In Which a Genie Proposes Marriage

For a change of pace we decided to have Storytelling Time instead of a tea debate one day. We went to a lot of trouble to find a village storyteller. First we found this marvelously ancient woman who only spoke Pulaar. The idea was to have the students translate the story into French for us and exercise their brains that way.

Anyway, Ancient Lady took out a little bucket of red-hot peppers and started breaking off their heads (snap, snap, snap) as she talked to us. Meanwhile her thirty grandchildren were clustered round staring at us, as if we had three heads. Well, staring at me. I don't exactly blend into the surroundings, you know. Then Ancient Lady starting shaking her head and gesticulating fiercely, and I could tell she was refusing our request. "Oh dear," I thought. And then I thought, "OH MY GOD! What is that!" One of the small grandchildren had suddenly released a torrent of orange vomit from his mouth, as calmly and naturally as if it was nothing more serious than a burp. I looked around in confusion. Was no one going to care for him? Everyone was acting as if nothing had happened. I started to panick. What was wrong with these people? Then one of the older children swept up Vomiting Child in her arms and carried him away. Okaaaaaaay......... I thought. I had to bite my lips to restrain slightly hysterical laughter. It was all suddenly so surreal.

Then Emma stopped talking with Ancient Lady and started talking with her son. I stood there feeling useless and smiling a lot at everybody. Finally, Emma and the man shook hands, seeming very satisfied. Emma finally got around to translating. Ancient Lady could not come to the library to tell a story, because her mother was sick. (I was frankly astonished to find out her mother was still alive. Ancient Lady herself looked about 106.) However, Ancient Lady's son was able to tell stories perfectly well and was happy to come to the library tommorow. His name was Mr. C.

We had gotten used to having 12-20 people showing up for the tea debates. However, only two students showed up for the storytime. They sheepishly made excuses for their absent fellows, as Emma and I exchanged glances. Apparently listening to a village storyteller was not nearly as exciting as I had hoped. To me, African storytellers are very exciting. But for me they're something new.

Anyway, we decided to go ahead and tell stories anyway, thin audience or not. With me and Emma and our friend Cody, it made five people anyway. And the story Mr. C told was wonderful. It went something like this:

Once upon a time there was a king who had two wives. One wife came from a noble family, and the other wife was a slavewoman. He was very kind to the noblelady, but the slavewoman and her son Samba always had the worst of everything.

One day the king fell very ill. Nobody could find the medicine which would cure him. So all the children left to search for their father's remedy. They wandered their separate ways through the forest. Samba was in the deepest, darkest part of the forest when he met a genie in the form of a beautiful woman. The genie told him, "I know where to find your father's medicine."

Samba became very excited. He began to press the genie, "How? How? How can I find my father's medicine?" But the genie smiled her mysterious smile and said, "To my knowledge there is a price." Samba offered to pay anything. He said, "I would be ashamed to return home without my father's remedy."

The genie explained she was looking for a husband. If Samba promised to marry her, she would tell him how to find the cure. So Samba promised, and she told him, "You must slaughter a bull, tear it in half, and leave the halves lying out in the middle of the forest, dripping blood. A giant vulture will come to feast on the meat. You must grab ahold of the vulture's legs, and it will fly off and carry you towards the cure."

Samba followed her instructions, and sure enough, a giant vulture came to feast on the bull he killed. Samba swallowed his fear and seized ahold of its legs, trying not to breathe in its terrifying stench. The vulture carried him away to a strange and beautiful tree. Samba filled his pouch with a harvest of the tree's marvelous leaves. Then he climbed down and started on the path for home.

At the edge of the forest, he met his half-siblings, the sons of the noblewoman. "Rejoice!" cried Samba. "Our quest is over!" He showed them the marvelous leaves and told them the story of the genie. Listening, they became very jealous. They began to whisper among one another, "If Samba brings back the cure, he will gain incredible status in the family. Our father will place him above us." And so they hatched a plot.

They told the youngest, cutest child to pretend to be very thirsty. She cried out, "Samba! Samba! I am dying of thirst! Fetch me a drink of water!" Now, even though Samba's half-siblings usually treated him like scum, he still loved them very much. And he especially loved his little sister. So he bent over the well to fetch a drink of water for her, and then the two elder siblings snatched his pouch of magic leaves, pushed him in, and went away laughing.

A potion brewed from the leaves cured the father quite miraculously. At Samba's home there was great rejoicing. Everyone feasted and sung the praise's of the noblewoman's sons. Then the noblewoman went to the king and whispered to him that the slavewoman, her co-wife, was a witch. His illness had been caused by the evil spells the slavewoman had cast on him. The king went into a towering rage and banished the slavewoman to live in the graveyard until she starved.

Meanwhile, Samba was at the bottom of the dark, muddy, well, his nose barely above water. He screamed and screamed for help until he had almost no voice left. Just as he was beginning to despair, the face of a kindly shepherd peered over the edge of the well. He pulled Samba out of the well, and Samba staggered home covered in mud. When he arrived, everyone threw stones at him and said, "Go live in the graveyard with your mother." No one had the slightest interest in listening to his story.

So Samba went to live in the graveyard with his mother, feeling generally pissed off. They lived off the meager supplies of bitter roots they could scavenge from the ground. Meanwhile those jerkface siblings were eating cow's meat every day. Things were looking pretty hopeless, when the genie arrived in a gorgeous palaquin with golden curtains, carried by four golden-collared slaves. Everyone rushed out to greet this regal princess. She explained her role in finding a cure for the king, and told them she had come to claim her groom.

But when they brought out Samba's elder brother, who had carried the pouch of magic leaves, she curled her lip in distaste and cried out, "That isn't him! That's not the person I showed the cure to! Where are you hiding my fiance?" So a great search began. They started showing her all the young men of the village, demanding, "Is this your fiance? Is this your fiance?" She kept shaking her head and saying, "No, no, no. Where is my fiance?"

The last person they showed her was Samba. You see, even though Samba was abused and mistreated, he was still the most handsome young man in the entire village. So the genie was able to recognize him easily. She proclaimed, "This is him. This is the son who cured his father." And the whole story of treachery, deception, and betrayal came out. The king was outraged. He made Samba crown prince, and proclaimed that from now on, Samba's siblings would be his slaves. Samba's mother was released from slavery, and returned home in a blaze of glory.

The genie then explained that her mission had been to restore justice to the kingdom. The whole business about the marriage was just a ploy. All she actually wanted was to give Samba the chance he deserved. She then evaporated in a puff of colored smoke. Samba and his mother lived happily ever after.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't marry the genie. I suppose an ordinary human marrying an immortal magical being would have caused problems. But isn't it a little heart-breaking that she just disappears like that? It made me want to write a sequel in which Samba pines away for love of the genie that has deserted him, and goes on a quest to win her hand.

We decided to have another tea debate on the morrow, since those had better student turnout. We thanked Mr. C and apologized for the thin audience. Fortunately, he didn't seem to mind. I told him that I had LOVED his story and he went away smiling.