impress1

The Curse of Tembo

Once upon the time there was a little village beyond the mountain Kilimanjaro. A man called Mwandege
lived there with her old mother. His father was dead, the brothers had moved to Nairobi to find an
easier life. The sisters had married and gone to other villages.

One day the mother spoke: “My son, I’m old and I cannot work too much any more. It is about
time that you marry a woman, who will help me”. But it was not that simple. Mwandeges Shamba
was small and he could not make profit of it neither throuhg raising animals nor through growing
vegetable. So he had no means for paying the price for a bride. He was thinking a lot about the
matter.

One day after the big rains some men from Nairobi came to the village and told Mwandege that
they aimed to go and shoot a tembo. There were white men in town who paid a lot of money for
ivory, even though the shooting of tembo was prohibited.

Till late in the night the men were sitting in front of Mwandeges hut drinking palm wine and
talking about the big money they could earn when poaching a tembo. Who could resist that when
beeing so poor and needing money so desperately as Mwandege.

One day before dawn he went out to the savanna, where he had seen tracks of tembo. After a
while he found the herd whose leading cow had considerable tusks. He rised his old rifle and
shot the tembo. But he ghost of the dying tembo came over him and talked: ” You killed me
because of your own selfish reasons. Instead of working hard and saving money you killed
me.You wanted the easier way on cost of my life. I’m cursing you! No woman will ever want to
marry you then I’ll open their eyes and they will see straight in your black poor heart. Your
looks will be ugly to them and no one will take you for husband”. So Tembo spoke and it became
true:

Although Mwandege now had a lot of money for bride price, no woman accepted him as husband.
Some of them even covered their eyes and some run away, screaming.

After many failures Mwandege decided to consult a witch doctor. He prescribed the problem and
asked for advice. The witch doctor consulted his oracles and shells then he nodded and said: “The curse
of tembo is very mighty and covers the eyes of the women so they reject you. Perhaps you will have a
chance to find a wife if you go to the islands beyond the coast where there never has got tembos.
Maybe the curse has no power there?”

Next April Mwandege travelled to Mombasa full of hope and hired a small boat to sail to the
Island Pemba with the winter monsoon. There he wanted to look for a bride. Perhaps the women
on the island would not be under Tembos curse.

But as he was sailing through the channel between the continet and the island, a terrible storm was sent
over the sea by the ghost of Tembo.The wind was tearing at the canvas and the whitecaps were tossing
the little boat up and down. His end in sight Mwandege preyed to Allah and rued from the depth of his
heart to have killed the Tembo. As he was about to drown Allah had compassion for Mwandeges soul
and sent a hollow piece of wood into the water in which the ghost of Mwandege could slip inside. But
the open end of the hollow wood was sealed by the ghost of Tembo so the ghost of Mwandege could not
get out of there.

Allah spoke to Mwandege: „As you killed the tembo you killed a creature of mine and his ghost has
punished you till death but from now on you will be bound together in this hollow piece of wood to see
to your further destiny.”

So they were drifting together in the ocean around the shore of the island Pemba.