14 Aug Friday Fables: The Kubu

~ A story by Moji Kitsi~

If you are born into an African tribe, discipline is central to your upbringing. While more often than not it is a lesson of reasoning that prevails, with values and morals passed down through folklore and modeling from respected elders, sometimes a harsher punishment is called for.

If you were from a Batswana tribe you would not be surprised to hear your neighbours whisper to one another, ‘Ya mosimane ke e nkgwe (the rod is for the boy)’, ‘fa a sa utlwe ka ditsebe, o tla utlwa ka letlalo (if their ears cannot hear, then their skin will feel)’ or last but certainly not least, ‘dithupa di mo metsing (the whipping sticks are in water)’ as you were ushered down the street by a very loud, irate mother after having behaved badly. That would be the moment you knew, that evening you were getting the whip.

The last saying always told of the severity of the crime. Heavy leather whipping sticks made from cow hide were left for days to soak in a barrel of water until the whip had absorbed water giving the ‘sjambok’ an extra sting.

When my father was twelve, his grandfather told him a story. Back in those days water had to be fetched from the rivers, and the young boys and girls from the village usually did the fetching. But no one was allowed near the river after dark. The legends of mythical beings that frequented the river at night were not the only thing the villagers feared, for in the river lived large, rotund, semiaquatic ungulates – hippopotamuses – the most deadly of all land mammals!

Watching them lounge about in river pools or bask on the shore, you would easily be duped into thinking that hippopotamuses are slow and lazy. But you would be wrong. At night Hippos emerge from the water to graze alongside the river, covering large distances as they do so. Males are extremely territorial and females with calves are equally aggressive. This aggressive nature and their deceptive speed mean that many who have close encounters with hippopotamuses at night, do not live to tell the story, causing sorrow and despair to their villages and those who love them.

In many African cultures the whipping sticks left to soak in water are named after the Hippopotamus, in Batswana it is Kubu, in Zulu Imvubu, Kiboko in Swahili and Mnigolo in Malinké. Poetic and dramatic, for just like the hippopotamus, these turgid flexible whips that have wallowed in water all day will emerge from the cool water in the evening to cause only unhappiness and sorrow to loved ones. Ironically, traditionally it was even the skin of these ungulates, and not that of cow, that was used to make the whip back then, so one was truly being whipped by a Hippopotamus.

It was enough to make any young boy or girl behave.