This story is about a man named Nenpetro, who has 3 wives.
The husband goes out hunting for dinner and returns with first an antelope,
then a monkey, and then sets out to kill an ox. He kills the ox, but another ox
kills him afterwards. One of the wives has a dream he was killed by an ox, one
leads them to his body, and the other revives him from the dead. The three
wives argue about which one he will want to see first and decide to each cook
him food. He decides to eat the food that the wife who revived him cooked.
This time it is said that Nenpetro only has 2 wives. He has
a child with each of them and agrees to not accept anyone as their husband
unless he can guess their names. One man (Nsassi) shows up years later and asks
to marry the daughters, but is told that he must guess their names. Knowing it
to be impossible, he sets off back home but forgets his dog. The dog hears the
daughter’s names the next day and goes to tell his master, but forgets after
eating a cat. He then returns back and learns the names again, but forgets them
on his journey back home again after drinking some water. The dog ventures back
home for a third time and remembers the name, which he tells his master. The
man returns to Nenpetro and calls his daughters by name, so he is allowed to
marry them.
Two brothers lived in the same town. Swarmi was married and
rich, Buite was single and poor. Buite gets fed up with Swarmi treating him
poorly and moves into the jungle. His first night there he has a dream about a
beautiful girl. He woke up and tried to relive his dream. It works and he
leaves to go fishing and cut the head off at his wifes request, just like in
his dream. When he comes back home a huge palace and a woman that he marries is
in its place. Buite begins to stop cutting the heads off the fish. When the
wife finally sees the head on the fish, the woman and house vanish and he is
left with his brother who hates him even more.
There were two brothers named Mavungu, who was tiny and
miserable, and Luemba, who was handsome. Mavungu was abused by his mother and
ran away into the jungle, where he finds a canoe. He eventually comes across a
tree where when he pulls a leaf off it turns into a man or woman. One woman
becomes his wife and makes him a palace, but tells him to never say where his
good fortunes came from. One day when he returns home to see his family,
Mavunga accidentally explains where his wife came from and everything he had
disappeared.
Yet another man had two wives, each of which had 1 kid. He
left them for 6 months to go trading and told them to never leave the children
alone. They knew he would be coming back soon so took turns going to catch fish
for a meal and watching the two children. The younger wife had a much smarter
child, which made the other wife angry. The older wife tries to kill the child
that is not hers at night, but accidentally kills her own child. The wife
disappears and he husband sets out to find her, when he does he kills her.
Four girls went to go fishing one day, but one of them had
sores all over her body and was not allowed to come by the other sisters. So
Ngomba goes to fish on her own, where she encounters a murderer. This murderer
insists she comes with him, which she does once he promises to cure her sores.
He cures her and takes her home, where he marries her. Ngomba grows homesick
and wants to return home, but isn’t allowed by her husband. She makes a balloon
one day and leaves, when the husband finds out he decides to murder her. She
escapes home and when he goes to find her he is tricked into coming into the
house for dinner, where he is thrown in a hole and killed.
The story has a husband and his wife, who is demanding him
to chop down more pine nuts. He insists that she comes with him, where he cuts
off her limbs. The townspeople learn of his actions, find the husband, and kill
him.
Once again, Nenpetro has two wives, Kengi and Gunga.
Nenpetro gave them each equal land and crops, but one day Gunga steals from
Kengi. They argue but then make peace, until one day when Kengi goes to Gunga’s
plantation and has a child while she is there. Gunga then claims the child to
be her own. Various people uphold this decision and she keeps the child as her
own.
This story is again about the brothers Luemba and Mavungu.
The twins are born almost fully-grown. Mavungu sets out to marry the daughter
of Nzambi, who had refused all of her suitors so far. After a very long
journey, Mavungu arrives and Nzambi’s daughter falls instantly in love with
him. They are escorted into a hut, where the spent the night.. This hut had
many mirrors, each of which showed a reflection of a town. Mavungu’s wife
refuses to let him look into one because whoever adventures there never
returns. Mavungu travels there and meets an old woman. Luemba, missing his
brother, decides to follow him. This leads him to Nzambi’s town, where everyone
thinks he is his brother. He then sees the mirrors and realizes where his
brother has gone. Luemba sees the same old woman and kills her. He then sees
the bones of his brother and his charm revives them, along with all of the
other bones in the city. The brothers then begin to fight about who owns all
the people that were revived. Mavungu kills Luemba, but Luemba’s horse revives
him. Luemba then kills Mavungu and the townspeople agree he did the right
thing.
Once again we have a story about 2 brothers, who are
arguing. The younger brother leaves town out of anger with his wife. They
escape to the woods, where he finds a path that leads to three small huts,
where the man there invites the younger brother to live. The brother and the
owner of the town go hunting and decide that the brother gets the males and the
owner gets the females. The first 5 days a male is caught and the brother
shares nothing with the owner. The next day they go to check their hunting trap
and find the brothers wife. By random chance, the older brother hears voices in
the woods and sees that it’s his younger brother. The older brother tells the
man that he is not in the wrong and that the woman in the trap is now his. This
causes the man to go into the trap, which makes him the younger brother’s. The
man realized he had been tricked and the two brothers return home with the
wife.
One day a leopard bets an antelope his life that if he
hides, the antelope will never find him. The antelope easily finds him and
tells the leopard that he gets his life now, but first the leopard should try
to find the antelope. The leopard cannot find him and then has everyone in his
town help search. There is a dog that appears out of a nut, but each of the
leopard’s 4 wives try to kill it, with the last one succeeding. It then turns
into a beautiful woman who the leopard wants to marry, but the woman says he
must kill all his other wives first. He does this and then the woman has him
remove his claws, teeth, and feet, which he does out of love for her. As the
leopard is dying, the woman turns back into an antelope and therefore has the
leopard’s life.
Nzambi had a daughter who she refused to let marry unless
the man could bring her the heavenly fire from Nzambi Mpungu. A spider accepts
the challenge and webs a silk strand all the way to heaven. He then has a
woodpecker poke a hole through Nzambi Mpungu’s roof, a turtle go down to earth
and retrieve bamboo (as requested by Nzambi Mpungu), a rat sit under a fire (as
requested by Nzambi Mpungu), and a sand-fly to eavesdrop and learn where the
fire is kept. They all return to earth with the fire and all think they deserve
the woman. Rather, Nzmabi gives her to none of them.
A turtle and a man build a town, but have no crops planted.
They build a trap and decide to split it in half. In the turtle’s half, an
antelope is caught. The turtle then has an ox help him carry the antelope and
fetch water, but while the ox is getting leaves to take away his share of the
antelope, the turtle takes the whole thing and goes inside his house. The ox is
angry and goes to destroy the trap, but gets caught in it. The turtle then gets
a leopard to help him with the ox in the same way the ox helped with the
antelope. This time, the leopard destroys the trap and acts as though he has
been caught in it. The turtle falls for the trick and gets eaten by the
leopard, who eats all of the turtle’s meat.
A gazelle and a leopard run a plantation together, but the
gazelle never helps the leopard prepare it or grow the crops or harvest them.
When all of the work is done the gazelle goes to the plantation and has a feast
with all the animals. The leopard sets a trap for the thieves and catches an
antelope, which he kills. This angers the gazelle and he and all of the other
animals gang up and kill the leopard. The gazelle sends the leopard’s head back
to the wife, which she unknowingly eats.
This story was told in first person. Basa was the
storyteller’s great uncle’s twin brother. Basa would catch lots of fish
everyday, but hide them from his family. A fetish then appears to him and tells
him to follow her and leads him into a town. They throw him a feast there and
give him lots of wine, which the fetish poisoned with something that does not
allow Basa to speak anymore, this way he cannot lie.
A rabbit and an antelope dig a well together because there
is a water shortage. The rabbit runs off 3 times to go eat, but tells the
antelope that each time he leaves he has to go name a child of his. He tells
the antelope they are named uncompleted, half-completed, and completed. The
antelope finds out that all the food is gone and that the rabbit ate it, but
says he will do him no harm if he just doesn’t use the well that they made
together. The antelope learns that the rabbit is using the well anyways and
sets out a fake rabbit with sticky material. The next time the rabbit goes to
the well, he sees the dummy but thinks its real. He then begins to attack it
and gets stuck to it and cannot move, then the antelope kills him.
Lifuma is a fetish of a King who had always been on the sea.
The King retires to the coast however, missing his home, Lifuma returns to the
sea to get a jar of salt water. On his way back home, he is attacked by the
fetish Chimpukela, who takes his jar of water and the posessions he took from
the beach. Lifuma then curses everything related to the beach, so Chimpukela’s
land no longer has water or a beach.
A fetish named Boio has the voice of a bird. The
storyteller’s sister is in the woods one day and hears the voice of a bird.
Jokingly, she tells it to be quiet and then finds herself tied up. The
storyteller then found his sister in this position and went to the princess who
owned the fetish, who then freed his sister. Another day the fetish was being
carried in an invisible hammock and some passersby started making fun of the
men carrying the hammock, then found themselves tied up. Another time someone
was skeptical of the fetish’s ability to make offerings disappear. He sets down
presents and they disappear.
A man who had many wives could not find a way to make them
work. The man finds a leopard and cuts him some pine nuts and then the leopard
agrees to catch him food in exchange for cutting no-one pine nuts except the
leopard. The man makes the same deal with a crocodile. The leopard and the
crocodile each want the man to give him a dog, but neither has ever seen one. Knowing
this, the man sends them both to the same spot and tells them they will each
see a dog there. The animals go to the spot and kill each other, thinking that
each other is a dog.
A crocodile noticed a hen coming to his water everyday to
get food. He goes to eat her but then she calls him brother, which throws him
off. He eventually asks a lizard why he is called brother and the lizard
explains that it is because they all lay eggs in the water, so all come from
the same place and are brothers. Therefore the crocodile does not eat the hen.
KaCongo and his mother lived with their family and did not
know how to plant. A woman then brings three babies to them and KaCongo does
not know what to do with them. The three babies are left in the grass, but grow
up to be strong blacksmiths and carpenters. They all get wives and together
have their own town. A man (who is the father of the brothers) walking one day
hears voices and rushes home to tell his wife. The wife then sets out to find
them but collapses from exhaustion. The brothers find her and take them back to
their home.
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