One sunny day the fox was in her burrow thinking of how to spend the day when she (the fox is feminine in Tigrinya) heard a nock on the door.

“Who is it?” 

“It is your old friend hyena.”

“What do you want?”

“Please help me, I can’t open my eyes.”

The fox opened the door and let the hyena in. Then she examined his eyes.

“Oh my God!” said the fox, “This is serious, you need medical help”

“What is it?” the hyena asked trembling.

“Well, I’ll be damned if I knew, but on second thought, you don’t need to go to the doctor, I will cure you myself,” said the fox. And saying that she instructed him to go to the woods and put some drops of tree fluid (raisin of the kintchib tree) onto his eyes.

The hyena went to the woods and put three drops of the white sticking tree fluid directly into his eyes. Result: His eyesight worsened.

So he went back to the fox and told her that he could see no better than before.

“Fine!” said the fox. “Just lean over a glowing charcoal until the sticking fluid in your eyes gets less gluey.”

The hyena did what he was told and went completely blind. 

He hurried back to the fox and told her of the new situation.

“Help me Aunt Foxy, I am now blind and I don’t know what to do,” he whined.

“No problem!” exclaimed the fox. “I have a job for you.”

The fox had a farm, and she always wanted a farmhand. So she thought of using the blind hyena to pull the plow for her.

So she harnessed the hyena and made him pull the plow just like an ox.

“If you want to eat, you have to work,” she told him.

The hyena worked so hard and for so long a time that after a month he collapsed and began to groan in pain.

The fox knowing he was done for left him lying in the field and went to her lair. She had already plowed and sowed her field and had no use for an ailing hyena now.

On that day there was a heavy downpour. The streams were filled with water and sudden floods rolled down dry riverbeds.

Alas! The unconscious hyena was carried away by a flood and was left half dead on a bank of a river far from the fox’s grain-field.

On the same day, in the evening, a villager was returning home from a market day in another village when he saw something lying on his path. First he thought it was a person, but after looking closely he said to himself:

“Hurrah! I have found a sheep for the holiday”

He carried the half-dead hyena on his shoulder and continued on his way to his house where his wife was waiting for him.

“Look honey,” he shouted. “ Here is the sheep I promised I will bring you for Easter celebration.”

The wife was very happy. She took the hyena, thinking it was a sheep, into the kitchen put him near the oven and tied his legs. They planned to slaughter him the next day for the feast.

Sprawled in the kitchen, the hyena got warmer and warmer because the oven had been used only a few hours earlier. Coming back to his senses he started to howl:

“Oongoooi…. Oooooongooooi…..”

The husband and wife froze in their bed.

“What is it?” stammered the wife shaking all over.

“I don’t know,” answered the husband outdoing his wife in trembling.

“It’s coming from the kitchen,” gasped the wife.

“Why don’t you go and check?” suggested husband shaking like a feather.

“Why should I?” retorted the wife covering her head with the blanket.

However, she decided to wait till morning when some ladies from the neighboring houses would come asking for fire.

Early in the morning, a woman’s voice was heard from outside the fence:

“May I borrow a piece of glowing charcoal for brewing coffee, please?”

To the wife, this was an answer to a long prayer.

“Go to the kitchen, it is open, and take a glowing charcoal from the oven,” shouted the wife lying in bed beside her shivering husband. And she added:

“And would you please untie the hyena…ahem, I mean.. the sheep which is lying near the oven? For we will be slaughtering it soon for the Easter”

So the lady from the neighboring house got inside the kitchen and tried to untie the hyena thinking it was a sheep.

The hyena looked around and was perplexed. As was his habit he took away a chunk of the lady’s breast before making his getaway and ran as fast as he could straight before him into the open field.

(To him who forgets this story, may death also forget him forever. But as to him who remembers it, may they treat him to a bowl of porridge garnished with melting butter).

 

 

 

Come Down, Zingbaba

 

Zingbaba was a beautiful little girl who lived with her stepmother in a small hut. The youngsters of the village admired her beauty and wanted to marry her. But, her stepmother was cruel and she wanted her to work in the house for her all the time, just like Cinderella. 

One day, her father thought of marrying her off before she got too old and lost her youth and charm.

Zingbaba knew that her father wanted her to marry a person of his choice. She preferred to continue working in the house like a slave rather than marry someone she did not like.

The father made arrangements for the marriage and everything that was needed for the big wedding feast was ready including a cow to be slaughtered and suwa to be drunk.

A week before the wedding feast, one moonlit night, Zingbaba left her house and went into the woods and hid in a sycamore tree.

When her father found out that she was no more in the house, he sent a searching squad to look for her.

“Zingbaba! Zingbaba! Where are you!” shouted the searching party, but they found no trace of her.

They kept on looking, checking every bush and tree, every nook and cranny. Finally they spotted her sitting in a sycamore tree, sobbing.

“What’s the matter with you Zingbaba?” they asked her.

“I don’t want to get married now,” Zingbaba sobbed.

“What’s the reason?” they wondered.

“I don’t want to marry someone I don’t love,” she whined.

The searching party tried every means to persuade her to come down, but the more they pleaded with her, the firmer she became.

Finally, her stepmother arrived and sang her the following:

 

My Zingbaba. My darling.

Don’t you know that..

The suwa is getting sour in the pot

The ingera is getting dry in the pantry

The food is burning in the clay bowl 

Please, come down my sweet Zingbaba

 

But Zingbaba wouldn’t have any of such pleading and refused to get down and the people who came to look for her decided to leave her alone.

Zingbaba kept wailing and sobbing perched on a branch of the sycamore tree.

 

“Stop crying,” murmured the sycamore tree.

Zingbaba had a fright. She looked right and left and said:

“Who is speaking?”

“It is me,” said the sycamore tree. “I want you to listen to me.”

The sycamore tree told Zingbaba to ask for any kind of fruit she wanted and it would be granted.

“You should only say ‘ Sycamore tree of my father and mother give me this and that’ and it will be given to you” intoned the sycamore tree.

Zingbaba had only to wish for something to eat, and she would get it.

But, Zingbaba was a kind girl. She remembered her cruel life with her stepmother and decided to help the poor shepherds who happened to be around watching over their flock near the sycamore tree.

Every time she spotted a very poor looking shepherd, she would say:

“Sycamore tree of my father and mother give me a basketful of guava” and puff! a basketful of guava would pop up within her reach.

Or it was a basketful of grapes, or corn on the cob or even blueberry, and she would drop it on the ground for the poor and the now bewildered shepherds to fill their stomachs with.

Zingbaba told the poor shepherds, under oath, not to tell anybody about the whole thing.

But, eventually, the secret was made public.

Meanwhile Zingbaba had grown very old and died in her sleep. The sycamore tree stretched out her branches and buried her under its shade.