Kenya: Her Tales and Her People Quiz

Answer: Sun braved terrifying sights to woo a pretty bride, while Moon ran away.

In this narrative, Moon is the older brother, and he loves the pretty girl very much. However, the pretty girl lives deep in a frightening jungle, and Moon runs away in fear from illusions rising from an enchanted pond. Sun stands his ground, and the pretty girl claims him for her husband with her father's blessing.

When Sun returns home with his new bride, Moon tries to kill him out of jealousy. Their mother stops him, however, and curses him to be forever smaller, dimmer, and afraid to come out in daytime.

Answer: The chameleon is so tired from the journey that he can't get the words out; the faster weaver-bird swoops in and tells humans there is no afterlife.

In this tale, the weaving-bird performs the familiar "trickster" function of folklore, fooling God into letting him spoil the afterlife for humans. Other tricksters include Coyote from several American Indian traditions and Loki from Norse mythology.

Answer: Frog

The caterpillar frightens away all the larger animals by saying in a booming voice: "I am the warrior son of the long one whose anklets have become unfastened in the Kurtiale country. I crush the rhinoceros to the earth and make cow dung of the elephant. I am invincible!" After all the other animals have refused to fight such an imposing foe, the frog replies: "I, who am strong and a leaper, have come. My buttocks are like the post and God has made me vile!" This vivid portrait of how to stand up to tough talk ends predictably, with the other animals dragging a surrendering caterpillar from hare's house and having a good laugh at their own foolishness.

Answer: Fire

According to the seminal folklorist James Frazer, ceremonial fire serves to "promote the growth and welfare of man and beast, either positively by stimulating them, or negatively by averting the dangers and calamities which threaten them from such causes as thunder and lightning, conflagration, blight, vermin, mildew, sterility, disease, and not least of all witchcraft." One could easily add wild animals to this list; as the Pokot tale makes clear, animals not friendly to humans flee fire. Yet another reason for its sacred nature.

Answer: A trail of thick sap

By the time Wam'wea finds his sister, the sap has grown into a line of trees and Wachera has two adolescent children. He doesn't take revenge on Wachera's husband, though. Rather, he waits his sister and brother-in-law out, refusing to come to their home and reconcile until he is paid an appropriate sum in goat, oxen, and wives.

This is probably an allusion to the bride wealth tradition in most African cultures, where a family typically receives compensation when they lose a daughter. In traditional society, this was almost always paid in cattle. My mentor in East African history and culture, however, tells me that today bride wealth is often paid in Johnny Walker Scotch - preferably red label!

Answer: She scolds them and calls them "children of the tree", causing them to become fruit again.

The children leave the woman, returning to the tree from which they came. The woman returns to the sycamore tree to retrieve them, but she can see their angry eyes staring at her. This frightens her so that she never returns.

Answer: The hero's own brother kills him, but the hero is reincarnated and takes revenge.

Out of jealousy, the hero's brother kills him, claiming the deed to be a hunting accident. Following her ogre mother's prophetic advice, the title character has the hero's body thrown into the woods to rot, then retrieves a maggot from his body and nurtures it with fat and milk.

The maggot turns into a child which quickly grows into the hero. He kills the murderous brother, and then takes his wife to settle a new land called Kavithe.

Answer: A castle in which to live

M'wambia ends up the master of a large village. One day, his sister sees him herding and brings the family to see him. M'wambia's father drowns crossing the river to his son's settlement, though it isn't clear whether M'wambia kills him or if his death is just poetic justice. M'wambia welcomes the rest of the family, and gives them roles in his village.

When he returns from a trip, however, he finds that his family has killed the N'jenge. Despondent over losing his magical benefactor, M'wambia kills his family, then commits suicide.

Answer: False

The story described above is that of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek legend. The Kikuyu version is rather different. The maiden, Wanjiru, is sacrificed to bring rain at the direction of the shaman. She is placed in the middle of a circle, and she gradually sinks into the ground.

Her family rushes to save her, but the rest of the village buys them off with goats, and they allow Wanjiru to sink. The rains do come, but the hero of the tale chafes at the injustice of the sacrifice and goes to the spot where Wanjiru went into the earth.

He finds her in the underworld and carries her out - no death gods to convince, no three-headed Rottweilers to charm. Seeing her returned, Wanjiru's family tries to reclaim the girl, but the hero rebukes them for letting her be sacrificed. Eventually they make amends, and the two lovers are married.

Answer: Yes - but part of the giant survives.

Realizing that the hero has grown too strong to defeat, Mukun'ga M'bura tells the hero to dig a large hole. Then the giant places his finger in the hole, and all that was lost emerges from it. Even after this restoration, however, the hero feels Mukun'ga M'bura is too powerful and evil to live and leads a campaign to destroy him.

The party does kill the giant, but his leg survives and goes into the water. The boy goes to retrieve it, but finds that it has survived and taken Mukun'ga M'bura's belongings far away.

It has left the giant's great herds, however, which the hero and his family take for themselves.