Melvin Burgess

Writer

The Boy Who Cried Croc

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This story was told to me by Madou, who worked in save the children’s offices in central Kinshasa. She told me her children loved this story and that they will always willing to find a lesson in a story.

Many years ago, I remember reading an article arguing that black Africa had a far greater influence on Western Culture than was at that time usually thought, via ancient Egypt. One of the themes was that the fables attributed to Aesop originated in central Africa. Anyone who has followed these stories  will be familiar to the themes common to both these African and our own European folk tales, and the odd way they sometimes surface. In this case though, you’ll know the story just from reading the title. There have been many comings and goings over the years between Africa and Europe, and where this story began – that’s anyone’s guess. But I include it here for the sheer fun of hearing a story we all know from a land in which wolves are unknown.

Never Cry Croc

One day there lived a family with 4 children, 3 girls and one boy. All the children were good except one – you guessed it was the boy. But he wasn’t just unruly – he was also funny. He wanted to spend the whole day playing jokes on people.

One day the boy was sent to get water from a river that was full of crocodiles. After he had collected his water he put the pots safety on the back. Then he started to call out at the top of his voice, “Help! Help! The crocodiles! The crocodiles!”

When they heard his screams, everyone was in a panic. They all came running as fast as they could down to the river bank to help him. When they got there they found him laughing his head off. He’d fooled them all! He thought he was hilarious.

Of course everyone was very cross. “You called us was nothing. You interrupted our work for nothing. You stupid, bad boy.”

Another day the boy was given the same job to go down to the river to collect water. This time though he really was caught by the leg by a crocodile. He pulled all he could and yelled and screamed – “Help! Help! The crocodile the crocodile!”

Everyone in the village heard, and rolled their eyes. “Yeah yeah yeah,” they said. “He does that all the times. Take no notice.” When his screams got really loud and panicky, they all shook their heads. He doesn’t give up, that boy, does he? But he’s not fooling us twice!”

No one realised that they were really listening to the boy being attacked and then eaten by a huge crocodile, until they went down to the riverbank later on and found nothing but a pile of clothes and some bloodied mud.

And what is the moral of the story? Simple: you must never lie. You must always tell the truth. Even when you want to make a joke.

This is the last story fro Kinshasa. The next post will be from Samba, a village almost exactly on the equator in the DRC.

Or … and this is my version of the moral because who wants to live in a word with no jokers and no jokes … don’t make practical jokes about dangerous things – they really aren’t funny!

Short Parents

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A short father and a short mother gave birth to 4 tall children. But these children weren’t just tall – they were vain. When they got old enough to think for themselves, they looked down their noses at their parents and said, “These people cannot be our parents. We are too big to have come from such little things.”

So they left their parents and went to ask King to provide them with a new set. They knew he would never give them new parents if he knew they already had some, no matter how short they were; so they lied, and told him that they were orphans.

You should know that these children were planning on making a living by baking.

The King listened carefully, and then he said; “I will give you parents. But in return you must give me 2 sacks of charcoal. But this charcoal must not come from wood. You must make it out of pure fire.”

The tall children have no idea how to do this, so they went back to ask their short parents for advice. Of course, they did not want to tell them how they were trying to get new parents, more befitting to their tall stature; so they lied again, and told them they went to the King only to ask for food.

“We asked him nicely, but he told us to make some charcoal from nothing but fire! How do we do it?”

Of course the parents wanted to help their children, so they agreed.” Okay. Go back and tell him that the charcoal is cooking, but that in order to prepare it properly you need to have jars filled with the King’s tears.”

They went back to the king and did as their parents had asked. The King said, “I have no tears. But I now know you have not been telling the truth. You are being too clever. Someone must have told you to play this trick. The only people who would help you in this way must be your parents.”

And so the tall children had to go back and live with their short parents.

So what is the lesson of this story? Whether they are rich or poor, or tall or short ot strong or weak, you must love your parents as they are. They are irreplaceable in your life. You can search the whole world but you will never find anyone else who will be parents for you.

That’s the story. Not a good moral if you happen to be an orphan, or loose your parents through no fault of your own. Not always true either. In Kinshasa I met several children who’s parents had left them to live on the streets, who were later adopted by brothers or other relatives – see the story of Nono earlier in this blog.

Many of the organisations that help the street children of Kinshasa reunite with their families are funded by Save the Children.  Evarista Kalumuna who told me this story used to work for Save the children and he, like me, would be delighted if you were return the favour. If you’ve spent the time to read this, please spare a little more; return the favour with a small contribution. You can help Save the Children continue their important work by clicking here.

Kubangwa

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At the end of my visit to Kinshasa last year, I was taken to visit a friend of the director of Save the Children – Mr  Evarista Kalumuna. Everista, like me, is a lover of stories and those that follow were told by him, sitting in a conservatory in the suburbs of Kindhsasa while the rain fell around us. Very nice!

These stories are a little different from the ones I’ve posted here so far, all of which were told to me by street children – kids outside of family life. These stories are, as you’ll see, more complete – not so much in the tales themselves, but in the way they are told. More specifically, in the way they are ended.

They were told to Everista by his father and, and to his father by his grandfather – a true oral tradition. As you will see, they have a great deal in common with the Aesop, in that each one ends with a discussion of the morals to be gleaned from the narrative – although they are considerably more sophisticated than anything in Aesop, I think. I suspect that originally, many of the stories the street children told me would have ended with a similar discussion. Few of these Congolese stories have a “proper” ending as we might understand it in Europe – a satisfying tying up of loose ends and a clean finish. Perhaps that’s because they were never designed to be told like that in the first place. Instead, a place for discussion is left at the end, where the listeners can try to work out the morals to be gleaned from the tale.

I can’t help wondering if traditionally, all the stories would end up with a discussion of the action, without which each tale is often a little incomplete.

Evening in Kinshasa

The 1st story  is called …

Kubangwa.

There was a king who owned many dogs. He loved them all. Every day when he came to the table to eat, he called the his dogs to him so that he could give them tit bits and pet them and have them share his food. He loved all dogs, but there was one dog he loved more than all the others – Kubangwa.

Now the Queen, the favourite wife of the King, was nine months pregnant and likely to give birth any day. But she was feeling restless and wanted to be busy and useful, so she called a servant to her, and took him with her into the bush to collect firewood. She took the dog Kubangwa along with her as well.

They soon collected plenty of  wood, but of course the Queen was too heavy with child to carry the wood herself. Instead, she piled it all onto the backs of the servant and the dog. More and more wood … higher and higher she packed them up, until they both groaned under the weight. Kubangwa was a loyal dog, he wanted to please, he was big and strong …. But he was getting old. It was a a hot day, the Queen kept piling up more and more wood on his back. At last the weight was too much. With a groan, the dog collapsed.

The Queen and the servant knew exactly how furious the King would be if his favourite dog didn’t come running for tit bits from his plate that evening, so they both did everything they could do save him; but it was too late. Kubangwa was already dead.

So when the evening came and the King called his dogs to him, one of them did not come …

The King ordered the palace and all the grounds to be searched. The search went on half the night, but there was no sign of the dog. He was an old dog – but not that old, and in full health. The King quickly came to the conclusion that someone had killed his favourite.

He called all his people to a meeting and asked each one of them, who had killed his dog. No one admitted it.

The King was furious, certain that someone had killed his favourite dog. So he devised a test to make the culprit tell the truth and swore that every single person in the land would have to submit to that test, no matter how old or how young they were, or if they were strong or weak, well or sick, no matter if they had lived in his country only a few days or for a lifetime. Even if they were from his own family, every single person would have to go through with it.

This is the test he devised.

There was a river on his land, running fast and deep through a gorge. The King ordered a rope to be attached from one side of this river to the other, high above the water, high above the foaming, rock studded rapids below. He made each of his people cross from one side to the other, swinging by their arms. As they went, they had to call out aloud, “If I killed Kubangwa, I want to fall in the river and drown.”

Starting with the poorest and going up to the most important and wealthy, the King made every single one of his subjects cross the river in this way. When they had all passed the test, just to show how serious he was, he made his own family do it, one after the other. First his youngest children were forced across the water. They cried and wailed, and their mothers begged, but the King would not be moved. Then the elder children had to cross. After them, it was the turn of the wives to go, starting with the least of them and working up to the most important. Finally, because he had come this far and would not back down, he made his favourite wife perform the test, even though she was nine months pregnant. She begged to let off for the sake of their child, but the King was on a point of pride; No; she must go as well. As a concession though, he allowed her take a servant with her – the same servant who had been with her in the woods.

The two set off across the rope together. They held on as well as they could, calling out, “If I killed Kubangwa, I want to fall in the river and drown.” But at last it was too much, and one after the other, first the servant, then the queen, fell into the raging river below. The King was horrified – he had not expected this. But he had publicly said that whoever killed his dog should be left to die in the water. As the King he felt he had to be true to his word, and now he was going to loose his favourite wife as well as his favourite dog. All he had to die was issue the command, but he would not. He was the King – his word could not be bent. The servant hit the rocks and was killed at once, but the Queen landed in the water. As she was washed away towards the rocks, he shouted after her – “You will die!  You will Die!  You will die!” – until at last she disappeared under the water.

The water was fierce and deep, there were many jagged rocks in the torrent, so everyone assumed the Queen would die; but she did not. Instead, the water rushed her away, right out of her husband’s country and far away and into a forest of ouerje trees.   She almost drowned many times, but in the end she was able to grab hold of a small plant and pull herself to the water’s edge. She crawled out exhausted onto the bank, and fainted away among the trees that stood tall around, as if they were looking down at her and wondering who or what she was.

She had one been a Queen, but now she was alone in the bush, wet, hungry, with no help, and about to give birth.

“Oh, if only those oujere trees would people” she exclaimed.

Now the trees had never seen a person before, and they were fascinated. To her amazement the trees replied. “We will become people,” they said. “But you must never tell anyone would were once trees.”

The Queen made her promise. The trees became people. Very shortly after that, the pregnant Queen gave birth to a healthy boy. The boy grew up, and in time he became the king of the forest, and all the trees became his people.

One day, many years later, one of the tree people, who was unhappy with the rule of the boy king, when to see the old King in the neighbouring country. “Your wife survived; your son was born,” he told him. “He is now a king in his own right.”

The old king was angry at the news – firstly that his word had not been carried out, and second that a rival King should be ruling in a neighbouring country. He decided to kill his son. He sent people to commit the murder, but each time they arrived, the old queen greeted them with a song ..

“The King here is tall and beautiful

My son, your father’s friends have come to kill you,

but they will not succeed.”

When he young King heard this, he did not harm them in any way. Instead, he welcomed them and gave them gifts of goats, and cows, and asked them to settle in his land and stay with him. Seeing this, each assassin put away his spear and stayed to live under the young King.

The old King was astonished to discover that his people were staying with the young King, so he went to see for himself.

The old Queen greeted her husband in the same way …

“The King here is tall and beautiful.

My son, your father has come to kill you,

but he will not succeed.”

His son welcomed his father into the kingdom with goats and cows, just as his friends had been before him. The old Queen came forward and welcomed him herself, and told him how sorry she was that she had accidentally killed his favourite dog. The old King was deeply moved and shed tears to see his Queen again, all these years later. He admitted that over the years he had regretted his hasty actions. He stayed for several weeks, and as he watched his son, and saw how gentle, how beautiful and how shy he was, he reminded him of what he had been like when he was young. All his aggression melted away.

He thought to himself – “This kingdom belongs to my son – I can’t kill him. But I can unite our kingdoms.” So that is what he did. The old king became the high King, while his son ruled his own Kingdom, and became his heir to rule both when the older man died.

So all ended happily.

Now – what morals we can learn from the story? There are a great many, but here are 5 that Evariste gave me

1 When you are angry, please, that is not a good time to act.

2 Note that the old king made all his subjects cross the rope first and his own family only at the end when he had failed to find the perpetrator.  So Never think that your children are wiser than the children of your neighbour.

3 Always tell the truth – every time.

4 always pardon your neighbour.

5 never think that when you’ve decided to harm your neighbour that you will succeed.

I can think of a few more myself – like, people are more important than dogs. And notice how the Queen learned to keep her word after her initial lie – she never told anyone that all the people of that kingdom were really trees. I think a family could have a lot of fun trying to see how many morals they could squeeze from a story like this.

Any more?

I hope you enjoyed the story of Kunbangwa. You can see that in the Congo, there is a strong and really wonderful tradition of using stories to educate children – I think we could learn from it. Unfortunately, poverty and political upheaval make it a hard place for many to be children over there. A little money goes a long way – check out Save the Children and make a donation.

Next story – Four Brothers. Shades of Jacob and his coat of many colours ….

Three Dogs

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There’s been a bit of a break in my writing up the stories I collected in the Congo, when I was there with Save the Children last year. It’s been a busy summer and autumn, with a new book out and Andersen press Re-issuing The Cry of the Wolf. But I’m back at my desk now; so here’s another one, collected from the street children of Kinshasa. This story has witches, and a witch child right at the heart of it – which is poignant because many of the children I spoke had been accused of witchcraft themselves, and chased out of their homes and onto the street by their own families

Three Dogs is a classic folk tale of entrapment. It’s well known that witches love to eat human flesh, and that pregnant women love to eat the fruit of the safu tree. Put the two together – and the witches know they’re onto a good thing.

Safu fruit, by the way,is a purple-ish fruit that has to be carefully prepared  before it tastes good. Even so, it is said to be incredibly bitter to western tastes. But it must have something good in it, because pregnant women are known to often have cravings for it. Many thanks to Exhause, one of the children I men in the Sainte Famille open center for street children in Kinshasa, last year,
for telling me this great tale.

Three Dogs

A man a woman owned three dogs. One of these dogs was black – as strong as a wolf. Another one was white, a fierce, brave, loyal dog. They were obedient and loyal. But the last one was a weak dog, a dog the colour of mud, who never did anything good. He was lazy, disobedient and impossible to train. So they called their dogs black dog, white dog and weak dog.

Soon after the man and woman got married, the woman fell pregnant. As soon as her belly started swelling, like many other pregnant women before and since, she developed a sudden passion for safu fruits. She would hardly eat anything else – all she wanted was safu fruits, safu fruits – as many as she could get.

Fresh safu fruits.

Her husband wanted to do everything for his wife, so he went into the woods looking for safu trees. Pretty soon, as the weeks went by and the craving continued, he’d picked all the fruits near his village, and was having to go further and further afield to satisfy his wife’s craving. One day, in a part of the forest he had never been in before, he found a wood full of safu trees, all full of fruit. He picked all he could carry and went home with a big bag of fruit. But his wife was so greedy for the fruits, that she ate the lot within two days.

“Let’s go back to that woods together,” she said. “We can carry enough between us to last us for ages.”

Her husband agreed, and they went back to find the fruits.

Now, what that couple did not know was that these trees belonged to a witch. In all innocence they went there, climbed up the trees and started to pick.  There was one tree with the biggest, ripest, fattest safu fruits they had ever seen, and the wife climbed straight up that one and began to pick the best fruits she could reach.

It was at that moment that a witch child came along. This was the son of the most important witch, the chief of all the witches in the area. The husband and wife did not know that anyone else owned that tree, but even so, they were surprised to see someone from another village, so they kept very still.

The boy stopped beneath the tree with the wife in it.

“I feel someone is hiding in our tree,” he said out loud. Then he sniffed the air. “I can smell someone hiding in our tree!” he said. “And I’m sure it’s a pregnant woman.”

He looked up – and there she was.

“I want you to come down from our tree,” said the boy. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t run away. You are welcome to eat this lovely safu fruit. I want to introduce you to my father. He’s always happy to see visitors to our part of the forest.”

The husband and wife knew that they should ignore the boy and go home, but somehow, they didn’t seem able to do what they wanted. They climbed down from the trees and followed him through the woods to the village of the witches. The boy led them straight to the house of his father, the most senior witch. This man, whose importance was shown by his incredibly long nose, was, as the child had said, delighted to see the visitors.

“Well done, my son,” he said. “Thank you for bringing such delicious meat to me. Oh, I’m going to enjoy eating these two!”

The couple tried to run away, but it was already too late. They were held in a nearby house while the chief witch sent out a message to all the other witches in the area. “On this Saturday,” he told them, “We are going to have some good things to eat!”

A Congolese village house.

Saturday came. The senior witch called all the witches together for the feast. One of them, a huge, hungry witch, rolled out a huge cauldron from his house and filled with water. This was the witch cook. The witches built a fire and boiled the water. Then, the cook grabbed hold of the husband and prepared to throw him in.

The man had one last chance to save himself, his wife, and his unborn child. He shouted at the top of his lungs ….

“My black dog, my white dog, my weak dog – help me, please help me!”

Far away in the home village, the dogs heard his cry. They were tied up and locked in the house, but they pulled so hard that all three of them, even the weak dog, broke their leaches. But they were still trapped inside.

The man called out again. “My black dog, my white dog, my weak dog – help me! Come running quickly to me!”

“Shut him up – he makes too much noise,” said the senior witch crossly.

But the dogs had heard. The black dog broke jumped up and shook the door. The white dog jumped up and shook the door. They jumped up and banged against the door over and over, until at last until the door burst open …

And those three dogs came running, running, running through the woods!

The man heard them barking and he laughed.

“Why do you laugh?” asked the chief witch.

“Call this laughing?” said the man. “I’m not laughing. I’m just feeling sad that this is my last day on earth.” And he grinned at them

The witches looked at him as if he was mad. The chief witch jumped to his feet. “Enough!” he shouted. “Fling him in the pot. Let the feast begin!”

The witch cook grabbed hold of the man and dragged him to the pot of water, which was bubbling away. But just at that moment, the three dogs came bursting into the village. The witch cook wasted no time – he lifted up the man above his head and prepared to throw him in. The strong dogs, the black dog and the white dog, were held up by the crowd of witches who jumped to try and stop them. But the little weak dog, the dog the colour of mud, the dog who did nothing good, leaped forward and sank his stubby blunt teeth right into the cooks big toe.

“Agh!” yelled the cook. He dropped the man, who rolled across the ground out of the way. Then the three dogs really began their work.

The strong black dog grabbed hold of the chief witch by his ridiculous nose and began to drag him around the village. The strong white dog seized hold of the big witch chef and shook him until he died. And the little weak dog, the dog the colour of mud who did nothing good, chased and harried the witches round and round the village, snapping at their heels and barking at them when they hid, so that the other two, the strong black and the strong white dog, could come and finish them off.

When it was all over, the man and his wife walked around to have a look. All the witches were dead. There was  only one they couldn’t see, and that was the witch child that had trapped them in the first place. The husband, the wife and the three dogs went to hunt for him – and guess who found him. It was the weak dog, the dog the colour of mud who never did anything good who found him, hiding under his bed.

That was the end of him, and the end of the village witches, too. From that day, all the pregnant women in the village had all the safu fruit they wanted.

****

That’s it – Three Dogs. And that’s the last story from Kinshasa, and the street children – the child witches themselves, who didn’t get all that much to eat from what I could see – let alone meat. The next stories up will come from a different source, from Everista, a family man I was introduced to, who lived just in the suburbs of Kinshasa. You may find it interesting to see how different his stories were, how they were told and used in the context of a family – as they were always intended.

The street children, of course, had no such luxury. Tragically, many of them had been chased or scared away from their own families because they were feared as witches themselves, who might eat human flesh in the night-world. Accusations of this kind can come from almost anything – bed wetting, bad behavior, or just an odd appearance. Even more tragically, up to 80% of the families who had let them down so badly realise their mistake once it is simply pointed out to them what the real cause of their children’s behavior  is; often – as usual –  a break up in the family.

Save the Children do valuable work re-uniting children and their families in Kinshasa. You can help with a donation, no matter how small. Don’t let our current economic woes blind us to the nature of real poverty as it exists for so many millions of people in the third world. Make a donation now, and help a child find a family.

... wish it was true ...

Kill All Enemies – Blog Tour.

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I’m just about to go off on a virtual tour, guest blogging at various wonderful book sites, where I’ll be writing a lot about the people behind the characters in my new book, Kill All Enemies – the real life people I used to spin the novel from. (For a full list of the sites I’ll be visiting, click  here.) After the recent riots, the book has taken on a sudden relevance. Everyone has dispossessed young people from deprived communities on their minds, and usually they’re pretty disgusted from what they’ve seen. In fact, I can’t remember the last time a group of young people in our society was so universally despised. Since the kids I talked to were often from very similar communities, I’d like to say a word about them here, before the book comes out.

I’ve always believed that the first and foremost creative act we all engage in is ourselves. We are all, of course, the products of our environment, but we are also acts of the imagination – our own.

Many of the people I spoke it had been through very difficult times as children – painful, hateful, often violent. When those things happen to you, you can’t stop the feelings that come. You have no choice. You will be made to feel useless, weak, cowardly, hateful, angry and vengeful. It’s just human nature. What you do have control over, however, is how you react to those feelings. You can react by becoming violent yourself, or by bullying others. You can hide in a room and be sick, or go out and make music about it, or forgive, or rebel, or just stick your head in a bucket and shout to yourself. That’s up to you. All of those decisions, all of those acts, multiplied over the years, turn us the people we become.

Those of us unlucky enough to have many hateful things happen to use when we’re young, if we’re rejected or hurt, or have to see dreadful things happen to those we love, have so many opportunities to become hateful ourselves. Dreadful things happen to so many people, and many of them take the decision to become dreadful themselves. It’s how pain, violence and hatred are perpetuated.

But despite everything, some people manage to make decisions that lead them away from that path. So many of the young people I spoke to had been through the most astonishingly difficult times as young children, when bad things strike the deepest – and yet they had successfully turned themselves into kind, warm people. In my book, the lads from Kill All Enemeis – the band from whom the book takes it’s name – and the girl I based Billie on in particular, have managed to cope with terribly difficult and painful circumstances, and yet come out of it transformed, as if by magic, into people anyone would be proud to know.

I have the utmost respect for all of them. So many children manage against all the odds to emerge from pain and fear and transform themselves, and the disgraceful behaviour of their elders into the warm and generous people they have become today. They are acts of their own imaginations, works of art equal to anything Shakespeare ever wrote, or Michelangelo ever painted, and I’d like to pay tribute to them today.

Melvin Burgess

The Plate and the Cane

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This story is from Naomie, one of the girls who used the Santa Famillie open center in Kinshasa. This one is like a number of stories I’ve heard from Europe, but it’s not the sort of thing we might might tell our children these days. And once again, unlike many of the European stories I’ve heard, there’s a lot of humour in it.

Sharing a meal at the Sainte famille open center for street chidlren in Kinshasa. I wonder how many of these tots had been chased out of their homes for witchcraft? 80%, the center director said. A more unlikley bunch of witches I never saw!

A wife and a husband lived together by a lake, where they caught fish for a living. One day, out on the lake with his nets, the husband pulled in huge plate. What to do with it? They had no use for it, it wasn’t a particularly nice place … so they threw it back. As soon as it hit the water, the plate called out to them.

“Don’t throw me away – ask me!”

The fisherman was amazed, and scared – but fascinated. “Ask you what?” he demanded.

“Just ask me.”

The fisherman was troubled. What if the plate was trying to trick him? But then – what it was doing him a favour? In the end, he decided that this was something he just couldn’t miss. So he took the plate home, and he said to his wife, “You’ll never guess what I caught today …”

That evening they both sat and looked at the plate. It seemed impossible to imagine that it had ever talked. “What shall we ask it?” said the man.

The wife thought for a mount, then she said, “Let’s ask it for food. We never really get enough to eat. Asking for food should be quite safe.”

The husband agreed. “Plate, feed us. Please,” he added. At once, a wonderful feast was spread out before them – plates of meat,which they almost never had, wonderful fruit, everything they could hope for. And it wasn’t just food that the plate could serve up. Money, clothes, anything they asked for, the plate produced. After that, they never needed for anything.

Now, that couple had a son who loved football. One day, this son went to play a game against a rich kid. This rich kid was boastful, a bully, disrespectful to his parents and always expected his own way. He boasted so much about what a great player he was, that the fisher’s son grew angry with him, and an argument broke out. In the end they had a bet – who was the best football player? The rich kid bet a fine new football. “And what about you?” demanded the rich kid. “I’m always hearing abut this famous plate of yours. If you’re so sure of yourself, why don’t you bet that?”

The fisher’s son was so angry, he stupidly agreed to bet the plate. They played the game, the fisher’s son was outclassed. That rich kid may have been boastful and irritating, but he was a great football player. So now what? Too ashamed to back down, the fisher’s son crept him, stole the plate and gave it to the rich kid.

When he got back home and his parent’s discovered what he’d done, they were furious. They beat him for his stupidity and went straight round to the rich man’s house to ask for their plate back. But of course, the rich man said no. “Why should I?” he asked. “It was won fair and square. You should teach your son to behave with more respect to you.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” said the fisherman, “when everyone knows how rude your son is.”

“That may be so, but the plate is still mine,” said the rich man. “But I’ll tell you this – I’ll make a bet with you. if you can find a way to make my son behave, I’ll let you have it back.”

The fisherman went home feeling miserable. His son had given away their only bit of good fortune they’d ever had. “And there’s no way on earth anyone could make that boy behave himself,” he told his wife. “Everyone knows he’s the rudest, most unpleasant kid in the village.”

There was nothing for it but to get back to the fishing.

A few days later, the fisherman was out on his boat with his son, and he found caught in the net a cane. “This is no good to anyone,” said the father. “Although I could find a use for it if I thought about it,” he added, looking sideways at his son and swishing the cane. The son looked ashamed, and the father threw the cane back into the water.

But as soon as it hit the water, the cane shouted out. “Don’t throw me away. Tell me, tell me!” The father was delighted – but still a bit suspicious. Just because you have one piece of good luck, it does’t mean you;re going to have a second.

“Tell you what?” he asked.

“Just tell me,” said the cane. The fisherman pulled back the cane into the boat. “Now then – what shall I ask it?” he said aloud. “I know! Cane, beat my stupid son.” The cane set to work with gusto, gave the unfortunate son a beating of his life. It whipped him all the way back to shore and all the way back home, and still carried on when they got home.

“This is the life!” said the fisherman, lying back and watching, while his son hopped and howled. Every time he tried to escape out of the door, the cane would whip him back in.

“But this is perfect,” said his wife. “Now we have a way of teaching the rich man’s son his manners, and we can get our plate back.”

The next day, the man and his wife went to see the rich man, and explained to him that they were ready to take up the bet.

The rich man called his son to him. “Now – show me what you can do,” he said.

“Cane, beat this boy,” exclaimed the fisherman. As once the cane started work. The boy whooped and yelped and ran and twisted this way and that, but no matter where he went and what he did, the cane was there behind him, whipping merrily away. “This is perfect,” exclaim the rich man. “I’m far to busy to make sure my son behaves himself, but now I don’t need to, because this fine thin fellow will do all the work for me.”

So the deal was made – the cane for the plate. And everyone was happy – the fisherfolk because now they had all they could ask for; the rich man because he already had enough, but now he could keep his son in check; and the fisher’s son, because he had no need to worry about that troublesome cane any more. Only the rich boy had any need to feel sorry for himself – and that just serves him right.

That’s the end of the story.  Caning – not the sort of thing we do nowadays in Europe. I guess some of these children in the Congo aren’t so lucky, but I was a child, canings were a common place in books and in comics – half the stories in the Beano ended with an child bending over and getting six of the best from a jubilant teacher.  I remember a folk story I read as a child, one of a collection from the Czech republic, in which a group of rude princesses ended up being caned for three, six and nine days! Not only that, but the illustration showed them in their underwear – long frillies; and with a little crown on their heads. Not something I;d recommend for 11 year old boys today, although as a means of dealing the Royals, it has something to recommend it.

This lady told me all about the child witches she met in the market, and how she had a special gift from God to spot witches. Funny thing was, I have a special gift to spot self deceivers myself, and God was pointing right at her.

Mother Love

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This is an interesting and unusual story. It starts off as something we feel familiar with, but the ending is a real surprise. we often talk about how our own folk tales have been sweetened for the Nursery since the Brother’s Grimm – but this sort of thing makes me wonder if the Grimm’s didn’t make the steories they heard a little more palatable for 19C tastes as well …

Unlike many of the stories told to me by street children, this one has something at the end that was almost always there with stories told to me by people in families – the lesson at the end. “What can we learn from this?” was a phrase I heard so often, and then the story would be plundered for lessons.  I think people often tried to find as many lessons in the story as they possibly could – I could imagine a competition for who could find the most at storytime. Perhaps that’s why many of them read so much like fables.

Many thanks to Henoch, who passed this story on to me.

Story time - the Three Little Pigs

A boy and his mother were walking in the woods, collecting food to sell in the market, when they were attacked by a lions. The boy bravely fought the lion and managed to scare it away, but as he did so another lion came from behind and seized his mother in its jaws. He turned and ran at it, and scarred that one away too – but it was too late. His mother was already dead.

Sadly, he took her body away and buried her. Now he had nothing in the world except his own self.

After the funeral, he went to visit her grave.  “Mother,” he said. “Without you I have nothing. I can’t even get any money from working in the woods any more because I don’t have your skills.”

A voice from the grave spoke to him.

“In the desert there is a dead tree. You must find that tree and dig in the sand underneath. You will find buried under the sand some cups, a great many of them, some very fine and grand, some very poor. But one cup and one cup only will have a mosquito flying around it. You must take that cup and bring it home. That will help you on your way in life.”

The boy knew that tree; he and his mother used to pass by it sometimes on their way to the city to sell the berries and grubs they collected in the wood. He went straight there and dug under the tree, deeper and deeper, until at last he began to uncover the cups.  He dusted the sand off them with his hands, and at once, from one of the cups, a tiny little insect flew; the mosquito his mother had told him about. It flew round and round the cup it had been buried with, an old cup, chipped and dirty and made out of cheap pottery.

The boy was disappointed. He wondered why on earth he had to take such a cheap cup when there were so many other better cups about. He would get hardly any money for that one – he wasn’t even sure he wanted to drink out of it himself, with that mosquito buzzing around it all the time. He told himself that surely his mother must have made a mistake – dead people can get it wrong too.  So he took another cup instead, a big, fine, two handled cup that he was sure he could sell for a lot of money.

He picked the cup up – but inside it, something was crawling. With a shout of surprise he dropped it, and as he watched, a small tawny creature crawled out. As it came out of the cup it grew bigger, and bigger and bigger, until before him stood a ferocious lion. The boy jumped away adndclimbed up to the top of the dead tree just in time to save his life.  The lion spent hours prowling around the bottom of the tree before it got tired of waiting for him and left.

The boy climbed down the tree and ran home as fast as he could. That night, his mother’s ghost appeared to him in a dream.

“Stupid boy!  What did I tell you? You never listed while I was alive and now you don’t listen while I am dead; but this time you must listen. Go back and this time take the cup with the mosquito, like I said!”

The ghost disappeared. The next day, very frightened and even more foolish, the boy went back to the dead tree, and this time he did as he was told, and took the cracked dirty cup with the mosquito buzzing around.  That mosquito followed him all the way home, until he was fed up with it buzzing round; but he didn’t dare squash it. Back at home he looked at the cup – and saw that it was full of money. The cup wasn’t very big, but there was enough money in there for the boy to buy himself some pigs. He looked after his pigs carefully, breed them and sold them on and increased his herd until at last, after a number of years, he became rich.

Nw that he had his fortune, the boy began to think about other things in life. He went back to his mother’s grave and told her he wanted to find himself a wife. At once, the ghost of his mother was by his side, looking sadly at him.
“In Kinshasa there is a good wife, and I shall help you find her. Go home; I will come to you in a dream and tell you what to do.”

The boy, a young man now, went home and did as his mother told him. And just as she had said, she came to him in a dream, looking beautiful and young, just as he remembered her in life.

Go to Kinshasa, go to the river and walk upstream. As you leave the city behind you will come to place on the river where there are coffins floating, many coffins, some rich, some poor. If you see a grand coffin, do not take it; but if you see one with a mosquito flying around it, you must take that one. Inside, you will find your wife.”

This was even more scary than the dead tree; and the boy was not so sure about finding a wife inside a coffin. But his mother had looked after him when he was a boy, and when he was a man so perhaps she would look after just as well now that he was ready to marry.  He went to Kinshasa and walked upstream, and soon he came to the place his mother had told him about. There were dozens of coffins floating on the water, jostling about and rattling together. The boy was terrified and wanted to run away, but he heard his mother’s ghost whisper in his ear; “Be strong.” So he tightened up his courage, and went up to the coffins to look among them for the mosque.

Some of them were very grand; but this time the boy had learn his lesson, and he searched carefully until he had found the one with a mosquito bussing around it. He dragged that coffin, a very poor one, out of the water.  On the shore, he broke the coffin open – and out stepped a beautiful young woman, who at once threw her arms around him and vowed to be his forever, because he had rescued her

Well, the young man was pretty worried about all this. She was beautiful all right, but she came out of a coffin. He asked her how she got there, but she shook her head and wouldn’t say. But his mother had looked after him all his life, even from beyond the grave, so he took her home and looked after her.  He soon found out that the beautiful lady knew everything about him – what he liked and what he didn’t like, what sort of food he enjoyed, what made him laugh, what made him happy. He couldn’t imagine getting anyone better for himself. Soon, her thanking his mother everyday for finding such a wife for him, and soon enough he asked her to marry him.

The time for the ceremony came. Dressed so fine, the beautiful girl and he went to the church; but when they arrive there, she would not go inside.

“I want to be married outside,” she said. “What is wrong with that?”

The priest was not happy about it, but he agreed and went ahead with the ceremony; but something dreadful happened when he began to pray. The bride began to writhe and moan. The more he prayed, the louder her cries became. The young man begged the priest to stop, but the priest did not stop. If she couldn’t bear to hear a prayer, what did that mean? On he went, and by the time he arched the Amen, the beautiful girl drooped to the floor – stone dead. Now that she was dead she began to change back to her own shape. Her beautiful face grew old and then decayed, her body withered and her flesh shrank away from her bones, until all that was left was just bones and clothes.  But the boy knew those clothes – they were the clothes his mother had been buried in.

His mother had loved him dearly, and helped him in his life after her death; but she could not face him marrying, because she thought that another woman would mistreat her son.

What can we learn from this story?  Many things. That a mother’s love is good for some things but not others;  that a mother can love her son but still be bad for him; that she can overstep her place in her children’s lives.  We learn that the dead are not always as sensible as the living; and of course, that a mother will love her children even beyond the grave.

Story time - one of the children tells me a story back

Wind

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This is a very short story about a boy called Wind. It’s a joke – the kids laughed like drains when Aron told me this one. Anyone who’s had to steal, lie or cheat to get the often very basic things they things they need in life will appreciate Wind’s mother and her sense of humour.

Wind

Once there was boy called Wind. At school one day, they asked for money to pay the fees.

Wind went home and told his mother. She said, “No problem. This is what we’ll do.  You have to run as fast as you can to the money exchange. Since you’re Wind it’ll be easy for you to steal some money and then run quickly away.  As you go, shout; ‘Everyone should protect children!” at the top of your voice.

So he did it. And it worked!

Well done, Wind. It’s a pity someone doesn’t find a way of getting money off the people who deal in currency in this country to pay a few school fees. I’d laugh as well. Of course, the people who deal in money in Wind’s world are only tiny weenie little piggies compared to the monster porkers who stuff their faces daily on the homes, schools, libraries, hospitals etc in our own neck of the woods.

The boys played drum and the girls lined up to show off their skill. Each dance ended with a double beat as the girls swung their hips - BOOM-BOOM! Needless to say, I was rubbish

Thanks for the story, Aron – I hope someone pays for your school fees without you having to steal them. Hey – maybe who ever is reading this can help. So come on, readers – Aron gave us something from his country; maybe you can help him out with something from yours. A little money towards the school fees of Aron and other kids like him would be a nice start …

Help Save the Children save children. Donate here.

The Bag of Mosquitoes

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This is the second story told to me by the children of the  Santa Famillie open center in Kinshasa. We have Honore to thank for this one – so thank you, Honore. I hope you’ve had a chance to get back with your family now and that your life on the streets is at an end.

There's always a good use for a blackboard ...

The Bag of Mosquitoes

One Sunday mooring, a mother went to work in the fields. She did this despite the fact that Sunday is a day of rest, because she was so poor, and had a large family, and because her hungry children were more important to her than God. She had six children to bring up all on her own, as her husband had died a few months before. The five eldest stayed behind at home – the older ones could look after the younger ones perfectly well – but she took the new baby with her, because she felt that he still needed a mother’s love and attention

She worked all day with the baby tied to her back until it was time to eat. She went to get some shelter under the trees and bushes that grew all around, but as she ducked under some low branches, one of them caught the baby and knocked it off her back. By the time she picked it up, it was already too late. The baby was dead.

The Mother was heartbroken. For a while, all she could do was weep. When she had recovered a little, she picked up the still little body and carried it back to the village, to tell everyone what had happened and to prepare for the funeral.

Now, it so happened that the headman of her village was known for his special powers. In fact, he was a fetish man, who knew all about the spirits of the forest. She decided to go to him and ask for help. She took the body of her dead son along to him, told him what had happened.

“There’s nothing I can do for you or your baby, unless you do exactly as I say,” he told her. “Now listen. You must go about your life in the ordinary way – but keep your eyes out and your ears sharp for the things I tell you about.
“If you see some clothes standing in front of you, just like a man but with nothing inside them, don’t touch them, don’t talk to them. Don’t take any notice of them at all.
“It you see a bag full of diamonds coming towards you, don’t take any notice of that either. Just leave it. Pretend it doesn’t even exist.
“But if you see a bag of mosquitoes, you must pick up that bag and take it home here in the village with you and open it up. Only if you do this, is there any chance that you will get back your lost baby.”

The woman was scared when she hear this kind of talk. Whoever heard of clothes standing up on their own? Or bags of diamonds that wandered about?  But she loved her little baby boy and wanted him back desperately, so she resolved to do exactly as the head of the village had told her.

Over the next few days she kept her eyes and ears open, hoping that a miracle would happen. But nothing did. The funeral took place as usual, the Mother sadly buried her baby and tried to get on with her life.

A few days later, as she was working in the gardens, she heard someone coming through the forest towards her. She looked up and saw a shape standing in the shadows, watching her.
“Who’s there?” she called, but there was no answer. She went closer and saw to her horror that it was just as the headman said – a set of clothes stood there in the shadows, watching her work. It looked exactly as if there was a man inside them – but they were empty of any living thing. What was inside those clothes, she could only guess. Some sort of spirit, perhaps – but what sort of spirit, good or bad, she had no idea. All she wanted to do was run for her life – but she remembered what the headman had told her, to pretend it didn’t exist if she wanted to get her baby back.  So, with a shudder, she turned round and walked back to the patch she was working on, and got on with her weeding. Behind her, she could hear the clothes following behind her. It made her hair stand on end!

As she worked, the clothes just stood there, always facing towards her, just as if someone was watching her. Sometimes they stepped out of the shadows as if to get a better look at her, sometimes they hid deeper among the trees. When she moved from one patch to another the clothes followed her, and resumed their post – always watching, watching, watching.

Soon some other women came to join her at work. The Mother, who was watching the clothes out of the corner of her eye the whole time, didn’t dare ask them if they could see them too.  But no one said anything, so she knew that they were only there for her.

The empty clothes stood there all day watching her. When she left, the clothes followed her back home, sometimes walking by her side, sometimes a little in front. Again, no one else seemed to be able to see them, but she didn’t dare say anything about it, in case she made them angry or lost her chance to get her baby back. When she ate her evening meal, the clothes sat on the floor next to her. She thought about offering them some food, but she remembered the headman’s words and didn’t even flinch when they shuffled up closer to her. When she lay down to sleep, the clothes sat up, cross-legged on the floor, facing right towards her; and when she woke up in the mooring, there they still were, leaning against a wall, watching her as if she as the most fascinating thing in the world.

She prepared breakfast for herself and her children, who all wanted to know why she was so quiet and scared looking. Then she went to work in the fields as usual. The clothes walked behind her, but by she time she arrived, they had gone. She looked all around her and in among the bushes, but there was no sign of them.

The Mother was so relived – despite her calm face she had been in terror at the whole time. She left at once and went straight to the river to wash herself and to try to get that terrible clammy, dirty feeling of fear off her skin.

On the way back, she kept her ears and her eyes sharp, and sure enough, as she got close to the river she saw a glint in the weeds at the side of the path. Her heart beat fast, because she already knew what it was. She took no notice, though and walked on. As she got closer there was a rattle, and the bag of diamonds rolled out of the bushes and stood there in the path in front of her.  The top of the bag was slightly open and she could se the sunlight shining on the diamonds inside it – huge, fat diamonds, as big as your thumb, sparking and glinting in the sunshine. That Mother couldn’t help thinking how much better life  would be for her and her children if she only had those diamonds. She had the five children at home, all of them hungry, all of them with no decent clothes or shoes. But she took no notice and just walked past. even when the bag of diamonds started to roll towards, rattling and clinking temptingly, she took no notice – she just stepped over it, as if it was clod of earth in the road.  Behind her called out to her ..
“Woman! I am yours. Pick me up, sell me, spend me.”  It made her skin crawl, but she didn’t reply. She just carried on her way

By the time she got to the river, the bag of diamonds had gone. She washed herself, and let herself have a little cry, because what she was doing was scary and very hard. Then she got out of the water to dry herself, and as she stood there, wringing out her hair and shaking her arms to get he water off, she heard a great, loud whining buzzing noise.

There it was! – on the bank next to her clothes. A bag of mosquitos.

The bag was totally surrounded by mosquitos. There must have been thousands – no, millions – of hungry, buzzing mosquitos. She’d never seen so many. You could have grabbed them by the handful and baked them in a pie, there were that many.

The woman got close and tried to pick the bag up, and as soon as she got near, the mosquitos  flew at her and started sucking up her blood as fast as they could. She tried to take no notice, and pushed her way through the storm of insects.   When she did finally manage to pick it up, the bag was plump and heavy with a billion mosquitos, and of course she disturbed them more than ever by carrying them. Out they flew, more and more and more of them,  and pretty soon she was covered from head to foot, over her clothes and under her clothes and even through her clothes, with greedy, whining, bloodsucking mosquitos, sucking and sucking at her blood, until she was certain she had barely a drop left.

But she held tight to the bag and hurried back homes. What a sight she made! There were so many on her and buzzing around she could hardly see where she was going, and all anyone could see of her was a cloud of mosquitos, whinging and buzzing away as loud as an engine, staggering along the street, banging into thing and stumbling and falling over. People screamed and yelled at her to go away. She kept calling out her name, but none of them believed it was really her. They thought she it some kind of mosquito spirit, and to make things even worse, started to throw sticks and stones at her to try and chase her away.

Despite all this the woman forced her way back to her house and staggered inside. When her five children saw that gigantic hoard of mosquitos coming in the door, they all jumped up and ran out, but she took no notice.  She sat down with the bag between her feet, opened it up – and at once all the mosquitos vanished. Instead, lying there in the bag, was her own baby, fat and smiling, with his arms held out to her, and a smile on his face, gurgling with happiness at being back in the world – as full of life as he had ever been before.

With a cry of joy she ran out into the village holding the baby high in the air.
“Look everyone! I ignored the clothes and I left the diamonds, and I suffered the mosquitos – and now I have my own pride and joy back in my arms!”

There was a great deal of celebrating in that house, and in the whole village – although it did take that mother a long time to recover from all those mosquito bites. Of course, the story went right around the village and far beyond, and it wasn’t long before a neighbour of hers heard all about what had had happened. This Mother too had a little baby son, about as old as the first Mother’s, and she decided that there was a chance here for her to help herself and her family.

Playing draughts with bottle tops

What she did was this; she went into the fields to work with her baby tied to her back, and while no one was looking, she lifted the baby up held it high up over her head …
“Now, baby, this won’t be very nice, but it’ll all over quickly. You’ll be back with us very soon, and when you do, we’ll all be rich” she said.

Then she dropped her baby down to the groud . When she bet down to pick it up, the baby was already dead.

Just like the first woman, she went to headman and told him that her baby had fallen off her back and died. The headman looked at her sadly, and sighed; then he told her exactly the same thing he had said to the first woman – that she must ignore  the standing clothes if she saw them; she must ignore the bag of diamonds; and she must only pick up the bag of mosquitos.

“Soon I shall be rich, and me and family will never want again,” the woman thought.

Only a few days after the baby’s funeral, she was working in the fields, and she heard a noise in the buses. She looked up and there, sure enough was a set of clothes standing upright with no one in them. It just stood here as if it was looking at her. It made her hair stand on end to see it, but she remembered what the headman had said, and what her neighbour had done. She didn’t flinch or run away, she just carried on on calmly working as if nothing had happened. Just as before, the clothes stood by her all day, followed her home, sat by her as she ate, watched her as she slept. And the following morning, when she got to the fields, it was gone.

“Great,” she thought. “Now for the diamonds!”

She went straight off to the river to bathe – and sure enough, as she walked along, there was a glint in the path ahead, and she got close a huge bag of enormous diamonds rolled out into the road.

Well, this Mother didn’t need anyone to tell her to take those diamonds – she was on them like a cat on a mouse. She grabbed the bag and ran off into the bushes to open it up and stuff those diamonds into her headscarf. But when she unwrapped the bag, there were no diamonds inside – there was only her baby, still and cold and stiff and dead, with the earth of the grave still on him.

With a wail the woman ran out of the bushes, cradling the baby in her arms, all the way back to the village where she begged the headman to help her.

“There is only one chance for this kind of magic,” the headman said. “You should have left the bag of diamonds alone, as I told her. Now you baby is gone for ever.”

The woman crept home, heartbroken. And that was not the end of her troubles. She had clearly offended someone – or something – because from that day on, her  family fell ill and died, one after the other, until last she was left alone, an unhappy old woman, with no one to call her own.

Many thanks to Honore for this great tale – homage to a mother’s love from a child of the streets.

Honore has done her part, now perhaps you’d be willingto help save the Children help girls like her. Paying her a few pounds for her story can helps change lives. Donate now at Save the Children

Running Faster than the Wind

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Street children at the Santa Famille open center in Kinshasa, where children can come for food, sleep, medical care and play.

A few days after going to the Store House Foundation to meet the girls, Save the Children took me along to another place they funded – The Santa Famillie open center in Kinshasa, where children can come for food, medical care, get a bed for the night, and play safely.

While the children ate, the staff showed me round. Thee were classrooms, a medical room, and various dorms for different age children. I noticed how many beds there were for boys, and how few there were for girls. When I asked them about this, they replied that so fewer girls came for a bed each night. How come? Well, you can use your imagination to answer that. As you can see, some of the children were very small, although it was mainly the older girls who failed to turn up. I don’t think they always had much choice in the matter – another reason why the work funded by Save the Children in looking after these children and reuniting them with their families is so important.

After taking a look round, I met up with some of the children and did a story swap; I told them the stories of the Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood, and they told me theirs. I had an absolute torrent of stories pouring down past me, and I had to scribble and scribble and scribble to get them all down. My poor translator was as exhausted as I was by the end of it – everyone had a story to tell.

I think I’ll be spending the next few weeks re-telling you this mine of stories. The first one is called, Running Faster than the Wind, told to me by Jonathon, one of the street children I spoke to that day.

Running Faster than the Wind

A man and a woman lived together; and soon enough, the woman became pregnant. But before the baby was born, the man decided that he didn’t want to stay.

“I’m going,” he said to the woman. “And there’s nothing you can say is going to change that. After I am gone, if you give birth to a son, I want you to call him by a special name – Running Faster than the Wind. That way, I can be sure he will remember me.

The woman begged him to stay, but his mind was made up. So he left, and in due course a baby boy came along. Although she had thought of a great many better names to call her child since then, the mother decided to do as the man had asked, and call her child Running Faster than the Wind, because it was the one and only thing the child would ever have from his father, as long as he lived.

The boy grew up, and there was nothing unusual about him except his name. His friends at school thought the name was hilarious and spent a lot of time teasing him about it. Many times he wished he was called something really ordinary, but he wasn’t; and that was all there was to it. He just had to live with it. Secretly, he hoped that there was some other, special reason for his father wanting him to be called that – but the years went by and nothing happened, and it looked as if it was just wishful thinking

Catching those stories! Writing Faster than the Wind ...

One day, Running Faster than the Wind was walking in a wood and he came across a hole in the ground. He walked around that hole and had a look at it. It was empty, and yet a curious rushing, whistling noise was coming from it.  He got closer and looked in – and discovered that this wasn’t just any hole. Because in that hole there lived the wind. Even at home the wind couldn’t keep still, and it was rushing round and round inside, and it was that making those curious sounds.

“So this is where all the wind lives!” thought the boy. It seemed to him that it could be no coincidence that he of all people, with his special name, had found that secret hole. If the wind was in that hole, he thought, maybe he ought to be in it as well.

So he climbed in.

The wind wasn’t having that. It came roaring straight at him. It buffeted and punched him and whirled him round like a leaf in that hole, and then – WHOOSH! it came rushing out and up, up, up, up higher and higher into the air, carrying that poor boy with it. It got so high, that the trees underneath him looked like moss growing on the ground. Then down, down down down down, until he crashed to the earth – right through the roof of his father’s house,knocking it to pieces.

His father came rushing out – “What have you done? Look – my house – it’s ruined!”

Poor Running Faster than the Wind crawled out, bruised and battered and exhausted. He could hardly walk, let alone run faster than the wind.

“Oh, so it’s you, Running Faster than the Wind,” said his father sternly. “What do you think you’re doing, wrecking my house?”

“Wrecking your house? It nearly wrecked by whole body,” he said. “It serves you right for giving me such a stupid name.”

Some time after this, Running Faster than the Wind met some old school friends of his – the same ones who always used to tease him and make his life a misery at school. Off they went, same as normal, teasing him away about his ridiculous name.  Well, he stood up to them, and a fight broke out. Of course there was no way he could win – there were just too many of them, and he got a sound beating. Afterwards, though, the friends suggested that they put their quarrels behind them and go off together on a trip across the Congo river from Kanshasa, to Brazzaville. Running Faster than the Wind agreed, so they all caught the ferry and went across.

When they arrived there, they went straight to the beach. Now, it was a hot day and everyone was thirsty. The friends had spent all their money getting across, so theyall banded together again, and went up to running Faster than the wind, and asked him to give them £100 to by some water.

“£100 for water? You must be joking,” he said. But they wanted it. They were sure he had it, and they insisted he give it to them.

Running Faster than the Wind could see another beating coming along.

“Very well,” he said. “I can get it for you, but you must do what I tell you. I want you to grab hold of my clothes.”

“Is that all? Well, we’ll happily do that,” they said. “Then you won’t be able to get away.” They all grabbed hold tight of him. “Now,” they said … “Give us the money!”

“As tight as you can?” shouted the boy.

“Too tight for you to get away1′ they sneered.

“Good. Wind!” shouted the boy. “I’m coming back in your house!”

When the wind heard him say that, it came rushing at him in a rage and blew him up in the air again, and of course all his fiends holding tight onto his clothes got blown up as well. Up, up, up, up, higher and higher, until the sea looked like  a blue field, and the clouds were scudding along underneath them and the even the biggest ships looked like little bits of stick floating far below.

“This is the deal,” said Running Faster than the Wind. “You wanted water – there it is! I’m going to let you go.”

The friends were terrified. “No, please, don’t do that, don’t let us go … please, no!” they begged.  But Running faster than the Wind did it anyway. He shucked off his clothes and down they fell .. down, down, down, down until, with a mighty splash, they hit the water and carried on all the way down through that, until they hit the bottom of the sea.

No one ever saw them again.

As for Running Faster than the Wind, the wind carried him away right around the world until it got tired of the game, and dropped him down – bang! – right where it had found him on the beach in Brazzaville.

And I don’t think anyone ever tried to bully him again.

And that’s the end of the story. I hope you liked it.  I’ll transcribe some more stories from the Sante Famille open center over the summer – there’s plenty more to come. Meanwhile, the children have done their part and told you a story. If you’ve read this far – fair’s fair – you can do something for them. Help these lovely kids – I met them and I promise you they were great – by making a small donation to help Save the Children keep places like this open.

These children are innocent of any wrong, have been thrown out of their homes, often by their own families and they need help. Save the Children funds organisation like this, to help street children and hopefully, to get them back with their own people so that they can resume a normal childhood. A little bit goes a long way in Kinshasa – I promise you, you will be making a difference. And I think you’ll agree that a few pounds is small price to pay for the chance to read these marvelous and unusual stories.

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