Reading Notes, Nigeria, Part B

I noticed that in this collection of stories, they all are organized the same. They are all basically why an animal does something. That's not necessarily a bad thing it just gets boring to read after a while. So my favorite story in this second part was The Election of the King Bird. In this story there was a wealthy powerful King. This king, although wealthy did not own any slaves and instead called upon animals to do the work he needed. To do this efficiently he crowed head chiefs of each species. Elephant for land, Hippo for water and when it became time to crown the air chief, he didn't know which bird species to choose. So he held a contest. The birds competed against one another, until finally all agreed that the fishing eagle should be the king of the skies.

(African Fish Eagle, Arturo de Frias Marques)

Reading Notes, Nigeria, Part A

Last week I chose to read Asian folklore's so this week I chose African folklore's. My favorite story in this part was Why the Bat Flies by Night. A bat and a bush rat were really good friends and always ate together but the bat was jealous of the rat. When asked how the soup they ate (that the bat cooked) was so good, the bat said that he boiled himself in the water and the sweetness of his flesh added to the soup. The bat jumped in a pot of warm water to show the bush rat. The rat then went home and told his wife he knew how to make the best soup. And so he boiled water and jumped in it and died. The wife grew angry at the bat and reported him to the king, who gave orders that the bat should be a prisoner. The bat escaped and to keep from being captured had to change his habits so that he slept during the day, and hunted during the night. I think it would be cool to retell this story as like a front page headline in a newspaper.

(Why the Bat Flies by Night, Christie Allen)

Bibliography: "Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria" by Elphinstone Dayrell link to reading