Most Nigerian children grew up listening to folktales about the tortoise. Though slow and cunny, the tortoise was also considered crafty and wise.
Take a look at these tortoise folktales and see if they bring back memories:
1. Tortoise as a guest to party in the sky
In this story, Tortoise tapped into his inner Nigerian politician and asked for a feather from every bird so that he could make wings to follow them to a feast in the sky he wasn’t invited to. After taking advantage of their kindness, he tricked them by making them change their names for this party. He chose the name “All of you,” which led to this dirty bitch eating all the food and drinks that the party organisers offered to “All of you”. The birds got pissed, collected their feathers, and left him stranded in the clouds. This shameless animal still had the guts to beg one of the birds to bring out all the soft things in his house so he could jump from the cloud. Already over tortoise’s nonsense, the bird brought out the strongest materials in his house for the tortoise to land on. Mr. Tortoise jumped and doomed his species to an eternity of cracked shells.
2. The tortoise and the wisdom gourd
One thing about the folktales starring Tortoise is how illogical they can be. In this story, Tortoise was distressed because he wanted to be the wisest person in the world. So he gathered all of the world’s wisdom into a gourd, which totally makes sense and took a long trip to the biggest tree he could find so as to hide his new treasure. When he found it, he noticed that his son had been following him. With all the knowledge he had, he didn’t know how he’d be able to climb the tree while holding the gourd. His son told him to put the gourd on his back so he could climb it. He was confused at how smart his son was since he had collected all the wisdom in the world. Realising how foolish his quest was, the tortoise smashed the gourd and went back home.
3. Why tortoise has a bald head
It turns out that tortoises used to have hair before. Long ago, Mr dog and his family were making porridge yam, like the evil spirit he is, Mrr tortoise somehow smelt and followed the aroma to the dog’s house. Instead of asking for a plate-like sensible person, Tortoise decided to lie that the king had summoned Mr dog and his family, Tortoise promised to safeguard his house while they were away. As soon as they left, he began to eat as much as he could, knowing that they would hurry back as soon as they realized that the king wasn’t even around. He heard them approaching and decided to take some porridge home for his family but he had nothing to put it in, he got the brilliant idea to stuff the porridge in his hat and wear it. Mr dog came back and was so annoyed that Tortoise had wasted his time and they argued for a bit when all the tortoise wanted to do was rush home. The pain eventually got too much for the tortoise to bear, so he removed his hat, and the porridge along with his hair fell out to everyone’s dismay. That’s why Tortoises are bald.