African Stories (Lang) - Reading Diary A

For my week 7 reading diary, I have chosen to read the African Stories unit by Lang. The first story, titled "Motikatika", is about a family and an ogre. The story starts by telling of a woman who refuses to eat anything and is beginning to fall ill. She tells her husband she will only eat honey. He goes to find her honey, but the honey he returns with is not good enough for her. This happens several times until he finally offers her the purest of honey. She eats it and gets better, but now her husband is angry with her. To get even with her, he tells her to fetch him water. Several times, she leaves and comes back with water that he refuses to drink. Finally, she travels to a lake to fetch pure water. As she is filling the pale with water, though, an ogre emerges from the lake and asks why she is taking his water. She replies and tells him that he can have her baby in exchange for water. She tells him that the sides of the baby’s head will be shaved, he will have white beads, and he will answer to the name “Motikatika”. What the mother did not know is that her baby was a magician and he heard everything that she said. He turned to some magical bones for advice. They told him to gather all babies in the village, shave their heads, give them white beads, and told them to answer to “Motikatika”. When the ogre came and called that name, numerous babies responded. The ogre went to the mother and told her of this, so she developed another plan for the ogre to get her baby. The baby spoiled this plan and the next as well. Eventually, the baby tricked the ogre into eating his father. The mother was upset, but the baby told her that he should be eaten because it was he who sent her to fetch water. The whole concept of this story was strange to me. A baby magician and a mother offering her baby to an ogre just for a pale of water is a little odd, but the story made for an interesting read. 

(Drawing of an ogre and a woman. Source: Un-Textbook)