Don’t Know Much About® Mythology (59 page)

Chuku
(Ibo of Eastern Nigeria) The Ibo (or Igbo) believe that the supreme creator, the benevolent Chuku (“great spirit”), creates an earthly paradise in which there is neither evil nor death. In a very typically “confused message” story, Chuku sends a dog to earth to tell people that those who die accidentally can be brought back to life if they are laid on the ground and sprinkled with ashes. But the dog carrying this message is too slow in delivering it, so Chuku next dispatches a sheep with the same message. But the sheep stops to eat along the way, and by the time it finally reaches mankind, the message is confused—the sheep tells the people to bury their dead. Because of this foolish sheep, death comes into the world.

Imana
(the Banyarwanda people of Rwanda) In Rwanda (central Africa), the omniscient creator Imana has very long arms and is benevolent to mankind, but likes to keep his distance. One legend describes how Imana is hunting down Death in order to rid the world of it. But Death begs an old woman for protection, and she agrees to hide Death under her skirt. For this, Imana decides that Death should live with mankind, after all.

Kalumba
(the Luba of Zaire) The creator of the Luba tribe (central Africa), Kalumba creates mankind and then wants to protect people from death and disease. He sends a goat and a dog to guard the road on which Life and Death are traveling. The animals have been instructed to only allow Life to pass, but they argue and split up. While the dog sleeps, Death is able to sneak past. Then, while the goat is on guard, Life gets turned away, so people cannot be saved from Death.

Leza
(the Kaonde of southern Africa) Leza is a supreme god who rules the sky, sits on the backs of all people, and is supposedly growing old, so he cannot hear prayers as well as he once did. In one tale of the Kaonde, Leza gives a bird three calabash gourds to deliver to humans. Inside two of the gourds are the seeds to grow food, but the third is not to be opened. Like Pandora, the bird can’t restrain its curiosity and looks inside the gourd, releasing all the evils of the world, which are contained inside. Leza and the bird are unable to recapture the evils once they are set loose.

Mawu and Liza
(Fon of Benin) This pair of twin creator gods may have belonged to another tribe that was conquered by the Fon (western Africa), who possessed superior iron-working skills and probably had superior weapons. The defeated tribe’s gods were then absorbed by the Fon. Mawu and Liza are born from an older creator god, Nana-Buluku, who is a sexless primeval creator, and Aido-Hwedo, the rainbow-colored snake who holds up the earth. The male god Liza is associated with the sun, power, the daytime, work, and strength; the goddess Mawu is associated with the moon, nighttime, fertility, motherhood, and joy. This divine pair shape the universe from preexisting material and then create all the other gods in the sky and on earth.
In one of the Fon Creation stories, these two come together during eclipses to create the other gods. They have a set of twins, Sagbata and Sogo, who, like most mythic twins, get into a dispute over which of them will rule. When the elder twin, Sagbata, is given precedence over the younger twin, Sogo, Sagbata angrily stops the rain, and soon all of creation is starving and thirsty.
On the second day of Creation, they send down their son, Gua (or Gu), the god of thunder, blacksmiths, and farmers, to help mankind. Gua does not anticipate that his tools will later be used for warlike purposes. In a separate version of this myth, Gua helps make the first people out of divine excrement.

’Ngai
(Masai of southeastern Africa) A creator god of the cattle-herding Masai, ’Ngai gives every man a guardian spirit to ward off danger and carry him away at death. The good go to a rich pasture land, while the evil are carried off to a desert.
In the beginning of Creation, there is only one man on earth, Kintu. When ’Ngai’s daughter Nambi sees Kintu, she falls in love with him, and they marry after he passes a series of challenges. Promising not to return to the sky, they go to earth with plants and animals in Nambi’s dowry. But Nambi forgets to bring along grain to feed her chickens, and when she returns to the sky to get some, she meets Death, who follows Nambi home and then kills the couple’s children. Death remains on earth after that. As in many African myths, the connection between heaven and earth is destroyed by human error or foolishness.

Nyame
(Ashanti of Ghana) Supreme god of heaven and earth, as well as the sun and moon, Nyame is Creator of all the realms—heaven, earth, and the underworld. Nyame gives each soul its destiny at birth, and washes it in a golden bath. But Nyame is one of those gods for whom living with humans gets to be too much of a nuisance. After an old woman preparing yams keeps hitting Nyame with her pole, he goes away to seek a more peaceful home in the sky.

Unkulunkulu
(Zulu, Xhosa) Known as “Old, Old One,” Unkulunkulu is both the creator, a god of earth who has nothing to do with the heavens, and the first man. According to the Zulu (southern Africa) Creation myth, he evolves alone in the emptiness, and, once he comes into being, creates the first men out of grass. Unkulunkulu orders a chameleon to tell men that they will be immortal. But the creature lingers so long that the god angrily sends a lizard with the opposite message, and the lizard arrives with the news of death first.
To balance man’s mortality, Old, Old One teaches humans about fertility rites, marriage, healing, and other basics of civilization. He also provides the dead with a dwelling place in the sky, and the stars are thought to be the eyes of the dead looking down upon the world.

Tricksters and Animal Gods

No matter what he is called, people everywhere love a trickster. To Shakespeare, he is the playful sprite Puck, who makes trouble in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, or the whimsical spirit Ariel working his mischief in
The Tempest
. To generations of children, he is the magical boy Peter Pan who never grows up and knows how to fly, or the “wascally wabbit” Bugs Bunny, who constantly bedevils Elmer Fudd. In silent movies, he is Charlie Chaplin, sticking a wrench in the cogs of
Modern Times
to outwit the high and mighty. In
Star Wars
, he is Han Solo, the likable rogue out for himself. More recently, he is
Seinfeld
’s Kramer, who can create manic upheaval and disorder in less than thirty minutes.

Described as the “sacred clown,” the trickster can be found in every mythology. Looking to put over a con, cause chaos, or get something for nothing, the trickster is a lovable loner who is almost always outside the ring of “civilized” behavior. As Jungian authority Dr. Joseph Henderson writes in
Man and His Symbols
, “Trickster corresponds to the earliest and least developed period of life. Trickster is a figure whose physical appetites dominate his behavior; he has the mentality of an infant. Lacking any purpose beyond the gratification of his primary needs, he is cruel, cynical, and unfeeling…. This figure, which at the outset assumes the form of an animal, passes from one mischievous exploit to another. But, as he does so, a change comes over him. At the end of his rogue’s progress, he is beginning to take on the physical likeness of a grown man.”

While the trickster’s mischief can sometimes benefit humans—Prometheus in Greek mythology, for instance, tricks Zeus and brings fire to mankind—more typically, his amusing diversions bring discord and disorder to the world, making him an unwelcome member of the community. In African myths and legends—as well as in the mythology of the Native Americans—the trickster is an especially vivid character, most often appearing as an animal and always a male. Perhaps the trickster began simply as a way to explain the sudden, unexplained little mysteries of life—the food missing from the table, the muddied well-water, the vegetables filched from the garden—as well as the bigger anxieties, like the hint of a stranger in the marital bed, or the unexplained disappearance of a child.

Animals such as the chameleon, praying mantis, hare, tortoise, and spider take part in every area of African legend, from the Creation to the coming of death to humans. But probably the most common role of animals in African myth is that of the trickster. This list includes some of the most significant of them.

Anansi
Perhaps the most famous character in African myth is “Mr. Spider,” who is called Anansi in West Africa (and
Turé
in the Congo). Known for his cleverness, Anansi is a Creator god in some traditions, including the Ashanti, while in others, he is a man who gets kicked into a thousand pieces and becomes a spider because of his cunning tricks. A scoundrel and shape-shifter known for assuming disguises, Anansi is able to dupe other animals and even humans.
In one popular tale, Anansi makes a rather curious request—he says he wants to own all tribal myths that belong to the Ashanti’s Creator sky god, Nyame.
The sky god tells Anansi that to get the stories, he must capture three things: hornets, the great python, and the leopard. Setting about his challenges, Anansi cuts a small hole in a gourd, throws some water on himself, sits inside the gourd, escapes, and tells the hornets to get in so they will not get wet. Once the hornets are inside the gourd, Anansi plugs up the hole with some grass, and takes the hornet-filled gourd to Nyame.
Next, Anansi cuts down a long bamboo pole and some strong vines. When he comes upon the python, he tells the snake that he has been arguing with his wife about what is longer—the python or the pole. The vain python allows himself to be measured by the clever spider, who then ties the serpent to the pole with the vines. Now caught, the python is delivered to Nyame.
Only the leopard is left. Digging a pit and covering it with brush, Anansi next traps the leopard, who is eventually strung up in the air by rope and killed. When Nyame sees the leopard’s body, he is so impressed that he gives all his stories to Anansi, and they became known as the “spider’s stories.”
When anyone wants to tell one of the sky god’s stories, he must pay homage to Anansi, who owns them all. Today, we would call this “copyright protection.”

Eshu
(Yoruba of Nigeria) Unlike many other African tricksters, Eshu is a god, not an animal. Capable of shape-shifting, and being both large and small at the same time, Eshu confuses men and drives them to madness, but also acts as a go-between for the mortals and the gods. The bringer of chaos and cause of all arguments, Eshu once persuaded the sun and moon to trade places, causing universal disorder. He also got the high god of humans to leave earth for heaven. For his tricks, Eshu is ordered to become the messenger who links heaven and earth and reports every day on what is happening on earth.
In a tale with several variations, Eshu walks between two neighbors, wearing a hat with different colors on each side. The neighbors eventually argue over what color the hat is, and come to blows. When their dispute lands in court, Eshu resolves the argument and teaches people that the way in which one sees the world can alter his perception of reality. In other versions of this tale, Eshu is far less benevolent, and the argument over the colored hat leads to complete annihilation of the tribe, which only amuses Eshu, who says, “Bringing strife is my greatest joy.”
Among the Fon of Benin, which neighbors Nigeria, the trickster god Eshu appears as
Legba
, an attendant of the supreme god. Legba’s job is to do all the harmful things to people that god wants done. When Legba tires of this role, he asks god why he must always do the dirty work and get all the blame. The high god tells him that the ruler of a kingdom ought to get credit for all the good things while his servants take the rap for all the evil. Talk about archetypal!
In one story, Legba steals the god’s sandals, puts them on, and goes into the yam garden and steals all the yams. This time, the people are angry at god for stealing their yams. When the god realizes that Legba has tricked him, the deity decides to leave the world and instructs Legba to come to the sky every night and report on what happens on earth.
In another story, Legba asks an old woman to throw her dirty washing water into the sky. God is annoyed by the dirty water’s constantly being thrown in his face, so he moves away, where he can’t be bothered so easily. Again, he leaves Legba behind to report, which is why there is a shrine dedicated to Legba in many African houses and villages.
Legba’s counterbalance is
Fa
(or
Ifa
), the god of fate and destiny, who teaches healing and prophecy. To the Fon, everything is fated to happen, nothing is left to chance, and Fa represents every person’s fate. Divination or magic can help one discover their Fa. Whenever beginning work or starting a business, it is customary for the Fon to make an offering of food to Fa, but first give a taste to Eshu, to ensure that things go smoothly. The religions of Benin later influenced voodoo, one of the principal offshoots of the convergence of traditional African religions and Christianity in the Caribbean (see below).

Hare
Alongside Spider, Africa’s most popular animal trickster is Hare, about whom stories are told all over the continent. One typical story tells how Hare challenges an elephant and a hippopotamus to a tug-of-war. But instead of tugging, Hare ties the ends of the rope to each of the animals. As they pull against each other, Hare’s land is plowed, which is exactly the job Hare was supposed to do for his wife.
Another story tells how Hare mixes up a message he has been given to deliver, and loses immortality for humans. When the moon sends Hare to tell people that they will die and then rise again, just like the moon, Hare confuses the message and tells people only that they will die. When the moon finds out what Hare has said, she beats him on the nose with a stick. Since that day Hare’s nose has been split.
The Hare stories made the transatlantic crossing with the many Africans taken as slaves to the Americas. Mingling with many similar Native American tales of trickster rabbits, the Hare stories became best known in America as the Br’er (short for “Brother”) Rabbit stories.
Having heard these stories told on a plantation, Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908), a writer for the
Atlanta Constitution
, later collected them in a book called
Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings
(1881). The character of Uncle Remus is a former slave who becomes a beloved servant of a Southern household and entertains the family’s young son by telling him traditional animal fables, using a Southern African-American dialect. Besides Br’er Rabbit, the best-known characters of the stories are Br’er Fox, Br’er Bear, and Br’er Wolf. Most folklorists today agree that the Br’er Rabbit tales are thinly veiled racial allegories.
*
More than just a trickster, Br’er Rabbit represents the clever slave who could outwit his master.