Reading Notes - African Tales (Reading A)

I chose to read the African Tales myths, mostly because I was skimming through the options and came across the very first story in the Reading, Motikatika. 

In that story, which is heavy on the magical realism, a wife is sick. Her husband goes to try to find her honey, but she rejects it several times before she accepts. When she's feeling better, her husband decides that its his turn to be waited on hand and foot, and send her out for water. He rejects all the water she brings, until she goes to a special creek which has clear water. Here's where the story got weird.

"Portrait of African Woman Carrying a Pot on Her Head"
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This ogre pops up out of the river and he demands that she give him payment for taking his water. Then she (wildly) offers the ogre her baby in exchange for a pot of water. At this point, I'm thinking she's crazy. The ogre, though, thinks this is a great idea and somehow a baby's life is equal to a pot full of water, which he is sitting in and getting all ogre-y so it's not like this is the most sterile, delicious, stream of water on earth. But I digress.

So the mom says she'll shave her son's head, give him beads to wear and the ogre can just call his name to come and get him: "Motikatika." But!--y'all ready for this?--the baby is a magician. Who taught the baby magic? What constitutes a 'baby' in this story? Definitely not someone who does magic, right? Anyway, the magic baby has heard that his mom is gonna let an ogre eat him--somehow. And he decides to consult the bones and ask them what he should do.

So he plays a game of "I am Spartacus" with all the babies in the village. He shaves all their heads, gives them beads and tells them to call themselves Motikatika. This happens, the ogre is confused, but won't eat all the babies who call themselves Motikatika because they haven't wronged him. It should be noted that neither has Motikatika but it's cool with the ogre if he gets eaten because his mom didn't check the spring for ogres before she went to get water for her whiny husband.

Long story short, the baby keeps outsmarting the ogre and eventually the ogre gets pissed off because he hasn't gotten to eat any babies. He takes himself to the woman's house and demands that he get to eat Motikatika. The baby outsmarts them again, and this time, the husband gets eaten. The mother is devastated, but the baby makes a valid point: it was her whiny husband that sent her to the well because he was trying to get back at her for being sick, so he should have been eaten, not Motikatika.  

There's so much to unpack in this one tale. First, magical realism is honestly the best because I think that we live in a society where we have to have everything explained in a logical progression from cause to effect. But in a lot of Eastern traditions, including Africa, India, and Asia, (or really, just any culture that is not Euro-American in nature) there is no need to explain yourself. Magical things happen, and there are still rules that apply, they just aren't laid out for the reader. For example, the ogre wouldn't eat all the babies calling themselves Motikatika, beause they hadn't done him any harm, and try as he might, he was unable to eat Motikatika; but he was able to eat the husband, meaning that he was the one who had done the harm in the first place. This is a part of the magical realism tradition--accepting the circumstances that are given to you as the reader even though you will likely not get an explanation.

In Euro-American stories, what happens is dictated by a set of rules that were established before the story begins. When you're reading a story outside of the Euro-American tradition, especially one which has elements of magical realism, you learn to work backwards. Events in the story dictates what the rules are. In other words, what does happen is what can happen. I like that.