How The Tortoise Cracked Its Back - An African Fable (Original Rendition)

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“Just a fluffy feather to ease my daughter to sleep,” pleaded the tortoise.

“But can I also have that aging one growing out of place? It will support the palm fronds till the festivals are over.”

That way the tortoise visited the ostrich, the flamingo and the gonolek, with distinct reasons for each to pluck him just a feather.

“My wife made a dashiki and I have to give her colourful accessories to compliment,” he said to the peacock who graciously offered.

So on this great day of feasting where birds are exclusively summoned in the sky, behold a strange creature, whose origin eluded the sages, flew along. It was neither Jacana nor pelican. Not any bird that was ever known. This was the gathering anticipated by birds, and envied by land and water creatures. For words about its lush dining and infinite options of food had been carried by the wind across many a-river. This gathering was the only time the cheetah wanted to be a bird.

“What is your name?” the parrot asked the question that was on every bird’s mouth.
“My name is Everybody!” The already strange creature even became stranger.

With a cloud of curiosity over the air, the birds all flew in silence to their merriment.

The host had prepared the table with assorted foods and drinks, from wheat to barley to aromatic herbs and palm wine. The mound of pounded yam was high that one can't tell who sat across the other side of the table. Such as is told in fables. The calabash of bitterleaf soup steamed on the table as it barely left the fire, the palm wine was hardly contained within the keg as it bubbled from freshness.

Then the strange bird offered to say a prayer as the other birds sat for the business of the day. A lengthy prayer that called each of the seven gods and thanked them for everything from the cowries upto their daughters married in distant lands, to the disgust of the hungry birds who just wanted to descend on the meals.

“One last thing,” added the strange creature. “For order and fairness, can the host tell us who this whole table is set for?”

“For EVERYBODY, of course,” retorted the lady bird, to the amusement of the other birds who thought a stupid question was what the strange bird asked.

That is how this strange creature reminded the other birds that Everybody was his name, and thus the whole table was set for him alone.

The birds were bitter as they watched this ugly creature that looked like neither of them eat all of the food and drink all of the wine that was served. In annoyance they started at him. In the fracas his feathers began to fall off. It turned out they were glued on with pear tree sap. The peacock recognized his feather. So did the parrot and the pelican and the flamingo and every bird the tortoise had asked for the favour of a feather from. They each took their feathers from the greedy tortoise and he was left in the sky with his hard back and tiny hands.

Then the birds flew back one after the other, with their feathers. The tortoise in shame went to the owl who was the last to leave, and asked for a favour.

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“Please can you tell my wife to bring out all the soft things in the house and lay them in the open outside of my house?

“The mattress that is made from hay, the clothings too, and ask the pregnant goat to lie with her belly up.”

So the owl left and promised to deliver this message. The owl flew to tortoise’s wife and told her to bring out everything that is hard and tough to crack and lay them outside. The horse's saddles and the cooking wares, the sewing needles and the grinding stone. Tortoise’s wife brought out the mortar and pestle.

From his vantage point tortoise could see his wife lay the things on the field, but was too far to tell what they were. Meanwhile the owl had gone ahead to invite all the birds to come witness the return of the tortoise.

And then tortoise took a jump from the sky, where he had gone to feast, his stomach heavy from all the food and wine. No thunder before or any afterwards was as loud as the crash of the tortoise's shell against the bed of thorns his wife had prepared. Tortoise’s shell was torn in many pieces that no matter how hard the medicine man worked on it, the scars and patches remained.

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That is how the tortoise came to have a patched back.

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This is an African fable that boasts a lot of variations in how the same story is told. Chinua Achebe used the allegory in his novel Things Fall Apart in a way that is slightly different. Much of my version is adapted from the version of the same story I was told as an Anaang boy growing up in Nigeria. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did please upvote it like you mean it, and maybe resteem 😉