied his brothers to Njambe’s compound, and there his father sat waiting.
‘Come, Jeki,’ said Njambe. ‘I have a small job for you, for we cannot abide idle hands here. There is an old chest in my hut, and I wish to sell it. You must clean it for me, you must scour it inside and out and polish the wood and metal so that it gleams. Go and fetch it.’
This was of course the chest in which Njambe had enclosed a leopard when he first arrived at his homestead. Jeki entered the hut, and then he raised Ngalo, the amulet which he kept hanging on his neck. ‘What shall I do?’ he asked, and Ngalo replied, ‘Carry the chest down to the waters and wash it there.’
‘I see,’ replied Jeki, and immediately he lifted the chest onto his shoulders and made his way down to the edge of the waters, followed secretly by his brothers who wished to see the end of this horrible child.
Jeki did not stop at the water’s edge. He waded out until the water came to his hips and then he plunged the chest into the water and climbed on top of it. He scrubbed the top, then he turned it and scrubbed the sides, and finally he scrubbed the bottom.
‘I think I can open it now,’ he said, and Ngalo agreed. He opened the chest, and there within it was one large leopard which had drowned, and several small ones which also had drowned in the waters. ‘Hmm,’ said Jeki. ‘My father is careless with his animals.’ And he took the chest and its contents back to the shore so he could scrub the interior more easily. Then he carried the chest back to his father, still sitting in his compound and now looking older and weaker. The two sons who had followed Jeki had told him what happened at the waterside.
Njambe tried again. Two boys went and summoned Jeki. His father wished him to run an errand. Jeki listened to his half-brothers and then followed them. In the compound his father sat waiting.
‘Jeki,’ he said, ‘out in the waters there’ – and Njambe gestured towards the ocean – ‘lives a great crocodile. You must bring it here.’
Jeki returned to his mother’s hut by the waters and brought out his great canoe and the nine-pointed paddle. He launched the boat all by himself, pushing it through the sands into the water and then leaping into the stern. As soon as his paddle touched the water, the canoe sped out over the waves.
‘Ngalo, what does this task mean?’ asked Jeki, and from his neck the amulet replied, ‘It is another trap that your father has set. He wishes to see you killed. But you can succeed. Just be polite.’
Jeki thought over the amulet’s words, and dipped the paddle into the waters so that the canoe ran even faster. Soon he saw something at the horizon; he drew nearer and found himself facing a great green scaly cliff. ‘What is this?’ he asked himself, and immediately continued, ‘It is the side of the crocodile. I must find its head.’ So he turned the canoe and proceeded until he made out the brow and the eyes of the crocodile. It seemed large enough to eat a village in one gulp.
‘Uncle!’ called Jeki, and the crocodile opened its eyes and slowly turned its snout towards the canoe, creating whirlpools and waves as it did so.
‘Who calls me?’ asked the crocodile.
‘It is I, Jeki, son of Njambe,’ answered Jeki, ‘and my father has sent me to you. They wish to hold a council in the village, and they require the great wisdom which you have gained over the years, living so long in the great waters.’
‘Indeed,’ said the crocodile, pleased. ‘It would hardly be a council without me. They do need me. It is good to know that Njambe has not forgotten my powers. I shall come. You shall lead the way.’
Jeki turned his canoe towards the shore where his father’s compound lay and advanced slowly. He paddled with long slow strokes, sending the waters behind him back against the crocodile’s great snout, and as he paddled he and Ngalo sang songs of power, so that the water washing against the crocodile delivered the magic and brought the enormous beast under Jeki’s control. By the time they reached the shore, Jeki had mastered the crocodile.
‘Do not stop at the shore,’ advised Ngalo. ‘Bring the crocodile into the village.’ So Jeki created a great wave that bore the crocodile over the beach and in among the houses. Then the waters receded and the crocodile lay, almost helpless with its great weight, among all the houses. But it was not quite helpless; it could move and bite, and it did so readily. Snap! and a house vanished. Snap! and goats that had come too close disappeared. The crocodile writhed, and its tail knocked down several houses.
‘Father!’ called Jeki, ‘I have brought your crocodile. What shall we do with it?’
‘Send it back! Send it back!’ cried Njambe. ‘See! It is eating our goats, it is eating my wives and children and my people! It is breaking our houses! Send it to the waters!’
So Jeki summoned another great wave which lifted the crocodile out of the village and turned it about so that it faced the waters, and then Jeki sent the crocodile on its
way into the great waters. This was the second of the creatures that his father had placed about his compound when he first settled in that land.
Some time later, the two older brothers again came to Ngrijo’s hut. ‘Father wants Jeki for another task,’ they announced, and knowing what the previous tasks had been, Ngrijo began to lament at the dangers facing her son.
‘Do not worry, Mother,’ said Jeki. ‘I can face any challenge my father puts. I shall return to you.’ Then he followed his brothers to his father’s compound.
‘Jeki,’ said Njambe, ‘do you see that tall palm tree?’ He pointed to the tree he had planted so many years before, and on which he had placed a great bird. ‘Notice how thick the clusters of palm nuts are beneath the fronds. I wish you to climb the tree and harvest them. This task is long overdue.’
‘Ah!’ said Jeki, for he knew that above the fronds was the great Kambo bird which his father had placed there, and that the reason the palm nuts grew so thick was that no one could harvest them: the Kambo bird would skewer them with its long beak or fly down and rip them off the tree with its talons. But he would not allow Njambe to defeat him, and he was sure he could master the bird. ‘Very well, Father,’ he answered. ‘I shall harvest the palm nuts.’
‘Do so,’ said Njambe. ‘I am going into the village, to the men’s hut.’
As soon as he was out of the compound, Jeki rounded up his brothers. ‘Come,’ he called them. ‘Father has told us to harvest palm nuts, and so let us get to work.’ The brothers assembled at the foot of the great palm tree, staring up at the fronds which hid the huge bird.
‘Father said you alone should do this!’ protested the older brothers.
‘And I say you shall help me!’ answered Jeki. ‘If you do not, you shall die.’ He waved Ngalo over his brothers and they were cowed. They did not dare to disobey. The eldest shuffled up to the tree and tied the climbing-strap around the trunk. He stepped into the loop and pulled it round his waist. He shifted the cord higher on the trunk, and then stepped up, planting his feet firmly against the bark. Again he shifted the cord, again he moved his feet up. But when he was halfway up the tree, the Kambo bird leaned out over the fronds and saw him. Like a flash, the beak darted down and pierced the boy. With a twist of its beak, the bird gutted the boy and the empty carcass fell to the ground by the tree.
African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics) Page 28
