Storytelling Starters ~ Which one is the heroine?
Saturday, July 16th, 2016
A good story lasts and a good story travels. In the course of this week, I received a request from one of this blog’s readers. Steph who works in South London and whom I met at my Waterstones event a few weeks ago was asking for suggestions. She needs good hero/heroine stories for when she’ll be telling stories in a South London Primary school during Black History Month in October.
A Nigerian folk-story known as The Swallowing Drum was one suggestion that quickly popped up in my mind. The story was first introduced to me by my fellow storyteller, Karen Tovell. It’s brilliant for involving older-age, Key Stage Two primary pupils in participation, debate and story-creating. Adults in workshops, too, can get an enormous amount from it. Besides, there’s a fascinating tale to be told about how this story travelled from a telling of it I did in London to a large class of 11-12 year old children in one of South Africa’s black township schools. And, for me at any rate, the story raises an interesting question: Who is the heroine of this story – the mother or the daughter?
But all that is too much for one blog. So this week I’m simply retelling the story, reserving the rest for next week and perhaps the week after that.
The Swallowing Drum:
Once in a town called Ikom, there lived a girl called Ibanang. While her father went off to work on his land each day, her mother would sweep their hut, fetch water from the river and prepare their food. Then, when the father came home at mid-day, Ibanang’s mother would go off to work in the field while Ibanang’s father did all kinds of other jobs about their home and taught Ibanang how to weave.
Ibanang’s parents always had one important rule for Ibanang. They’d tell her she mustn’t go into the nearby forest – not on her own or without any grown-ups. Sometimes, families would go into the forest to collect wild honey or mushrooms. But Ibanang knew she mustn’t ever go there alone. Her friends’ parents said the same thing to them: Do not go into the forest on your own. But when the children were playing, they all used to wonder what could be in the forest that was such a problem. Wild animals? A witch? What could it be? (more…)