Folklores

Growing up in an African home, there were always stories and tales passed down from generation to generation. Mostly it was our grandmothers who derived pleasure in entertaining their grand children, or it was from our parents. It wasn't an uncommon thing for these stories to be shared among the children themselves whenever they gathered to play.

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You would frequently hear one child repeat a story and the rest would be awed by it and either try to experiment or save it for future purposes. At least this was my experience growing up, I think these tales were either meant to scare or serve as a warning to children.

One of such tale was from my mother. Back then, whenever we mistakenly put pepper in our eyes, she would bring a knife and hold it against the closed eye and recite a little song. She would say this twice and ask us to stop crying and open our eyes. I found this funny even back then because I couldn't understand the chemistry behind it, but my cousins swore it worked.

Another story we were told was that when it rains and the sun is still shining, it means a lion was giving birth (or an elephant, according to some other kids). Whenever this rare occurrence happened, we were always excited and would imagine how many cubs or baby elephants were being brought into the world in the jungle at that moment. But getting older, I discovered that this myth was false. The phenomenon is actually referred to as sun shower, and it occurs when accompanying winds blow the raindrops to areas where there are no clouds. So the myth is false.

When a boy touches a girl, she gets pregnant was a famous one. This myth is obviously false, but we did not know it as kids. I think elders just formulated this myth to prevent relations between boys and girls at a tender age. I guess it must have come as a shock to children when they learned how people got pregnant in biology and that it involved more than mere touching. Haha.

There's another one I told as a child. My friends and I would fold our eyelids in such a way that the red part underneath would show, and we would walk around trying to scare each other. Well, our parents successfully put an end to it by informing us that we could go blind if a housefly perches on it. Nobody wanted to go blind, so we immediately stopped doing it. To this day, I still think it's not true, they just said that to scare us.

Then there is a myth surrounding the bush baby, it was quite rampant among students who were in boarding schools when I was growing up. According to them, whoever successfully took the bush baby's mat or a strand of its hair would become wealthy. No one I know has ever encountered a bush baby, so I do not know how true the myth is.

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Myths are usually symbolic tales of unknown origin. They may be true or false, but either way they are told to serve a profound purpose in the society. Have you discovered a myth that turned out to be true? Please share with me!

Thanks for reading!