African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 596
sky to retreat and to become, in the process and in the telling, less fearsome and less
awesome.
The belief in a sky god, or Waaq, is common to the Cushitic groups in the Horn of
Africa. These include the Oromos and the Somalis. The notion of God’s retreat from the
world, however, is also found among the Dinka of the Sudan, who also blame women for
the retreat. To finalize the withdrawal, the finch is sent by God to sever “the rope that still
linked Heaven and Earth, thus ending the complete happiness that had prevailed and
turning man into a suffering and mortal being” (Deng 1972, 62). A Somali proverb,
mostly used by women, anticipates the blame: “All that is bad, belongs to Hawa (Eve).”
After the myth and the age of gods comes the age of heroes, of people who are larger
than life; their exploits become the plots of legends. This is the age of poetry, the age of
epics and of metaphorical tropes and modes of expression. This age has given us the Iliad
and the Odyssey. Similarly, it brings us a story from the Borana of Ethiopia. Thus begins
one of many stories of Dido Gawole, the strong man (Kidane 2002, 140):
Dido Gawole was strong. One cannot find a brave and strong man like
him. Wise too he was. At that time the Borana were fighting the Arsi.
They used to fight with shield and spear. In battle even fifty men couldn’t
be a match for him. He was full-hearted. When he fought, if he missed
with his lance, he struck and killed with his shield. Such was the man
Dido Gawole.
Finally, the age of men arrives. This is the age in which we understand ourselves to have
a history and to want to tell the story of that history. This is the age in which we
understand ourselves to have a society we want our children to join and a past that we
want them to appreciate. Our stories begin to have different meanings and different
purposes. Now come stories for their own sakes, stories for amusement, stories for
edification, stories to make children laugh and to frighten them into not disobeying their
parents or straying from home. And stories for adults, too: stories of wisdom that act as
guideposts by which to live a life.
Folklore in the Horn of Africa, as elsewhere, helps humans to come to terms with
ontological and etiological issues. Cattle are important to the psychological, social, and
economic fabric of the Dinka. A Dinka myth accounts for the troubles caused to people
by their need to own and defend cattle. The cow is said to have the last laugh, forever.
Since the Dinka killed the mother of the cow, the cow has perfected the best revenge on
man. It opted “to fight man within man’s own system: to be domesticated to make man
slave for her; to play man off against man; and to cause him to fight and kill for
ownership, possession, or protection of her” (Deng 1972, 2).
Not all encounters between humans and animals are violent. The folklore of the region
is replete with tales that emphasize the connections between the two. There is always
some kind of debt that is due to the animal kingdom. Some animal or another is
implicated in the proliferation of a group. The animal becomes the group’s guardian and,
by extension, its totem. The dispersal of the Nuer in the Sudan is, for example, attributed
to a blue heron. Latjor, a Nuer chief, led his people to new places: “In their search for a
new land, the band, without boats, came across the Nile. A blue heron in the midst of the
river gave Latjor the idea to wade through the water” (Huffman 1970, 2).