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No Problem Can Fail to Crash on His Head: A Trickster in Contemporary African Folklore
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# : |
16923 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1990 |
2,901 Words |
| Author
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Oyekan Owomoyela
Oyekan Owomoyela is professor of English at the University of
Nebraska. |
Usually embodied in animal form, the trickster, a character type popular in the folklore of cultures worldwide, is strikingly human in his habits and predispositions. The explanation for the anthropomorphism is clearly that the animal is intended as a human surrogate, but the choice of animal differs from culture to culture. In African folklore, Trickster appears as Spider (like the Ashanti Anansi, the Zande Ture, and the Hausa Gizo), Tortoise (like the Yoruba Ajapa, also known as Ijapa, Alajapa, Ahun, Abaun and Alabaun, and the Mpongwe Ekaga), Hare (like the East and Central African Sungura or Zomo), or Jackal (in southern Africa). Invariably they are creatures who have so impressed their human observers by some exceptional qualities as to have become invested with uncommon mental agility. The spider, for example, evokes awe because of the thread, produced seemingly out of nowhere, with which it make sits web; the tortoise, for its part, impresses by its ageless look, deliberate gait (which suggests dignity becoming to an elder), and portable protective armor plating.
Through mental agility, tricksters succeed more often than not in easing their passage thorough a treacherous and dangerous world. Unburdened by scruples, tricksters dupe friends, acquaintances, and adversaries alike in the pursuit of their selfish ends and blithely reward their benefactors' generosity with sometimes deadly betrayals. In addition, they have a pronounced weakness for food but are plagued by an inveterate aversion for work, a trait that forces them to rely on trickery to obtain food in times both of want and of plenty.
Characteristically, the tricksters' victims are larger and more powerful adversaries whose superior size and strength are neutralized by their gullibility and proclivity towards some appetitive weakness. For example, Ajapa (Tortoise) entices Ajanaku (Elephant) into town an to his death with honeyed bean fritters and tales of his election to succeed the town's dead king; Hare persuades Lion to employ him as babysitter (in variants as hair plaiter) for Lion's cubs but kills and eats all of them virtually under Lion's nose; and Jackal tricks an ogre, about to eat him, into letting him go and eventually gets the ogre and his brother to eat their mother.
An example of seemingly gratuitous mischief making occurs in a story involving Ajapa and his friend Inaki (Baboon). As the two sit in silent contemplation, Ajapa sighs a prayer that hey never encounter unprovoked trouble so serious as to redden their eyes. Inaki is so deep in his thoughts that he does not respond. When Ajapa demands and amen, his querulousness brings
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