Reading Diary B: South African Folktales

The second half of the South African Folktales were really interesting and very different from the West African Folktales I read last week. A lot of the stories were much shorter and gave very little detail about the overall plot. Most of these stories would be so fun to re-create for the storytelling post because they give you so much more freedom to write your own beginnings and endings!

One story I enjoyed, although it was very short, was Jackal and Monkey. I really liked that even though the majority of the story was written in English, words from the original African languages like "Boer", "kraal", and "kopje" were used as description words. I also thought it was interesting that Monkey put up a fight against Jackal, knowing his intentions were probably to fool him; however, as in the stories from the first half, Jackal always seems to be able to fool everyone, even though they know he's always up to his tricks.

I thought the story Elephant and Tortoise was very interesting. Most of these stories from the second section seem a tad bit morbid, and almost all of them end in death. I thought it was interesting that of all of the animals that were able to "break" the tortoise's protective sense over the water was the lion, the animal that is most prominently known for being powerful. The end of the story was definitely on the grim side, with the tortoise tearing up the inside of the elephant. I definitely did not expect for the short little story to end that way!

(African Spurred Tortoise)